Slideshow: Venues for 2012 London Olympic Games

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From Wimbledon to Wembley Stadium to The Dome, a look at the venues for the 2012 London Olympic Games.

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LONDON -- With the end of the Paralympic Games four days away, Londoners are being promised a bright Olympic legacy of new jobs, homes and park space – but some in the city’s poorest neighborhoods are already questioning whether they will see any long-term benefit.

The regeneration of post-industrial East London was a cornerstone of the city’s bid to host the 2012 Games, and work has already begun on finding new users for the permanent venues and on transforming the 550-acre park into a new community with almost 3,000 new homes as well as schools and leisure space.

“This is a generational project – it may be 20 years before we see the full benefit of the work being done today,” Dennis Hone, chief executive of the London Legacy Development Corporation, told NBC News.

The future of seven of the eight permanent Olympic Park venues has been decided, with the striking Orbit sculpture becoming a visitor attraction and the Copper Box – which hosted pentathlon, fencing and handball during the Games – turned into a multi-purpose sport and entertainment venue.

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A diverse community in East London will welcome the world to Britain for the 2012 Olympic Games. Meet residents and hear how they feel about having a huge, world stage in their backyard.

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On Wednesday, a conference heard how the 700,000 square foot International Broadcast Center – the building through which television pictures of the sporting action were edited and distributed to a global audience of billions - is to be turned into a technology quarter with office space for digital and creative start-up companies, studios, and a high-powered data center. The iCITY project, led by a private developer, aims to capitalize on East London’s growing reputation as a destination for designers, artists and creative entrepreneurs.

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Crowds make their way out of the Olympic Park at Stratford during the London 2012 Paralympic Games on Monday.

“We estimate that it will create 4,000 jobs, plus another 2,000 in the wider local community,” Richard Gibbs, business development director of iCITY, told NBC News.

But some in that community – particularly in Stratford, the poverty-stricken district bordering the Olympic Park - are unconvinced that they will see any of the promised benefits. “The good jobs will go to people from outside the area who have skills and education,” said Judith Garfeld, director of local charity Eastside Community Heritage. “The rest will be the same part-time, low-skilled service jobs that we already have.

“They are creating a new community on the site of the park but there is no sense that those of us who already live here will see any long-term legacy from the Olympics.”

Landscaping will be carried out to turn the grass and waterside areas into the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, with efforts underway to encourage wildlife into what used to be a contaminated industrial zone.

Up to 7,000 people will move into the athletes’ village, whose 2,818 dormitory-style apartments are being converted into proper living spaces to be known as East Village. A housing association will take over 1,379 of the homes, making about half available to those on local council social housing lists and the rest sold through government-sponsored shared-ownership and shared-equity schemes designed to ease young people into London’s sky-high property market. The remaining homes will be available on the private market, mostly for rent.

“It will be very nice for those people, but all it will do is push up the rent and the prices for everyone else in the area,” said a hot dog stand owner who gave his name to NBC News as Tony. “I don’t think it will change things for us.”

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Some local business owners in the Stratford area of East London think the legacy of the 2012 Olympic Games will not benefit their community. A hot dog stand owner, who gave his name only as Tony, said new homes on the site of the Olympic Park would be for wealthier incomers.

He said his stand in Stratford market – a stone’s throw from the main entrance to the Olympic Park – had seen only a 10 per cent rise in business during the Games, despite up to a quarter of a million visitors per day passing through the nearby station on their way to the venues.

“They all got channeled out of the station and straight into the Olympic Park – we hardly saw any of them,” he said.

Stall holder, Angela Brown, who sells flags from around the world, said locals had been left “very disappointed” despite being excited about the Games.

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“It was an exciting time and fantastic to meet people from all over world, but in terms of business it has been really, really bad,” she said. “The athletes wandered over but we didn’t see as many spectators as we hoped for.”

Much of the bitterness is aimed at the glitzy new Westfield shopping mall, abutting the Olympic Park, whose huge increase in traffic made it one of the few immediate economic winners from London’s $14.3-billion Games.

“Although Westfield has created jobs, they are low-skill shop jobs,” Garfield said. “Local kids hang around there but they can’t afford to buy anything, it’s not for local people. On the day a local kid got stabbed to death there they didn’t even close the doors.”

Elizabeth Dalziel / AP, file

Landscaper Jack Hunn builds a kingfisher nest, hidden at the bottom of the Olympic Stadium, on June, 20. Once the massive crowds go home, it is hoped bats will find themselves taking up residence in boxes around the park, part of a lasting environmental legacy for East London's Olympic Park.

Officials insist there has been wider economic benefit. “The cake has got bigger,” Hone said. “It isn’t about places like Westfield take a slice away from others. It may take time, but the whole area will get a lift from this regeneration.”

One of the biggest legacy questions remains unresolved: the future of the 80,000-seat $700-million main Olympic stadium.

Local soccer teams West Ham and Leyton Orient are among the bidders to become permanent tenants of the site, along with a sporting college and an ambitious scheme to host Formula One racing, the London Evening Standard reported. A final decision will be made next month.

Despite the lack of certainty, International Olympic Committee chairman Jacques Rogge believes London’s planning has set the bar high for future host cities.

“There is a lot of things London has done, with probably also a better care for sustainability and legacy than many other cities in the past,” he told an Olympic news conference last month. 

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East Londoner Dean Houssein sells coffee, drinks and snacks from the back of a van near the London's Victoria Park, a short train ride from the Olympic Park. He said that during the Games, the area has been "deader than dead."

LONDON – Quiet restaurants, empty sidewalks and spare seats on the subway have left businesses in central London without an Olympic gold rush, despite Britain's medal success -- and have raised new questions about whether the world's largest sporting event brings any economic benefit to host countries.

