Olympics-London landlords squeeze cash from dead space - Yahoo! Eurosport

Olympics-London landlords squeeze cash from dead space - Yahoo! Eurosport

London landlords are renting out everything from vacant stores to empty sports fields, rooftops and even an abandoned quarry to cash in on the tight supply of space in the UK capital during the Olympic Games this summer.
Eleven million fans, sponsors and athletes are expected to arrive in Europe's second-most crowded city from July, stoking huge demand for storage, temporary shops and vantage points for TV cameras, in turn allowing landlords to cash in on otherwise dead space.
" You'll see usable space created that doesn't currently exist, " s aid Mark Hughes-Webb, managing director of Space-2 Consultancy, a specialist real estate firm that finds buildings for events and film shoots.
"It's been a long time since the Games were in such a densely populated city," Hughes-Webb said. "People are having to be more imaginative."
London, the European Union's most densely populated city after Paris according to EU statistics, will host the games between July 27 and Aug. 12. Homeowners have already hiked rents by up to six times in anticipation of the influx and commercial landlords are getting in on the act.
Unlike the last two Olympic cities of Beijing and Athens, where neighbourhoods were demolished to create venues, or they were located in more sparsely populated outlying areas, mo st of the 34 London sites are at the heart of built-up areas.