The athletes’ village at False Creek: The push to build competition venues — most will start construction in 2006 and 2007 — is to give athletes, particularly Canadians, at least two seasons of practice

It has been 18 months since the International Olympic Committee and a collection of B.C. municipalities, sports organizations and community supporters embarked on one of the most ambitious cooperative sporting exercises in Canadian history.

Much has happened in the young life of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games since IOC president Jacques Rogge and representatives of Vancouver and Whistler fixed their signatures to a contract during a summertime ceremony at the Hilton Hotel in Prague.

The heady euphoria of displacing two equally competent bids from Austria and South Korea in an act that galvanized Canadians around the world has given way to a more pragmatic and hard reality: 78 months is not an awful lot of time in which to organize the Games.

Today, only 60 of those months remain before the parade of nations will march into B.C. Place Stadium to open the 17-day Olympics, which will precede the Paralympics.

There is still so much to do.

Not one drop of concrete needed for any of the massive new venues has been poured. The ground in the pristine Callaghan Valley, site of the Nordic ski jumping and sliding centres, has not been broken. The curling venue dreamed of for Riley Park is still just that. The aging ice hockey arenas at the University of B.C. have yet to be replaced.

The creative plans for how the Games will take place are all on paper, reams and reams of paper, and in binary files of organizers’ and consultants’ computers scattered between Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Toronto and the seat of the IOC, Lausanne, Switzerland.

They are also lodged in the brains and hearts of people like John Furlong, the de facto soul of the Vancouver Organizing Committee (Vanoc), and a small squadron of senior executives and planners who are slowly and methodically putting together what they hope will be a lasting Canadian legacy.

Almost everything is rolling off according to the plans. And yet the road over the past year and a half has not been wholly smooth. There have been some brilliant achievements, such as the record-breaking $200-million sponsorship deal Vanoc cut with Bell Canada, a deal so rich that it covers twice over what the organizers thought they’d get from all top-tier sponsors combined.

And the small team of senior executives Furlong has surrounded himself with appear to be copies of the Energizer Bunny. They arrive in their West Pender Street offices early in the morning and they keep going until late into the night. The air miles they’ve clocked in trips to Switzerland, Italy, China, Toronto and Montreal as they search out guidance from those who have gone before them, and to implement the contractual demands of the IOC, likely represent the year’s profits of a small airline company.

This week, for example, Furlong was in Victoria on Monday, in Williams Lake and Quesnel on Thursday, and Prince George on Friday. Today he’s in Whistler to officiate at the official five-years-out Vanoc celebrations.

Vanoc is still a small organization, with fewer than 80 people working for it. By Games-time, there will be nearly 1,200, along with as many as 25,000 volunteers. Each of the vice-presidents have multiple responsibilities, and they’re having to make Solomon-like choices every day. It’s not possible to delegate responsibilities to a staff you don’t yet have.

“Every day I have a hundred things I have to do, and I have to pick the 20 that I can accomplish,” said Dave Cobb, the senior vice-president for revenue, marketing and communications. “Having said that, I have loved every day I have been here, and it has been a truly fantastic experience.”

But there have also been some early failures that have reminded Furlong and his crew of the perfidious nature of their ambitious plans.

Almost immediately after the Games were awarded, the organizers encountered the unexpected: a surging local economy, coupled with a massive demand by China for construction steel, sent construction costs shooting up.

A shortage of skilled labour and an unexpected double-digit increase in the price of steel and concrete led Vanoc chairman Jack Poole to suggest the provincial government might have to pay more.

The province, which is contributing $310 million to the construction budget and is on the hook legally for any shortfall once the Games are over, immediately refused, telling Vanoc to find the money elsewhere or cut costs.

Vanoc did both. Its rich deal with Bell will set the bar for other corporations wanting to become top sponsors.

And it embarked on a line-by-line review of its budget, leading to the first of three major changes in venues.

Vanoc broke a promise to build the $60-million Cdn speed-skating oval at Simon Fraser University after the university said costs had likely risen to $80 million.

Vanoc turned the project over to the city of Richmond, which pledged to build the oval at the original cost as part of a $153-million municipal riverside revitalization project.

But Richmond also lost another venue, the International Broadcast Centre, after the proposed site, a piece of federal land, became bogged down in the middle of a land claim by the Musqueam First Nation. Moving the IBC to the new Vancouver Exhibition and Convention Centre under construction to the west of the current convention centre will also save operating costs.

