The first neighbourhood to be built will be called Chobham Manor and, according to the Legacy Company, it will be “a return to London’s traditional family neighbourhoods of terraced and mews houses, set within tree-lined avenues”.
Sitting between the Athletes Village and the VeloPark, the Chobham Manor neighbourhood will help to address the local need for larger homes with 70% of the 800 homes offering family housing. Some 40% of the new homes will be houses with gardens.
The shortlisted bidders are:
- East Thames and Countryside Properties
- Barratt Homes and Le Frak Organisation
- St James Group (Berkeley)
- Swan Housing Association, Urban Splash, Yoo & Mace
- Notting Hill Housing, United House and HTA; and
- Taylor Wimpey and London & Quadrant.
The shortlisted bidders will be asked to submit outline proposals by the end of February 2012. The Legacy Company will then begin a competitive dialogue process with three favoured bidders, aiming to appoint a development partner by summer 2012. The goal is to have the first homes ready in 2014.
Chobham Manor is one of five neighbourhoods to be developed on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, with up to 8,000 new homes being built over the next 20 years, in addition to the Athletes Village,which will be converted into 2,800 flats after the 2012 Games.
Olympic Park Legacy Company chief executive Andrew Altman said: “We have received an extremely strong response from developers interested in building Chobham Manor. This reflects the strong market appetite to develop family housing in the first neighbourhood to be created in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
“Plans for the Olympic Park after the Games are already more advanced than any other Olympic host city and we aim to continue this by appointing a preferred bidder before the 2012 Games.” 
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