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By John Kaponi With less than a year to the Olympic Games, a newly branded area of London inmidtown which covers Holborn, St Giles and Bloomsbury headed by Tass Mavrogordato, is proving to be an innovative method to mobilise local businesses and services into an effective lobby group. A campaign has already been launched to dispel the myth that this is a sleepy backwater to other West End districts, and instead offers a rich variety of museums, hotels, business services and leading academic institutions. Tass Mavrogordato Chief Executive of inmidtown speaking to The London Daily News said: "Inmidtown is the home to 12 museums including the British Museum, we are a very important commercial district for London and we represent the interests of 560 businesses in Holborn, Bloomsbury and St Giles." Responding to the proliferation of large retail chains pushing out smaller retailers and changing the demographic profile of inmidtown Tass Mavrogordato said: "A lot of people point their finger at Starbucks. We are not saying they should not be here but we do need to have balance. We are not trying to make this into a shopping destination just for the weekend. we offer wonderful entertainment historic theatre's, restaurants and shops open all the week". The brief given to inmidtown is a "bid is to enhance the commercial viability of the area and help it realise its full economic potential." The objective of inmidtown is to make Bloomsbury, Holborn and St Giles a quality environment in which to work and live, a vibrant area to visit and a profitable place to do business. The Olympic lanes will be running through inmidtown on Kingsway, meaning businesses in Holborn will experience massive disruption during the Olympics. Communication with Transport for London and LOCOG are ongoing, "there will be massive disruption with the Olympics lanes running through Kingsway, we will try to pass on the information to our members from the authorities, but i think its hard to tell what the exact impact will be. July and August are the quieter month’s inmidtown." The architectural contrasts of Bloomsbury with the neo-classical British Museum to Centre Point described by Noted architecture critic Nikolaus Pevsner as "coarse in the extreme", gives inmidtown a chance to market itself as a place to work, learn and go out at night and live all at same the time. What impact the Olympics will have on inmidtown is still not clear, but hotels and bars in Holborn are likely to experience the "Olympic gold rush" next summer. For more information on inmidtown visit http://www.inmidtown.org photo credit: Tass Mavrogordato by Natalie Mitrides
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