Naoibh O’Connor
Van. Courier

The Whitecaps vision of the 15,000-seat stadium proposed for the north foot of Cambie Street includes a plan for future expansion to 30,000 seats.

The city wants public comment at four open houses scheduled in March to display plans for the waterfront stadium proposed by the Whitecaps soccer team.

The initial proposal includes a 15,000-seat stadium, which could be expanded to 30,000 seats in the future. The stadium would sit over the rail yard between Granville Square and the foot of Cambie Street.

It would be used for Whitecaps men’s and women’s games and for other sporting events and concerts.

“This is really a fact finding mission in may ways,” said city planner Kevin McNaney. “It’s sussing out the issues, shining some light on the issues and getting a good understanding to help council make an informed decision.”

Whitecaps president John Rocha said the club welcomes public consultation. “It’s important because ultimately what we want to build is a community asset, so the more input we have from different constituents to ensure we build something that everybody can be proud of [the better],” he said.

Rocha maintains the public appears to back the proposal, which was announced last year. He cited a survey commissioned by the Whitecaps that indicated 71 per cent of respondents were very supportive or supportive of the stadium project. Eleven per cent were opposed.

Rocha said supporters liked the proposed stadium’s accessibility by transit and its availability for uses other than soccer. Opponents, he said, criticized the consultation and cited concerns about potential problems like traffic.

Rocha maintains some people were confused about the consultation, suspecting it was a done deal, which it’s not, he said.

“This is a long process to go through. [People] thought we were outlining a vision of trying to get people excited about our project [in October] and weren’t aware there was a full public process coming,” he said.

Several business groups have expressed support for the stadium, while groups such as the Downtown Eastside Residents’ Association have registered opposition. A call to DERA by the Courier was not returned.

McNaney said after the open houses, staff will bring a report to council in May.

“The thing to keep in mind about the whole study is it’s a step back study-a larger initial review to get a sense of what are the issues, where people stand on it, is it viable, is it desirable etc.,” he said. “It’s up to council to decide whether it moves forward for further planning, in which case it goes through, like any other major development, rezonings etc.”

Rocha won’t speculate on the outcome of the review. “In the end we think the project can be designed in a way that it has a whack of great community benefits. It could be a real asset to the city,” he said.

The first open house is from 2 to 8 p.m., March 6, in the W room at Woodward’s on the ground floor at 101 West Hastings St. Another is planned for 3 to 8 p.m., March 7, in the Storyeum lobby at 142 Water St.

A third is set for 2 to 8 p.m., March 8, in the Harbour Centre lobby at 555 Hastings Street, while the final one is between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., March 11, at Vancouver Public Library, Library Square, promenade, at 350 West Georgia.

study: Report says it wouldn’t run close enough to major population centres

William Boei
Sun

LOWER MAINLAND – Rapid transit will not work in the Trans-Canada Highway corridor “for the foreseeable future” because new development east of the Port Mann Bridge will not be dense enough, says one of the studies done for the Gateway Program.

Gateway is a $3-billion provincial government proposal to widen the highway, twin the bridge and build new truck routes on both shores of the Fraser River by 2014.

A rapid transit line along the highway and into the Fraser Valley as far as Chilliwack has been suggested by some regional politicians — including former Vancouver mayor Larry Campbell — as an alternative to the Gateway plan.

But a study on future transit needs notes that rapid transit in the highway corridor wouldn’t run close enough to the region’s major population centres.

As for future growth, “Although there will be a significant growth in the population east of the river, it will be over a large area — significantly larger than the City of Vancouver, for example — and will tend to be less dense over the larger area,” says the study report.

That means high-capacity rapid transit for the area east of Langley is not practical “for the foreseeable future.”

In the long run, a rail-based commuter system might work if it runs on existing tracks to keep capital costs down. The report says regional planners should try to keep that option open.

“In the shorter term, the focus of transit planning in the corridor should be on providing fast, easy access to the existing rapid transit system by both bus and car,” the report says.

Lanes designated for transit over a twinned Port Mann Bridge should be used for express bus operations, possibly shared by car pools and van pools, it says. If rail transit eventually becomes practical, that space could be converted for its use.

