Olympians will feel right at home — and have inspirational views
Jeff Lee
Sun
This room in the Vancouver athletes’ village offers a spectacular view of downtown. Photograph by: Steve Bosch, Vancouver Sun
The view from the 12th floor of Vancouver’s Olympic athletes’ village is stunning, with False Creek to the west, downtown Vancouver to the north, and a panorama of the city’s commercial and residential districts to the south and east.
Inside, chrome fixtures are being polished, windows cleaned and furniture installed, as organizers of the 2010 Olympic Games ready the buildings for the 2,730 athletes and officials who will live there during the Games.
Come Games-time, no one will be able to miss which athletes are living where, as the athletes themselves festoon the buildings with flags, draping them from balconies or taping them inside windows.
“Can you just imagine how athletes are going to feel when they move in here?” asked Robin Petri, Vancouver’s manager of development for the project. “They will have some absolutely inspirational views.”
For all the less-than-inspirational financial and political trouble the athletes’ village has caused the City of Vancouver while under construction — including news this week that the $1-billion project is about $130 million over budget — the transformation it is undergoing is radical.
Since late summer, organizers of the 2010 Games have quietly been converting most of the 68,000 square feet of commercial space in the vast village on the south side of False Creek. Earlier this month, they took possession of the first of 18 residential buildings that will house athletes and officials. This morning, the city is giving reporters and photographers a tour of that building, at 151-181 W. 1st Ave.
Over the next two months, the city will temporarily relinquish control of the remaining buildings — concluding on Dec. 4 with the transfer of the development’s “Net Zero” building, a completely carbon-neutral building that will house seniors post-Games — allowing Vanoc to begin the laborious process of fitting them for athlete accommodations. Everything from beds to dressers to chairs and tables will be installed.
Last week, labourers with Metrocan Construction, one of three general contractors, were polishing the chrome, cleaning the windows and sweeping floors as Vanoc workers were bringing in supplies.
“You wouldn’t recognize the place now,” Petri said Thursday. “It looks completely different from just a week ago.”
The first residential parcel handed over to Vanoc included two buildings, totalling 213 units. Of those, 189 are market condominiums in a 13-storey building with sweeping views of the city. A lower U-shaped building contains another 84 units for proposed affordable housing.
In each unit, workers have carefully covered over kitchen units and sealed cabinets and other items athletes won’t need behind temporary walls. Athletes will eat in a temporary dining hall, built in a large parking area on the east side of the the site. That land was turned over to Vanoc on Sept. 8.
“We actually left the temporary walls unfinished so that athletes could decorate them with the flags of their countries or photographs,” said Corey Oswald, the project manager for 151-181 W. 1st.
The most stunning of the buildings — Building 4, which sits right on the waterfront — is expected to house Canadians.
The village features a number of passive and active green initiatives, including solar power on some of the buildings and the use of a district heating system that will capture heat from a neighbourhood sanitary sewage utility.
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