Last month Vanoc directors also agreed to move the Slalom and Giant Slalom alpine races from Blackcomb Mountain to Whistler Mountain to combine the venue with other scheduled alpine events.

It also also strongly hinted that it will make its two Nordic ski jumps a temporary affair, since it doesn’t believe there is a strong enough post-games skiing community to justify building a more expensive permanent structure.

Those actions, coupled with the Bell deal, helped bring Vanoc’s burgeoning construction budget back into line. But the continuing slide of the U.S. dollar, which has lost a third of its value over the last three years, has presented new problems. Much of the organization’s $1.345 billion Cdn operating budget will be made up from transfers from the IOC in U.S. dollars, and the sliding exchange has not helped Vanoc at all.

There were also dramatic public and personal failures.

Within months of being hired as the vice-president of human resources, Jeff Chan suddenly left Vanoc under a cloud.

Neither side would talk publicly about his departure, but some hinted at an incompatibility between Chan and Furlong, who must put together an entirely new team of people who don’t know each other but who must hit it off right at the start. Former VanCity human resources VP Donna Wilson replaced Chan.

There is a lasting backlash over the way Vanoc handled the tricky issue of protecting the Olympic brand. It was seen as a bully for going after a long-time Vancouver pizza parlour that displays the Olympic rings. It is also being counter-sued by a Squamish family for what they say is a distressing attack on them over the ownership of an Internet website containing the words “Vancouver 2010.”

Even B.C. communities, which formed a core of support for the bid, came under scrutiny by Vanoc’s trademark police after forming “2010 Legacy” committees to try to benefit from the Games. With Premier Gordon Campbell at his side for support, Cobb gently helped municipalities rename the groups “community spirit” committees.

Vanoc’s argument for brand protection was logical; if the marks are watered down, it won’t generate as much revenue as it needs and would be forced to rely more heavily on the taxpayer-backed government guarantee.

But its heavy-handedness in protecting the IOC’s emblems did not win Vanoc many friends.

However, the past 18 months haven’t been all bad news. Vanoc has so far managed to escape the troubles that have beset previous Olympics.

The public too has found increasing favor with the Olympics. A recent Ipsos-Reid poll released in January found 68 per cent of British Columbians support hosting the Olympics. That’s up 10 percentage points over another Ipsos-Reid poll done two years ago during the bid phase.

There has been no great corruption scandal like the one that rocked Salt Lake City and forced a major reform of the IOC. Unlike Athens, Vanoc isn’t behind in its construction or dramatically over budget. And unlike Turin, the site of the 2006 Winter Games, it doesn’t have the kind of vicious national, regional and local political infighting for which the Italians are legendary. It has yet to have a visit from police investigators the way recent Olympic committees have.

And what of the next few years?

Organizing the Games is not the slow, measured, long-term affair of a corporation that will be around for generations. It is more like the life-cycle of an insect; short and frenetic.

This spring, clearing will begin on some of the 300 hectares of land in the Callaghan valley needed for the Nordic and sliding centres. Last week, more than 200 potential contractors turned up at a Vanoc briefing to find out how to bid. Construction of the jumps and the slide will begin in the summer.

Later this month, Vanoc and UBC will announce which of three short-listed design-and-build proponents will get the contract to build a four-ice arena later this year.

Richmond has already rezoned the land for its new speed-skating oval and is now holding open houses. Construction is expected to start in early 2006.

Construction of most other venues will begin in 2006 and 2007, including the two Olympic villages in Whistler and False Creek, the curling venue, and renovations to B.C. Place and GM Place.

As well, there’s a lot of other construction taking place in B.C. not directly related to the Olympics but certainly affecting it: the $600-million upgrade of the Sea-to-Sky Highway, the $1.72-billion high-speed RAV line and the $565-million expansion of the Vancouver Trade and Exhibition Centre.

A lot of the push behind the construction is so Vanoc can open the venues by 2008 to give athletes — particularly Canadians — at least two seasons of practice.

“So far, we’re on track with all our planned start dates, and we’re in pretty good shape that way,” said Steve Matheson, the vice-president of venue construction. “We want to make sure that we’ve got two full seasons for training for our Canadian athletes on these new venues so that we can be as competitive as possible for the Games.”

Security has also ramped up; a team of RCMP officers is now permanently attached to the Vanoc office as it coordinates security and anti-terrorism strategies.

Sport development is also at a crucial crossroads. Cathy Priestner-Allinger, Vanoc’s VP of sport, says many of the governing sport bodies will be examining venue plans this year to make sure they comply with international standards.