The report also says capital costs would be too high to extend the Millennium SkyTrain line to Langley, Cloverdale and new developments along the Fraser Highway, and buses should be used in those areas.

Another report outlines a $50-million plan for cycling infrastructure in the highway corridor. Most of the money would go to build multi-use cycling and walking paths on the new Port Mann Bridge and its approaches.

About $7 million would be used to connect the bridge paths to cycling networks in municipalities adjacent to the bridge.

The report says there is also potential for $10 million in shared-cost projects to connect municipal cycling networks on opposite sides of the highway.

There would be no bicycle paths on or along the Trans-Canada, but the North and South Fraser Perimeter Roads could accommodate cyclists on their shoulders, the report says.

Another report, on land use, counters arguments that the Gateway Program will encourage strip development and urban sprawl along the highway. It says local governments have enough planning powers to “direct land development patterns towards community objectives while maintaining the benefits of transportation improvements.”

It cites several U.S. examples, including the East Portland Freeway, which was built 30 years ago and did not result in development outside designated growth boundaries.

The studies can be found on the Gateway Program’s website, www.th.gov.bc.ca/gateway/.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Builders of the massive 2010 Winter Games venue envisage an ‘internationally recognized icon’ on a par with Sydney’s famous opera house

Jeff Lee
Sun

This artist’s rendering of Richmond’s speed-skating oval gives a sense of the aspiration for the building to become an internationally recognized icon, such as the Sydney Opera House in Australia.

When it is finished it will be the third largest of its kind in the world, so massive it could hold four DC-10 aircraft wingtip-to-wingtip, and so remarkable in its design that its owners hope it will be considered on a par with the Sydney Opera House.

For now, however, the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics speed-skating oval in Richmond is nothing more than detailed engineering and architectural plans for a site beside the Fraser River that is now covered in nearly two metres of compacting sand.

By year’s end, the home of the world’s newest speed-skating venue will be a slab of concrete covering a 450-stall parking garage. And over the late winter of 2007, the distinctive flowing line of the massive roof will begin to take shape as a crane wheels in place 15 glue-laminated beams so huge they’re each just shy of a 100-metre Canadian football field in length. They will bracket 13 huge columns that represent Canada’s 10 provinces and three territories.

This is the place that also holds the greatest promise for Canada to break its at-home gold medal drought; in neither the 1988 Calgary Winter Games nor the 1976 Montreal Summer Games did a Canadian win an event.

In 2010, spectators in Richmond may well see that drought end. Canada’s new Own the Podium program, which seeks to identify and help train athletes who can win medals, has suggested Canada could win eight of the 34 speed-skating medals.

A long-track speed-skating oval is arguably the dominant architectural venue to build in any Winter Olympics. It is an opportunity for a city or country to stamp its mark.

Lillehammer, Norway did that for the 1994 Winter Games with an oval at Hamar in the shape of an overturned Viking ship. Salt Lake, which hosted the 2002 Games, built a light, clear-span cable suspension roof that carved 950 tons off the conventional oval roof design. Calgary’s 1988 Olympic oval — still considered the fastest ice on earth — was the first covered speed-skating oval in North America.

Richmond‘s is no less unique. From the air, the roof will take the stylized native shape of a heron’s wing, a tribute to the Salish First Nation and the large wading bird that cohabited the riverbank at first contact 230 years ago. It will cover 33,000 square metres of space, including a 20,000-square-metre main floor that includes a 400-metre refrigerated track. It will easily be seen from many places in the Lower Mainland and is being built on one arm of the Fraser river, between No. 2 Road and the Dinsmore Bridge, almost under the flight path of the Vancouver International Airport on Lulu Island.

“This will become an internationally recognized icon,” said Ted Townsend, Richmond’s senior manager of corporate communications. “It will be like B.C. Place or other signature buildings, or, in a more grandiose way, like the Sydney Opera House.”

Among the factors being considered in the oval’s construction is feng shui, the Chinese art of placing objects in buildings and other places to maximize positive energy.

Sherman Tai, a 53-year-old feng shui consultant, was hired by the city of Richmond for input on the oval because of the importance of feng shui to Richmond’s large Chinese-Canadian community. Tai also provided feng shui advice for the city’s new city hall, Townsend said.

