Zirve Eki - ISTANBUL REstate

15 Haziran 2010
thing you could do is privatize, but some of the things that they
passed, there was nothing you could do out of it. What are you
going to do, for example, with the baseball stadium in Greece
after the games? If you pass it will develop, nothing. Greeks
don't play baseball. These are simple as that. So, logistical
challenge; it is in absolutely incredibly complicated exercise. It
takes an enormous amount of coordination, enormous amount
of people and resources and of course that leads to a lot of
excitement over four years tried to get it organized.
Now, what does it do to the urban fabric? Urban regeneration?
Absolutely yes. Because the big idea is how are you going to
take the opportunity of the Olympics to redevelop areas that
really need redeveloping? Take Barcelona, for example. They
took great advantage of the blighted waterfront and they
created the Olympic village and a bunch of other things along
the waterfront and reclaimed the waterfront that was in a total
disarray and really did something out of it. Now, there are major
housing developments. I call them housing developments because
that's what they are; you have the Olympic athletes' village and
the media village. Now, in Athens, and since then things are
being, you know, every year you have a little bit more people,
I would expect that today the Olympic games in 2000, the new
one is in Brazil and it took. Probably in the host city contract
have an obligation on the order of 20,000 to 22,000 people
living in the Olympic village and about 12,000 to 14,000 media,
that you need to provide accommodation for. This is in addition
to the accommodation for spectators, Olympic family, etc etc
etc. So we are talking about... let's take the Olympic village for
a minute. You are talking about essentially the equivalent of
5 to 7 thousand units built in one shot and eventually being
given up to the market in one shot because you cannot do it
in phases. Now, I heard the presentations this morning about
all these medium housing development, certainly, that is what
we did in Greece. There was no way to put it in the market. So,
what we did? It was a deal that we made with the equivalent
authority for medium and lower income families and it was
done via a lottery. And essentially the houses in the units were
Gayrimenkul Zirvesi 10
given to the people afterwards. Now, there is the alternative
approach where you say 'I would like to do something that these
more high level to regenerate let's say your waterfront side'. Of
course that is going to go market rate. But perhaps you want to
do with the media villages because they are smaller in size and
you can break them up. The Olympic village has to be one; there
is no way to break it into pieces. And it has to be in a location
that strategically has a transportation advantage, because
everybody everyday has to leave that place and go to the venues
and come back. So, accommodation again, you have hotel rooms.
Certainly, Istanbul is not going to have enough hotel rooms as
it is today to accommodate the Olympic Games. So you are
talking about hotels, hotels, hotels which of course gives you
enormous opportunity to renovate a bunch of existing hotels
and not every hotel has to be five star hotel. So, that requires a
lot of planning. And then you have these special venues and I
put them down as... IBC stands for International Broadcast Center
and MPC is the Main Press Center. Now the IBC is a very special
lays if you want location that in the case of Athens was 110.000
square meters of high high level ceiling because all the studios
are going in it, with a requirement of a capability of housing
10,000 to 12,000 people everyday moving in and out of it and
a requirement for energy on the order of 23 to 28 megawatts.
Just for that damn facility. Now what the heck do you do with
a facility like that afterwards? And it has to be located relatively
close to the major venues which are used in the Olympic... the
Olympic Stadium etc. So, planning and again in the case of
Athens, to answer your question before, IBC was done next to
an existing small conference center that became the MPC with
the idea of combining the two, to make the major exhibition
center of Athens. But unfortunately, conflicting ideas of different
authorities and different agencies and different ministries etc.
the decision was not made, end result the MPC remained as a
mediocre small exhibition center and the IBC became a shopping
mall, unfortunately.
Now, infrastructure, as you can imagine, Olympic Games means
a lot of infrastructure. It is not just a sports infrastructure. It is
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