On a national level, Vanoc is also a major partner in an ambitious $110-million COC-Sports Canada dream to have Canada place first in the medal count by winning at least 35 medals in 2010. It’s a long way off from that mark, having placed 19th in the Athens Summer Games, tied with Bulgaria.

The success of the program hangs on whether the federal government will pay for half the program. Earlier this month, the IOC’s Rogge encouraged Ottawa to join the so-called “Own The Podium” program. But so far the feds have not anted up.

The provincial government, which will bring in its own budget Tuesday, is considering joining the program.

Vanoc this year will also embark on a massive cross-Canada effort to make the Vancouver Games relevant to the rest of the country.

“This really is Canada‘s Games. When you look at what the Olympics stands for, which is fair play, peace and unifying people around the world, those Olympic values are very closely aligned with the values of Canadians,” Cobb said.

At the end of April, Vanoc will unveil its logo, which Cobb believes will be another unifying mark for the Games.

Money, or the lack of it, is a main driver here, because Vanoc has been operating on a $25-million line of credit with the Royal Bank of Canada. There are strings attached to the $620 million the provincial and federal governments are contributing to the construction budget. The IOC’s operating budget contribution — which has yet to be negotiated — is a long way off.

So this year the pressure is on Vanoc to negotiate most of the top-tier sponsorship categories it is contemplating, including banking, automotive, airline, brewery, lotteries, petroleum and energy. It is already negotiating with the banking sector and could make an announcement within weeks. Several banks are interested, including CIBC and RBC, which has been the Canadian Olympic Committee’s sponsor for more than half a century.

One looming battle is just how much the IOC will give Vanoc. In the last year it has negotiated an unprecedented $4 billion Cdn in television marketing deals with NBC, the European Broadcasting Union and a Bell Globe-media-Rogers Communications consortium for broadcasting the 2010 Winter and 2012 Summer Games.

It was far more than the IOC had expected, thanks largely to the fact the Winter Games will be in Vancouver. But it also said last year it would no longer share broadcast revenues with its Olympic organizing committees on a percentage basis, but rather on a fixed sum plus inflation.

Tightly financed Vanoc, however, has its eye fixed firmly on getting a larger piece of the pie. “Our position is that we will be sitting down with the IOC later this year to determine what the fair share of the TV rights to Vanoc should be,” Cobb said recently.

It’s not all about money, though. Furlong, whose passion and eloquence are credited with tipping the balance in favour of Vancouver during the IOC deliberations, said the Olympics are about eliciting the best in people. Over the last 18 months, he’s seen that happen time and time again. The recent Ipsos-Reid poll validated his view, he said, that people have begun to see the Vancouver Games as a unique event in Canadian history.

Corporate support — and not just for the purposes of promotion — has also been remarkable, he said.

“We’ve met with dozens of corporations over the last year, and there is a huge desire in the corporate community to become engaged in staging the Games,” he said. “It’s not about them wanting to be sponsors as much as it is them wanting to do what they can to help it be a success.”

On his road trip to Williams Lake, Quesnel and Prince George, Furlong was struck by how much inspiration the Olympics has created.

“The people up here get what we’re doing. The rest of Canada gets what we’re doing. It’s a remarkable discovery to see people who live outside Vancouver and Whistler excited about these Games.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

The speedskating oval, Richmond: The land has been zoned and construction is to begin in early 2006 for completion by April 2008. Cost: $155 million.

Organizers of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games officials may have to turn to cheaper venue designs as British Columbia enters what might be the biggest building boom in its history and double-digit inflation hits construction costs, a senior industry official says.

In Greater Vancouver alone, major non-residential construction projects worth $17 billion are queued up for the next five to seven years, said Keith Sashaw, president of the Vancouver Regional Construction Association.

Province-wide, a running tally of all types of construction projects worth $15 million or more totalled $62 billion at the end of 2004, up from $44 billion a year earlier.

But the boom has helped push construction price inflation over 10 per cent.

“When you’re faced with that kind of cost increases, it’s a negative,” said Helmut Pastrick, chief economist of Credit Union Central of B.C.

Some private-sector construction projects will likely prove to be marginal and will be forced to fold, Pastrick said. Asked whether public-sector projects may be pushed into cost overruns he said, “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Sashaw said most Olympics-related projects haven’t got to the final design stage yet and costs can probably be shaved there.

“As you get into the design phase, you can effect savings in construction costs by . . . taking a look at alternate materials and those kinds of things.

“You can’t start talking about cost overruns when you don’t even have the design yet,” Sashaw said. “There’s no need to panic.

