Jack Keating
Province
CREDIT: Arlen Redekop, The Province Vancouver Coun. Anne Roberts raves about Olympic Village to be built near Science World.
Vancouverites of all incomes will have a chance to live where the athletes of the 2010 Winter Olympics slept.
The Olympic Village, which will provide accommodation for about 2,800 athletes and officials in about 12 to 14 buildings, will become permanent homes after the games as part of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics legacy.
“These units will actually be larger than the athletes are used to,” said Jody Andrews, Vancouver‘s project manager for the city’s southeast False Creek and Olympic Village development.
“The Olympic Village is going to be permanent accommodations for our residents, so they’re going to have that permanency to them.”
The Olympic Village is on about six hectares of city-owned land on the south edge of False Creek back to First Avenue, from Ontario Street on the east to Columbia Street on the west.
The Olympic Village will become the permanent home for more than 1,200 people — one-third low-income, one-third middle-income and one-third high-income — in the first stage of a 32-hectare mixed-use development.
“The bottom one-third will be affordable or subsidized housing,” said Andrews during a public information session.
“One-third will be what we call modest market or modest income and the top one-third will be market units.
“For the Olympic Village we’re building 600 units roughly. So there will be 200 suites of each category.”
Infrastructure work on the project will begin early in the new year.
“The buildings themselves will start in early 2007,” said Andrews.
“It has to be completed by Nov. 1, 2009. That’s when the athletes start moving in.”
The Olympic Village is part of a massive development that is called the Southeast False Creek development project.
It will include 10.5 hectares of parkland and a new community centre.
“I love this project,” said Coun. Anne Roberts.
“It has high environmental standards. It’s going to be a living laboratory. The project has social, economic and environmental sustainability.”
© The Vancouver Province 2005
