Demolition work at London's Olympic Park began Thursday with the destruction of an unused sports hall.

A new sports center with four swimming pools, tennis courts and a gymnastics training venue will be built in the north section of the 500-acre Olympic Park in Stratford, east London.

It will be training area for the Olympics and host tennis and archery during the Paralympic Games. After 2012, it will be a local sporting facility.

The hall, which closed in 2001, was the base of the Eton Manor Association, a sporting club founded in 1907. Part of the running track used at Wembley Stadium for the 1948 Olympics was relocated there.

"We have made excellent progress on the Olympic Park site this year, and this is another important landmark for us,'' London 2012 chairman Sebastian Coe said.