“The construction industry is very innovative. The design community can factor in design elements that can address these costs.”

Pastrick said the new building boom will “certainly” be B.C.’s largest in modern times, outstripping the 1985-90 boom triggered by the Expo 86 world fair. By some measures it might be bigger than the dam-and highway-building era of the 1950s and ’60s.

The provincial construction industry is expanding at a frenetic pace to keep up.

Last year alone, Sashaw said, construction employment in B.C. shot up from between 110,000 and 120,000 to 168,000 — an increase of close to 50 per cent. That included workers from other provinces migrating — or returning — to British Columbia.

“People are coming back into the province,” Sashaw said. “I suspect that a lot of the people we lost when the industry went into the slump in the 1990s are returning.

“This isn’t just the Olympics,” he added. “We’ve got a solid program of construction that’s five to seven years in length.

“People are going to be making decisions to relocate their families when they see that kind of solid performance.”

Bright as the future might be, there is a dark lining. Prices are rising, fast.

Statistics Canada’s non-residential building construction price index for Greater Vancouver, which 18 months ago was increasing by about one per cent a year, has been rising in leaps and bounds since late 2003 and last fall hit double digits, with prices averaging 10.4 per cent higher than a year earlier.

“Last year we saw some major hits on construction costs, with huge increases in steel prices and copper prices and some of the other commodity prices that go into construction,” Sashaw said.

Part of the rise is catch-up after years of below-average increases in B.C. construction, he said, and part is due to global conditions, such as rapid industrial development in China.

The pressure on steel prices should relent this year as China brings several steel mills on-stream and becomes a net exporter of steel, he said. But there will be other pressures.

“Last year, it was steel. Next year, who knows. . . . I can pretty well assure you there will be something, because construction is such a huge industry and is dependent on so many variables.”

The 2010 Winter Games official overseeing construction said the Vancouver Organizing Committee (Vanoc) expects the construction industry to help the Games stay on budget.

“There is a supply and demand situation that is going to impact us for sure,” senior vice-president Steve Matheson said.

“On the other hand, you know, the industry is very resourceful and is capable of coming up with some pretty good solutions to deal with a heated market.”

Matheson said all venue plans are on schedule, and the organizing committee is trying to kindle a kind of Olympic pride in the building industry to keep it that way, despite rising prices and risks of labour and material shortages.

“We’re going to try to appeal directly to workers to participate in the Games and take pride in that,” he said. “We think if we do a good job on that front, we’ll be able to attract companies to bid on our projects, and we will get the supply of labour that we need to build them.”

The organizing committee has been advertising in central Canada to attract interest from the building industry there, Matheson said, although most of the companies bidding on contracts are expected to be B.C.-based.

However, a labour leader said Vanoc is falling short of expectations.

Wayne Peppard, executive director of the B.C. and Yukon Territory Building Trades Council, said his group has been trying for close to a year to negotiate an agreement with Vanoc that would guarantee labour peace for Olympics construction and deal with labour costs, training, skills shortages, job safety and other issues.

“We’ve got to be able to sit down at the table and begin to work out whether or not there’s a possibility for that,” Peppard said. “At this point Mr. Matheson has said no, there is no room for an agreement, period.”

Asked if Olympics projects could be hit by labour disruptions in the absence of an agreement, he said, “That’s distinctly a possibility.”

However, Peppard said labour shares the enthusiasm about the coming boom.

“We’re looking at some pretty good times coming in the next three to 10 years.”

Source: Statistics Canada

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

VANCOUVER

Vancouver Olympic Village

Location: Southeast False Creek

Use: Accommodation for 2,800 athletes; permanent structures to become part of a new residential neighbourhood.

Cost: Final budget to be set by City of Vancouver, with a $30-million contribution from the Vancouver Organizing Committee.

Status: Infrastructure work to begin in early 2006, village construction in mid-2007, and completion by September 2009.

B.C. Place Stadium

Location: False Creek at Robson

Use: Opening, closing and medal ceremonies.

Cost: N/A

Status: Little work needed Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre expansion

Location: Burrard Inlet, foot of Burrard Street.

Use: Host 9,000 media in the Games International Broadcast Centre and Main Press Centre.

Cost: $565 million

Status: Construction started fall 2004; scheduled to open in fall 2008.

General Motors Place

Location: 800 Griffiths Way, north shore of False Creek

Use: Olympic hockey tournament.

Cost: $5 million to restructure building and ice surface to international specifications.