The architects behind Richmond’s striking design are Cannon Design, whose principal and lead project architect, Bob Johnston, was involved in the design of both the Calgary and Salt Lake tracks. The company has also done work for the Commonwealth and Pan American Games, and consulted for London, which won the 2012 Summer Olympics.

This is the year that Richmond’s big Olympic gamble takes shape, with construction starting on many parts of the $178-million development. Within months, contractors will begin pouring concrete for the parking garage, which will be housed under the massive oval.

It’s a gamble because Richmond is getting only $60 million from the 2010 Vancouver Organizing Committee, which moved the oval project from Simon Fraser University to keep ballooning costs under control. SFU had been the premier site for Vancouver’s submission to the International Olympic Committee, but lost it after the cost of its project escalated beyond $78 million.

Richmond came in with a different proposal: incorporate the 400-metre speed-skating oval into a major riverfront revitalization that would be used to offset additional costs.

The overall development encompasses 13 hectares on seven city-owned parcels and will ultimately include 130,000 square metres of commercial and residential space, including a proposed hotel. The city estimated in its application that it will get $54 million from that development. There will also be a new waterfront park. But until the Games are over in 2010, only the oval, parkade and public gathering place will be built.

The rest of the site will be used by Vanoc for temporary Games facilities, including parking, and broadcast and media services.

The city has also pledged not to raise property taxes to fund the project, and that another $50 million would come from nearby River Rock Casino’s revenue-sharing agreement. The remainder will come from development charges levied for nearby projects, naming rights and sponsorships.

After the Olympics, the oval will be converted to a multi-use sport facility that will include two Olympic-sized ice rinks, up to eight hardwood ball-sport courts, a gymnasium, a 200-metre track and a rubberized turf area.

The speed-skating oval will be covered with removable flooring and could still be used for competition.

But more importantly, the oval is being positioned by the city as a future home for up to six national teams, as well as a centre for sport excellence. The building will have fitness facilities for both high-performance athletes and the local community.

One of the first teams being courted is the University of B.C. rowing team, which is building a $6-million boathouse on the river just north of the oval.

The oval project is so huge that Richmond hired a raft of advisers and managers to keep it on track, and broke it into at least 23 separate contracts. Everything from roof design to pre-cast concrete to elevators to electrical and mechanical work has been sectioned off. Franklin Holtforster of MHPM Project Managers Inc. is the overall project manager. Dominion Fairmile Construction was hired as advisory construction manager, and will handle the issuance of contracts.

“We will let all the contracts this year. This project will be completely tendered this year,” said Greg Scott, Richmond’s director of major projects. He is equally confident the oval will be finished in the fall of 2008, enough time to give Canada’s athletes two training seasons before the Olympics.

So far, Richmond has issued three contracts. Clearing and grubbing of the site took place last year.

Agra Foundations just finished creating what Scott said is “a forest” of underground stone columns to densify the ground to keep it from moving. And E. Mathers Contracting just finishing pre-loading the site with 100,000 cubic metres of sand to compact it prior to construction.

The sand will remain there until April or May, after which it will be removed to allow for construction of massive concrete abutments that will be used to help anchor the roof trusses.

In January, Dominion issued a call for companies interested in bidding on 19 contracts. (One contract for finishing the building envelope, including installation of the huge glass windows, has not yet been put to tender.)

A separate super-flat concrete floor will be installed over the concrete base, between which will be sandwiched a massive refrigeration system. The skating floor and liquid-ammonia refrigeration system will be installed in 2008.

Scott said Richmond opted for wood beams rather than steel for the roof trusses to showcase B.C. products.

“There aren’t may companies that can bend steel in an arch that long and it can’t be done locally. We want to push the wood market, and esthetically it is elegant,” he said.

So far, Richmond has spent $5.9 million on developing the project, including $2.3 million for design and nearly $1 million to prepare the site.

In what may have been the shrewdest investment, however, it donated $500,000 to the Vancouver 2010 Bid Corp. in 2002 and 2003, shortly after Vancouver won the bid and while it was considering moving the oval from SFU. Vanoc awarded Richmond the venue in August 2004. With that foot in the door, the city then spent $459,000 that year and in 2005 to send staff and city council on 16 trips to examine ovals around the world.

