London (CNN) — Six months to the day before Opening Ceremonies, builders have handed the Olympic Village over to the London 2012 organizers.
The first of 16,000 beds have been delivered as organizers start to fit out the rooms.
“We are starting the huge process to install essential facilities and services ready to welcome competitors from around the world in six months’ time,” Sebastian Coe, chairman of the London 2012 Organizing Committee said in a press release issued early Friday.
The beds will soon be joined by 11,000 sofas and even 5,000 toilet brushes, say organizers.
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The Summer Games run from July 27 through August 12.
Olympic Village, a huge housing complex of some 2,800 apartments within walking distance of the stadium in East London, has already been sold as part of the post-games legacy plans.
Nearly 1,400 of the apartments were sold in 2009 for $400 million and will be rented by local governments for subsidized housing. The remainder was sold to a consortium, including the Qatari government, as part of a $800 million deal to own and manage the entire village.
Local campaigners have pushed for more of the apartments to be social housing as part of the organizer’s pledge to regenerate the area post-games.
The original plan was for the developer Lend Lease to raise the funding privately to build the village, but the work started in 2008 at the height of the financial crisis. The government decided instead to the foot the reported $1.6 billion bill and is unlikely to recoup the entire cost of the housing.
The complex will be known as East Village once it is turned over to renters and homeowners.
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