Developer Quintain is spending £1.5M daily to redevelop the area around Wembley Stadium.GETTY IMAGES
The area around Wembley Stadium "is beset by feverish activity," according to Rhiannon Curry of the London TELEGRAPH. Wembley is becoming almost unrecognizable as the "down-at-heel" London neighborhood it once was. Across the skyline "all around the famous arch of the stadium," tower blocks are emerging from the ground as an "ambitious project to regenerate a huge 85-acre site comes to fruition." For almost 100 years, Wembley and the nearby SSE Arena have been recognized as "world renowned venues," attracting more than 4 million visitors each year. But the area "suffered from a lack of investment and new homes have been few and far between." Fans traveling to matches or concerts in the area "were limited to a small number of pubs and just a few options to buy food." In '12, developer Quintain stepped in, buying swathes of land which had previously been "little more than grotty office blocks," with ambitions to transform the area into a "new cultural and employment hub" for the capital. The scale of the project "is extraordinary." In a single day, the company spends £1.5M ($1.97M) on construction. When the finished redevelopment, known as Wembley Park, is complete, Quintain will have built more than 7,000 new homes and office space for an estimated 14,000 workers (TELEGRAPH, 7/1).