The trips, including repeat visits to Calgary, Salt Lake City, Lillehammer and Turin, created controversy among taxpayers who wondered if all the travel was necessary.

In December, council approved another $120,000 to send nine people, including Mayor Malcolm Brodie and Coun. Bill McNulty, to Turin for the 2006 Olympics. Brodie has defended the expenses, saying the city has to get this project right and the trips helped it learn what not to do.

The project has not been without financial problems. Like other public works, it is affected by both “scope creep” and a white-hot construction market that is creating shortages in skilled labour and materials.

As an example, Scott said, the oval was costed out at $206 million after all of the project designers, engineers and interested parties were asked what they wanted to see in the oval. It was then pared back to what the city could afford.

Scott said it was similar to someone telling a developer about the dream home they want, only to have to cut out the library, swimming pool and expansive gardens once the dream’s sticker price is added up.

Ultimately, the city agreed to spend an additional $23 million over its original $155-million price to include the parkade.

WHAT TURIN IS DOING:

Venue: Speed-skating oval

Location: Turin

Size: Overall covered area: 26,500 square metres. Track size: 400 metres x 12.60 metres.

Seating: 8,463.

Number of events: 12

Distance from athletes’ village: 3 kilometres.

Post-Games use: Fairs and exhibitions in concert with the existing, and massive Lingotto Fiere convention centre, a former Fiat factory.

Cost as of 2005: 70.45 million euros, ($99 million) of which seven million euros ($9.8 million) come from the City of Turin and the rest from the federal government.

Of note: The new oval is in the centre of Turin, and a short walk from the Lingotto Fiere centre, where the main media centre is being housed. Construction began in 2003 and was finished late last year.

Source: Jeff Lee

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Vancouver city councillors from all parties express doubt about bridge plan and extra lane on Hwy 1

Frances Bula
Sun

The man in charge of the Gateway Project did not receive a valentine from Vancouver city council Tuesday.

In a rare show of unanimity, councillors from all parties expressed doubt and concern about the project’s plan to twin the Port Mann bridge and add an extra lane to Highway 1 from Langley to the Cassiar tunnel in the northeast corner of the city.

One after another asked whether this wasn’t just rewarding suburban councils for having created traffic problems by putting in business parks and residential developments far from transit.

Both Vision Vancouver Coun. Tim Stevenson and Non-Partisan Association Coun. Kim Capri told Gateway Project executive director Mike Proudfoot that he has a “very tough sell” ahead of him in Vancouver.

“This council has not proven itself to be united on tough issues, yet here we are speaking with one voice,” said Capri.

Proudfoot repeated several times in his 90-minute grilling by councillors that the Highway 1 changes will not bring a flood of traffic to Vancouver streets. Expanding the highway will actually make it easier to improve bus, carpooling, cycling and future rail options along the corridor, he said, while a toll on the bridge will make people think about other options besides travelling alone in their cars.

He said the Port Mann is so jammed now that buses can’t use it because it’s impossible to keep to schedules. And he said the project’s modelling of future traffic congestion predicts there will be a 17-kilometre rush-hour lineup by 2021, compared to the five-kilometre one now. That is costing the local economy $500 million a year, said Proudfoot.

But NPA Coun. Peter Ladner said people made the same arguments about the Lions Gate bridge a decade ago, claiming that “if we didn’t build a third crossing, the world would come to an end.”

In spite of pressure, the only change made was to improve, but not expand, the three-lane bridge.

“We still have some congestion there,” he said, “but somehow people work around it.”

Ladner also pointed out that according to the project’s statistics, the congestion actually hasn’t changed on the Highway 1/Port Mann bridge for the past decade, suggesting people have already adjusted.

Mayor Sam Sullivan wanted to know where the province is flexing any political muscle to demand that suburbs make some changes to “more responsible land use” in exchange for this temporary transportation fix. Both councillors Suzanne Anton of the NPA and David Cadman from the Coalition of Progressive Electors asked why the project doesn’t put more effort into other ways to reduce congestion on the bridge and highway before it starts spending money there.

Proudfoot came to council to present a brief overview of the project as part of the beginning of its community consultation, which will last until May.

Capri and others asked whether what the community has to say will make any difference at all.

Proudfoot acknowledged that it’s a provincial highway and the province can make whatever decision it feels necessary.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006