Olympic facility on time, on budget and has a strong future, mayor insists
Jonathan Fowlie
Sun
RICHMOND – The planned Olympic $178-million speed-skating oval is on time, on budget and has a strong future as both a community and high-performance sporting venue, Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie said Tuesday night.
“This project is on track,” Brodie told reporters. “We have a vision that we will have a speed-skating oval for the 2010 Winter Games and after that we will have a community use and high-performance sport [facility].”
Brodie was speaking after a public committee meeting where council members addressed recent media reports about the future of the oval, and took repeated shots at the coverage.
Last week The Vancouver Sun reported on a geotechnical report in which experts warned there is “considerable risk” the soil beneath the oval will shift.
The report suggested this shifting could happen to such a degree that within 10 years of the Games, the venue will no longer meet the International Skating Union’s criteria for holding speed-skating events.
The story was picked up by numerous media outlets and reported widely.
Throughout Tuesday’s meeting, councillors called the reporting on the issue “sensational” and “extremely irresponsible.”
“This is reckless reporting,” said Coun. Derek Dang. “This has really hurt Richmond.”
After the meeting, Richmond’s director of major projects Greg Scott said the information from the geotechnical report is part of a larger body of information and should not be read to mean the facility will necessarily be rendered useless as a speed-skating oval if the soil settles.
Scott said if the building settles after construction, there are ways to make adjustments.
“If it [the building] tips a couple of millimetres at one end, then there are opportunities where we could put coatings or leave it the way it is and you can build it with thicker ice,” he said, adding the soil issues at the site are similar to those in building sites across Richmond.
Brodie said the issue has been overblown in the media. He said Richmond had never planned to use the facility primarily as a long-track speed-skating oval after the Games, but always intended to convert it into a sporting facility for both high-performance athletes and members of the community.
“The only time that will be used as a long-track speed-skating oval would be very occasionally,” he said.
During the meeting, Coun. Harold Steves said he does not blame the media for the story.
“I think the reason we’ve got reporting like this is simply because of our penchant for secrecy and we’ve got only ourselves to blame for that,” he said.
“We’ve heard a lot from our council tonight saying we have done our due diligence and I agree that we have, but I think that partly because we have been worried about the IOC and everybody else looking over our shoulders … we got ourselves into this trouble,” he added.
He made the comment as council was debating a motion to compile a list of public documents and motions pertaining to the Olympic oval so it would be easier for people to get information on the project.
That motion carried with unanimous support.
Richmond has also attracted media attention over the amount of money it spent studying other Olympic ovals. Besides spending more than $115,000 to send representatives to the Games in Italy last month, it has spent more than $459,000 over the last two years travelling to former Olympic cities.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
