Regeneration is failing - Lance Forman
I recently interviewed Lance Forman, owner of H Forman & Son, a family business from east London. Their business was once where the Olympic stadium now stands (on the running track I believe).
The audio can be heard here. Here is a transcript...
How was H Forman & son founded?
It was started by my great grandfather, Harris. We’ve been going for four generations and are family run. We’re the oldest producers of smoked salmon in the world – it all started in East London, not Scotland!
My great grandfather came over from Odessa, saw the salmon coming from Scotland to Billingsgate and started smoking it. It wasn’t a luxury food then, it was a way of preserving. Through the 20th century smoked salmon became a popular gourmet food.
Why east London, did geography matter?
It’s where all immigrant communities came. In his case it was the Jewish escape from the pogroms in Russia. Billingsgate was nearby.
You were in east London for years, then it was announced an Olympics was to be hosted here. What was the impact?
This was actually the third in a spring of disasters. I joined the business in 1994, and four years later our kilns burnt down ¾ of the facility. We rebuilt out of the ashes, it took a year. Then within a year the river Lea overflowed! We had to start again from scratch, we had to move nearby, we got grant funding from the LDA, built a new facility and within a year the LDA said the site was wanted for the Olympic stadium!
All this in 5 years- very challenging!
You moved though, tell me about the building
The factory we now sit in is the result of a 5-6 year battle with the LDA over our facility. It wasn’t just our facility either. The area that is now the largest manufacturing district in London – wiped out for 3 weeks of sport!
The Olympics was sold to Britain as a regeneration project. It had to be that way as legally it could not be acquired just for a sporting event. The later evidence justifies our concerns. It was a phenomenal sporting event but significant questions hang over the regeneration
Tell me about what happened to your neighbours
There were 250 business employed 12000 people, and we know 75 closed down. A year ago a 100 were still trying to sign relocation deals. We were one of the ones who signed a deal and managed to stay local. It took 5-6 years and we suffered.
Long term will you benefit having stayed here
I hope so, but during the games this was not the case. As I said the games were sporting success but commercially it was a disaster for London. Even on the doorstep of the Olympics. the best opportunity to regenerate was during the games, where people would see and explore the area for 1st time but people were trapped in their Disney style bubble which could have been on the moon. People were not allowed out, force fed fast food then marshalled out to watch more Olympics on their televisions.
Potential was missed wasn’t it?
The UK is in recession, what an opportunity for UK plc – but sponsorship rules and protection ruined it. We have corporate facilities, but during the games people told us ‘how can I do that when I can’t even mention ‘Olympic’ on the invite. Sponsors only paid 10% of the Olympics, the public paid 90%, sponsors were protected too much.
The Greenway is reopened, the park will reopen soon, how will that affect businesses?
I am the eternal optimist. 2 positive comments we get – people come and dine and people are amazed that this part of London exists. They return a few weeks later with friends and family.
The other thing is that other Londoners are astonished how easy it is to get here – it’s really not that far! No further from central London than Hammersmith! Stratford is so well connected.
Finally, Istanbul, Tokyo and Madrid are all bidding – what advice would you give bidders
In terms of value for money it’s a bad idea. Prestige is a different thing. The Spanish and maybe Japanese economies don’t need it.
People say it costs a lot of money but look at the national pride. But if you look at the jubilee, that also generated pride and cost just 10 million – you could do a jubilee every day for 8 years for the cost of an Olympics!
If the Olympics was about regeneration, how much more could they have done just by spending 10 billion regenerating, in a more positive way than the games have?