It is a major concern in Britain, which is still entrenched in double-dip recession even after the construction boom created by the Games.

Attractions including St. Paul's Cathedral and the London Zoo have seen a 40 percent drop in visitors since the opening ceremony on July 27. Dire warnings of travel chaos scared many away, and those who do come are congregating in the shopping mall that abuts the Olympic Park in East London, or inside the bars and opens spaces of the sprawling park itself.

Even small businesses within sight of the landmark 80,000-seater main stadium have seen none of the expected dividend.

East Londoner Dean Houssein, who usually works as a taxi driver, decided to sell coffee, drinks and snacks such as chocolate gold medals from the back of a van near Victoria Park. It seemed like a prime location -- big screens in the park show action from the Games to crowds of thousands and the Olympic Park itself is just a 5-minute train ride away.

"It's been like a f****** ghost town ... deader than dead," Houssein said. "I've never seen the area like this. It's costing me money. It's really not happening. I need to go back to my normal job, I've got bills to pay like everyone else," he said last week.

Asked what the business was called, he replied with a wry smile, "I was thinking of calling it 'Dean the Coffee Machine,' but I'm not selling it. I'm drinking it all myself, getting the shakes."

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Even as authorities warned of major delays and congestion, the Daily Telegraph published a slideshow of deserted stations and sidewalks.

Theater producer Nica Burns told the Evening Standard newspaper that her venues were "bleeding."

"For my six theaters, last week was the worst this year," she said. "I think the Olympics are great — but I feel like I've been the bulls-eye for the archery competition."

Peter Vlachos, a marketing expert at the University of Greenwich, in southeast London, has been surveying local businesses about the impact of the Games. "One word came back: Disaster," he told The Associated Press.

"There are 23,000 people walking past (local shops) in the morning to get to the grounds, and at the end of the day the same 23,000 people rushing back to their hotels," he said.

"The Olympics were sold to the business community as if it was going to be a huge windfall, and it hasn't materialized," he said.

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Big traders are also suffering. Stores on the city's flagship shopping drag, Oxford Street, have seen footfall slump by up to one-fifth.

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"Of all months to see a drop in trade, August is the worst," said Bernard Donohue, chief executive of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions. "We expected a drop in international visitors -- it's the well-known displacement effect that happens at every Olympic Games -- but we didn’t expect all the domestic visitors to stay away, too."

British Prime Minister David Cameron last week repeated official estimates that London 2012 would bring $20 billion-worth of economic benefits over the next four years, mostly in the form of inward investment urban regeneration – enough to the justify the $14 billion cost of staging the Games.

"That figure is based on somewhat shaky calculations," said Samuel Tombs of London-based analysts Capital Economics, which predicts Britain will fall back into recession within weeks of the closing ceremony.

"There are some short-term benefits, particularly in the service sector, but long-term gains are unproven. We expect modest growth in the third quarter -- partly boosted by Olympic ticket sales which are officially recorded in this quarter -- but our current prediction is that we will see growth shrink again in the fourth quarter."

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You can lead the world to London, but you can't make them shop. Pedestrians walk past an Olympic-themed window display in a Tommy Hilfiger store on Regent Street, central London, on Aug. 2.

Athens is estimated to have spent between $15 billion and $32 billion on hosting the 2004 Olympics -- a contributory factor in the country's economic crisis -- and recent pictures show many of the venues lying vacant and abandoned. Research from Oxford University's Saïd Business School concludes that host cities have averaged a 179-percent cost overrun in the past 50 years, although recent Games have seen among the lowest overspends.

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Transit authority Transport for London last week abandoned the use of pre-recorded public announcements, voiced by Mayor Boris Johnson, warning Londoners to plan for an expected visitor boom that never materialized.

The New West End Company, which represents stores in Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street, is spinning the unexpected quietness as a boon for locals under the slogan 'No tickets needed.' "It's a Londoner's dream at the moment -- they can get around easily and get a table in a good restaurant," said spokesman Jace Tyrell.

The decline in visitor numbers in London could mean that other British tourist hot spots, including Scotland's capital city, Edinburgh, and northwest England's Lake District, see fewer summer visitors.

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Jonathan Denby, head of the Lakes Hospitality Association, told BBC Radio 4: "We get probably 100,000 Japanese tourists during the summer. This year in July and August there are none.

"No visitors are coming in from Asia because they couldn't get hotel accommodation in London and they were frightened of all the travel restrictions in London, so they just decided to stay away for the five-week period of the Olympics," he said.

"If you want to know where all the Londoners are, a lot of them are in the Lake District," Denby added.

Forging an Olympic legacy
There have been some winners. The recently opened Westfield shopping mall, through which tens of thousands of spectators walk from Stratford station in order to reach the Olympic Park, became so busy over the weekend that it closed to all except ticket-holders. A worker at The Cow, a bar at the end of the mall overlooking the stadium, said it was making $50,000 a day from food and drink sales.

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Thousands of people move through the recently-opened Westfield shopping mall on their way to and from the London Olympic Park on Aug. 2.

In Manchester, one of England's largest cities, more than 100,000 extra visitors have flocked to the central Exchange Square to watch the Olympic action on giant screens, to the delight of local businesses, according to the Manchester Evening News.

For others, it may be too early to judge with Cameron's predicted windfall will come true.

"We thought we might get some extra customers during the Games," said Roger Love, co-owner of London Fields Fitness, which offers personal training and pay-as-you-go classes in East London.

"In fact, not a single extra person has come to us because of the Olympics. At times the local area is as quiet as it was the morning after last year's riots. Having said that, we haven't lost any business, either – and there may be greater interest in sport and fitness longer term. In the park this morning I overhead someone asking their child if they wanted to be a swimmer or a runner, so there could be more future business for us -- and perhaps a real Olympic legacy -- after all."

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