Vancouver On The Rise- A Preview of 2010 Olympic Venues

“The Beijing Olympics certainly spent a lot of energy and effort and money and time doing some pretty landmark projects and buildings, and obviously the cost of that is significantly more that VANOC (The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games) is proposing to spend or that Vancouver has available to spend” says Berelowitz, when asked how Vancouver's games will stack up against Beijing's. “It's important to understand it's not about competing with Beijing, or trying to do as well as or better than Beijing. I think that was never in the cards. The winter Olympics are much, much smaller that the Summer Olympic games, quite different in scale and scope and global visibility... Also, a city like Beijing or a country like China, or a city like Barcelona or Sydney, Australia - they used their summer Olympic games as a kind of a national project, as a coming out of their nation. They were really trying to use the Olympics strategically to present themselves and re-brand themselves to the world. I don't get the sense that Vancouver has that ambition about it. For China, for the communist government of China, it was all about throwing as many dollars as they could at the project and having this huge coming out party for the modern Chinese government as a superpower. That's a very different agenda than what Vancouver has, which is to put on a really solid, responsible, sustainable games that leaves a reasonable legacy.”

Sustainability may not be as sexy as a brand-new, state of the art stadium, but Berelowitz is quick to point out that Vancouver is not at liberty to go crazy with construction. Whereas Beijing's budget for the games was over $40 billion, Vancouver's stands at just $2 billion, which means every new structure must have purpose and meaning beyond the games, and that older existing venues – BC Place, The Pacific Coliseum will be utilized, despite the fact that they're hardly architectural marvels

“I think that reasonable legacy is about how these buildings function, and who they will serve after the games, not whether they are landmark starchitecture - star architecture – with iconic buildings. I don't think any of the buildings that VANOC commissioned are iconic at all. Do I think it's a missed opportunity? Well, a lot of people would argue that that's real vanity architecture, that comes with a very hefty price tag and doesn't give the return on investment. In the case of Beijing, they were clearly hanging their hat on that. I don't think Vancouver has that aspiration. Also, the number of sites that are being built in Vancouver is really limited... We've being very mindful of budget and about being publicly accountable for every dollar spent. It all has to be very transparent. That's very different from somewhere like China which could just spend whatever it wanted without anyone ever voting them out office... BC Place is the classic example. They took a good hard look at it and said “well why build a whole new stadium for hundreds of millions of dollars? Because we have a perfectly serviceable, if rather boring and staid, stadium. Let's just tart it up and use that stadium and save ourselves millions of dollars.”

While Vancouver we may not be getting any soaring towers or futuristic-looking sports centres, there are a number of construction projects tied to the Olympics that will mean a lot to the city. The largest of these is the Olympic Village at Southeast False Creek. The village, which is scheduled for completion in September 2009, will house some 2,800 athletes and officials during the games. The village is slated to cover some 32 hectares, with 15-20 permanent buildings comprising an eventual six million square feet of development. According to VANOC, Southeast False Creek will include eventually boast more than 5,000 residential units, a full-size community centre and non-motorized boating facility; three to five licensed childcare facilities; two out-of-school care facilities, an elementary school,an interfaith spiritual centre, the restoration of five heritage buildings and 10 hectares of park space.

“That is going to be the first phase of the whole Southeast False Creek neighbourhood that has been planned to within an inch of it's life over the last decade,” says Berelowitz. “This will be the first, and a very significant phase of that. After the Olympic games are over, the village will be converted into a mixture of market and non-market housing...There's a lot of aspiration around that community – they are hoping for it to be a model of sustainable development. They've built a number of sustainability indicators, such as recycling of grey water, rooftop gardens and district heating systems, which is a heating system that heats all the buildings in the area from once source as opposed to individual heating systems.”

The most obvious evidence of this commitment to sustainability it the new “Habitat Island” just off the shores of the new Southeast development. Approximately the size of a football field, this new man-made island will act as a sanctuary for birds and plantlife, restoring a significant amount of shore to the once-stripped edge of Southeast False Creek. It's small, but perhaps the most impressive aspect of a seemingly austere-looking development.

