Comment: Closing Westfield to the public is Olympic folly

Just as Olympic crowds were supposed to peak at Westfield Stratford City, an over-zealous cabal of bureaucrats has been allowed to ensure that retailers will suffer.

So here’s a plan. Let’s open a shop in the Westfield mall at Stratford. What could go wrong? The Olympic shoppers will throng, the stock will shine and we’ll turn a penny or two, or maybe even three. This, or something like it, may have been the rationale that underpinned the decision by some of the smaller retailers at the east London mega-mall to set up shop in the location.

Yet nobody would have predicted the prescriptive body that is Locog acting in quite the high-handed, uncommercial manner that it has. OK, it perhaps has had a contractual duty to support those who stumped up cash to sponsor the Olympic Games, but it has managed to do so in a manner that will have affected both sponsoring and non-sponsoring retailers.

Who could have imagined that a mall with in excess of 300 retailers would be closed to visitors other than those heading directly for the Olympic Park, just at the moment when it was anticipated that revenues would peak? And why was there no prior notice? Locog seems to have managed to do its even best to ensure that if you wanted to sample the Olympic atmosphere (without jumping through the hoops required to get a ticket for one of those empty seats), indulge in a little retail therapy or just generally take a nose around the mall to see what was happening, you would be denied.

There is an obvious supplementary question in all of this. WTF (aka Where’s the flaw?)? Or put another way, what do the powers that be at Locog think they’re doing? There are some great shops at Westfield Stratford and it’s highly probable that they will have planned to have their stocks more or less at capacity for the Olympics. Yet at a time when one of the economy’s key drivers is coming under pressure on a daily basis, it is deemed sensible to stop potential shoppers shopping.

This may be the wisdom that surpasseth understanding, but there is the even more monumental folly of telling people not to visit London. They have obeyed, in their droves, and misery has been heaped on misery. There must be a good reason for all of this, but it is pretty hard to discern. And if all of this sounds like an unremitting grumble, picture what it must be like to be a retailer.