Status: Begin modifications in April 2007; completion date undisclosed.

UBC Winter Sports Centre

Location: UBC campus

Use: Olympic ice hockey tournament

Cost: $40.8 million

Status: Begin construction in late 2005, complete by 2007

Hillcrest/Nat Bailey Stadium Park

Location: East side of Queen Elizabeth Park

Use: Olympic curling tournament

Cost: $28 million

Status: Begin construction in April 2007; complete in August 2008.

Pacific Coliseum

Location: Hastings Park/PNE Grounds

Use: Olympic figure skating and short-track speed skating

Cost: $23 million in upgrades

Status: Renovations starting in 2005, staggered around other events and continuing for two to four years.

Richmond Oval

Location: 6200 River Road, Richmond (location of Richmond RV Park)

Use: Olympic speed skating

Cost: $155 million

Status: Construction begins in early 2006; complete by April 2008

Richmond-Airport-Vancouver Line

Location: Waterfront Station in Vancouver, underground below downtown and Cambie Street to 63rd Avenue, then elevated to Sea Island and from there to Lulu Island.

Use: Rapid transit linking downtown Vancouver with downtown Richmond and Vancouver International Airport.

Cost: $1.72 billion

Status: Officially unrelated to the Olympics but politicially tied in. Work to begin late this year and to be completed by November 2009.

Cypress Mountain Resort

Location: Cypress Mountain, West Vancouver

Use: Olympic freestyle skiing and snowboarding

Cost: $11 million for modifications of existing runs and new facilities.

Status: Under review to ensure new facilities meet technical requirements. No construction start is set.

WHISTLER

Sea to Sky Highway upgrade

Location: West Vancouver to Whistler

Use: Principal land route from Greater Vancouver to Whistler

Cost: $600 million

Status: A provincial government project, connected to the Olympics. Work began May 2005 and is scheduled to finish in spring 2009 to widen and straighten the highway at various points, improve sight-lines, add passing lanes and reduce driving hazards.

WHISTLER

Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains

Location: Whistler-Blackcomb Resort

Use: Olympic and Paralympic alpine skiing events

Cost: $23 million for modifications to existing runs, snowmaking and chairlift upgrades and related new infrastructure.

Status: Begin work in June 2005 and complte by November 2007. However, technical events are under review and may be moved from Blackcomb to Whistler Mountain, where speed events are scheduled.

Proposed Combined Alpine Venue

Location: Whistler Creekside Village

Use: Combined speed and technical alpine skiing events.

Cost: Undetermined

Status: Under review following a request from the International Ski Federation to combine speed and technical events at one site.

Whistler Sliding Centre

Location: Blackcomb Mountain

Use: Olympic bobsleigh, luge and skeleton events

Cost: $55 million

Status: Construction to begin later this year, with completion in the fall of 2007

Whistler Nordic Centre

Location: Callaghan Valley, near Whistler

Use: Olympic and Paralympic Nordic sports, including ski jumping, cross-country skiing and biathlon.

Cost: $102 million

Status: Construction to begin in June 2005 and be completed by October 2007.

Whistler Entertainment Centre

Location: Whistler Resort

Use: Potential site for Paralympic sledge hockey, and possible permanent entertainment complex and multipurpose facility.

Cost: Unknown. The Olympic organizing committee has offered a grant of $20 million to the resort municipality of Whistler, which is working on plans and total costs.

Status: Uncertain. If the project does not proceed, the existing Meadow Park Sports Centre can be converted to host Paralympic sledge hockey in about two weeks.

Whistler Olympic and Paralympic Village

Location: Lower Cheakamus Valley, near Whistler

Use: Accommodation for 2,700 athletes and coaches

Cost: To be developed by the private sector, with $32.5 million from the Vancouver Organizing Committee that includes $6.5 million for a first nations Legacy, and additional funding of $13 million for permanent athlete accommodations.

Status: A conceptual site plan is ready. Site planning is to be completed by May 2007. Construction will be in two phases, one starting in April 2007 and the second in April 2008, with the project completed in September 2009.

Whistler Media Village

Location: Lower Cheakamus Valley.

Use: Temporary accommodation, dining facilities and other services for up to 2,000 media and 1,500 Olympics workers and volunteers.

Cost: Undetermined

Status: Temporary structures would be leased for a six-month period ending after the Olympics and Paralympics.

Whistler Conference Centre

Location, Whistler Village.

Use: Media facilities, cultural events.

Cost: Undetermined.

Status: Little or no work needed.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005