An indoor snow centre is to be built near the 2012 London Olympic site in Stratford to the East of the city.
The indoor snow centre which has a price tag of £200m is to be funded by the Westfield shopping centre and to be built on a piece of derelict land adjacent to the mall.
The centre will have five slopes, the longest at 300 metres, substantially longer than the existing longest slope in the UK which is 180 metres long. There will be toboggan runs, a terrain park, ice rink and off slope facilities including shops, restaurants and a hotel.
The centre appears to be the same or a similar project to one proposed for the former Olympic media centre in 2011, which was unsuccessful.
The slope will be the UK’s seventh, meaning it Britain will equal the Netherlands in having the most indoor snow centres in one country in the world.
There have been several other indoor snow centre proposals for London over the past two decades.
Several media reports are incorrectly stating the slope will be the world’s longest (slopes up to twice as long exist in the Netherlands, Germany and France), or the biggest by its 20,000 sqm snow slopes total area (larger slopes in the Netherlands) and that Ski Dubai is currently the biggest. It will however, like Ski Dubai, be one of the 10 biggest of the nearly 60 indoor snow centres worldwide.
It is hoped the centre will open by 2015 and that it will attract up to three million visitors per year. It could be the first new indoor snow centre for skiing to open for several years at that point as, since the worldwide economic crash, most newly conceived indoor snow centres have been primarily snow play/activity centres in Asia with shorter slopes or flat snow play areas..
“One year on from London’s Olympic and Paralympic Games and we are defying the sceptics who prophesied a herd of white elephants. Westfield’s plans for a world-class indoor ski centre (…) underscores the massive confidence in this area from investors which is delivering a real payback for taxpayers in terms of jobs and the regeneration of east London,” said London’s mayor Boris Johnson.