it is here, at Sugar House Lane in Stratford, that Inter Ikea, the investment and construction arm of the Swedish furniture giant, has bought a 13-acre site. Within the next few years, Inter Ikea will have built a mixed-use development consisting of office and retail space as well as lots of Ikea housing – some 1,500 units or so – and it has already started working on a master plan for the site.
Peter Andrews, the chief executive of the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation (LTGDC) , says that he fully expects it to become "a Covent Garden in the East End". A retail, housing and leisure hub abutting the Olympic Park, this Ikea village will be one of the things making the new East End a place in which people will be proud to live, as well as a tourist destination to die for.
Home Swede home: A new 'village' on the 2012 Olympics site is to be designed by Ikea
The Independent
July 30, 2010