“The fundamental premise of Southeast False Creek is that people won't necessarily own vehicles and be driving that much. They are trying to create other modes of movement; an alternative model of urban development where people walk or cycle or take transit. That kind of urban landscaping - integration of public transit, and walking and cycling paths, restoration of the natural shoreline, the creation of environmental habitats - its quite an interesting project although that doesn't result in interesting architecture.” says Berelowitz.

“I think the architecture is actually quite questionable,” adds the longtime urban planner. “They seem to have built something that's quite a bit more dense than what they had initially approved in their plan. The developer [Millennium Group] paid more to the City for that land than anybody has ever paid for land in Vancouver before, so I think they had to squeeze a bit more density out if it to get some of their money back...What worries me about that is it's become a bit bulky, like design on steroids. I worry about things like sunlight penetration on the street and sidewalks, shadowing overlooks and the sense of perhaps being too enclosed. It's going to feel very different. It will have a much different sensibility walking around that area than almost anywhere else in Vancouver. It will feel much more like walking in say Paris or Barcelona or Berlin... The buildings are very different from those on False Creek North.”

Elsewhere in the city, Olympic venues under construction are similarly moderate. From the looks of construction, facilities being built at Hillcrest/Nat Bailey Stadium Park, to host 2010 Women's and Men's Curling are going to be a rather understated affair, despite a reported budget of $38 million dollars. But though it boasts no evidence of iconic composition, the building is likely to play a seminal role in community life after the Games: the venue will become a multi-purpose community recreation centre that will include an ice hockey rink, gymnasium, library and eight sheets of curling ice. Alongside the centre, the city will see a new aquatic centre with a 50 metre lap and leisure pool to be managed by the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation.

“The existing centre is pretty substandard and pretty old and the pool is leaking.” says Berelowitz of Riley Park Community Centre, the existing facility serving the area. “That centre is slated for demolition once the curling facility is converted after the Olympics. So there's and example where there's a really interesting social and community agenda that is being piggybacked off the Olympics. I for one think that's a really admirable approach. Otherwise they would have to go and build the new community centre and pay for it themselves, which is really expensive. This a good example where they're leveraging the Olympics, the Olympics budget is paying for that building, and the City is paying very little.”

Another spot where the Olympics are being leveraged to build community facilities is Trout Lake, where aging ice-rinks at the existing community centre will be replaced with new rinks that serve as practice facilities for Olympic figure skaters, hockey players and speed skaters. The facility, whose construction costs have stirred some controversy amongst Olympic watchdogs, is also slated for public use post-Games.

“That's a more modest facility, and then after the Olympics it will be converted to a public ice sheet.” says Berelowitz, “There really isn't going to be much evidence of the Olympics in another five years time when you drive around Vancouver, you'll hardly be able to tell that the Games were here. There's not going to be any iconic remnant or landmark structure that will say Look at me, 2010 Olympics! It may or may not be a good thing, depending on your point of view. Some people think we shouldn't be having the Olympics at all.”

Indeed, the legacy of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympics Games seems to be no legacy at all – a Games committee doing its best to leave no footprints that won't integrate smoothly into the community. Perhaps partly because Vancouver is already so breathtaking, but perhaps more because of a characteristic tendency of the city to aver flashy buildings in favour showing off our natural assets. After all, don't the Lions looking over from the North Shore, or the sandy beaches of the Pacific stand up against any man-made structure? Maybe. Still, Berelowitz, and likely more than a few citizens, see missed opportunities to change the city for the better – to create a unifying space that would define the city and shape its sense of community.

“What I would like to have seen is a more concerted and serious effort made in to creating a really dynamic and beautifully designed public open space, or spaces, for the Olympics.” says Berelowitz, with a touch of regret in his voice “I've yet to see too much evidence of that. I think that would have been a really exciting thing to have gotten out of the Olympics. We need a public square that can accommodate large number of people. Where people can congregate in a programmed, active way – for celebrations, protests, events, parties – we don't really have that in Vancouver, and the Olympics maybe was an opportunity to create that.”