Olympic village that housed athletes is the most visible example of the 2006 organizing committee’s commitment to sustainability

Jeff Lee
Sun

TURIN – On one side of a Turin railway yard is the Lingotto Fiere, the massive former Fiat automobile factory, a testament to everything industrial in this northern Italian city.

For nearly 70 years Europe’s biggest mass-production factory pumped out millions of pollution-producing cars and trucks, and in its own right became a significant polluter.

On the other side of the tracks is an equally potent symbol of the industriousness of Italy’s architects and planners, but of a different generation.

The 39 buildings that make up the new Olympic village signify a small but important change in the city’s stature as it tries to remake itself away from its heavy-industry image.

The village is the centrepiece of a complex environmental statement by the Turin 2006 Winter Games organizing committee.

The drinking and bathing water in each of the apartments is heated by roof-top solar panels. Wide-area radiant floor heating is used instead of inefficient wall radiators, and the heat comes from a new co-generation and district heating plant at Moncalieri that now heats part of the southern neighbourhoods of Turin. The walls are insulated with recycled cellulose fibre.

Each of the buildings has also been oriented to take best advantage of the sun as it rises and sets in the south, with deep double-pane windows to trap heat. The roofs all have wide flanges for collecting water that is then funnelled into underground cisterns for recycling on to area gardens.

Paolo Revellino sees the manifestation of a relatively new Olympic ideal, the concept that environmental stewardship should be as important in the Olympics as are two other concepts, sport and culture.

Revellino, the head of sustainability assessment for the Turin Olympic Organizing Committee, and his colleague Ugo Pretato, head of environmental programs, are the main architects of Toroc’s self-described attempt to be “the greenest Games ever.”

As he stood on the rooftop of one of the village’s buildings looking at the Lingotto, Revellino explained why Toroc undertook such a lofty goal.

“I don’t think you can consider the Olympics to be just about sport any more. It has the ability to influence the way people think and to change attitudes. Turin has the opportunity to do that also in how we take care of the environment. This is an industrial city, but it is changing.”

The Olympic village is the most visible example of Toroc’s sustainability commitments. It is built on the site of another industrial legacy, the old Mercati Generali wholesale grocers market, which operated from 1934 until the early 1990s before it was moved out of the city because of complaints of pollution and noise from residents.

In 2004 most of the abandoned warehouses were torn down, but the central building was kept and renovated into a series of shops and services.

Marco Operto, the construction manager for Agencia Turin 2006, the government arm that built the village, said it represents the best that Italy has to offer for changing public attitudes.

“This is something very new for Italians,” he said. “We haven’t always been so careful about conserving energy or water.”

It has only been in the last decade that the International Olympic Committee has realized its power to change public views around the environment. In 1994, when the Lillehammer Winter Games in Norway earned high marks for being compact and environmentally friendly, the Olympic movement began to recognize it could influence the world on environmental matters.

Two years later the IOC amended its charter to include environmental stewardship, and it has used moral suasion and political clout ever since to encourage Games organizers to plan events that meet or exceed environmental standards.

For organizing committees that have to manage tight budgets, these are not inconsequential costs. Operto figures the environmental initiatives drove the $198 million Cdn project up by about five to seven per cent, but the savings will be realized within 10 years.

Toroc’s environmental statement is much broader than just the Olympic village. The committee based its environmental management program on a set of stringent principles that included minimizing the footprint of the Games, recycling waste material, monitoring and mitigating the impact of construction and operation of the facilities and using eco-efficient transportation. It also encouraged local hotels and boarding facilities to subscribe to the European Union’s Ecolabel program which sets environmental standards for accommodation.

Toroc also sought certification under both the European Union’s Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) and ISO 14001, two voluntary programs designed around standardizing environmental management systems. Failing to comply with the certification doesn’t earn participants a fine, but it is a public embarrassment to be de-listed or criticized, Revellino said.

Toroc put together a number of high-value environmental projects to demonstrate its management principles, including the Olympic Village, three co-generation plants — two of which are at mountain venues –and a biathlon venue building that generates its own electricity with photovoltaic solar panels.

Ever since the Sydney 2000 Summer Games organizers have tried to make the events “carbon-neutral”, offsetting the greenhouse gases produced by the Games through efforts such as planting trees.

But Turin was the first Games to attempt to meet the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases.

“Our goal was to offset the greenhouse gases generated by the Olympic Games,” Pretato said. “We want to be able to say we recovered the greenhouse gases between our Games and the next one in Vancouver,”

Carbon dioxide is blamed for causing global warming, and the Kyoto Protocol, which comes up for renewal in 2012, has been signed by a number of countries, including Canada, as an action plan for reducing greenhouse gases.

Pretato and his colleagues calculated that more than 121,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide would be generated by the Games, primarily from transportation and the operation of the events. It didn’t include the amount that the spectators themselves would produce.

The $7-million Cdn greenhouse gas initiative, called Project Hector (which stands for Heritage Climate Turin), is funded by the Piedmont Region and involves carbon credits generated from three low-energy district heating and two co-generation projects. The town council in Pinerolo, site of the curling venue, is also undertaking energy-saving programs that will generate carbon credits.

“I think we are expecting about 250,000 tonnes of carbon credits from these projects,” Pretato said. “Over four years we will generate more credits than were necessary for the entire Games.”

Toroc also became the first organization in Italy, and one of the first in Europe, to implement a “strategic environmental assessment.” The SEA program was mandated by Italian law and required Toroc and Agencia Turin 2006 to subject every project to set of environmental principles.

Revellino said one example of that was the snow-making facilities Toroc had to install at mountain venues. After reviewing the plans, Toroc cut the number of temporary reservoirs needed by a third.

Toroc also used methane-powered buses where possible, and electric golf carts in the village itself.

But not every program has met with success. Recycling in Italy is not widely practised and unlike the Lower Mainland, there is no curbside program. Inhabitants can take their cans, bottles and papers to communal depots, often large containers located on street boulevards. Italy also doesn’t have a container deposit system. Instead, manufacturers pay an up-front fee that is then supposed to be filtered down to municipalities which mount recycling programs.

Toroc tried to encourage a separate-at-source recycling program with its staff and at the media centres.

It put out different-coloured cardboard bins for bottles, papers, organics and plastics. In the media centres, however, they didn’t put all the containers together to offer a choice. As a result, people threw their garbage into the nearest container regardless of content.

However, Revellino said Toroc worked with suppliers to cut down the potential for waste; Coca-Cola, the corporate beverage sponsor, agreed to supply drinks only in plastic bottles that could be recycled, and McDonald’s, another sponsor, used environmentally-friendly packaging.

Food suppliers also used utensils made from corn starch instead of plastic. The only problem with that was that the corn starch, which is compostable, also breaks down under heat. Revellino said that presented problems for soup-eaters, and Toroc had to change to plastic spoons.

Turin‘s efforts have also earned high marks from the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (Vanoc).

“They definitely raised the bar in environmental management and certification,” said Linda Cody, Vanoc’s vice-president of sustainability.

Cody said Vanoc is still working on its environmental management plan but has also pledged to be “carbon neutral.” Vanoc hasn’t finished a greenhouse gas audit but Cody thinks it will be less than Turin’s 121,000 tonnes because B.C. has a different energy structure.

Most of the province’s power-generation is hydro-electric. The city also uses a high proportion of electric buses and the SkyTrain and new Canada Line are also carbon-free.

BC Transit also has a proposal to have 20 hydrogen-powered buses in operation in Whistler. Vanoc will supply bus transportation between Vancouver and Whistler, reducing the amount of vehicles on the Sea-to-Sky Highway, Cody said.

Vanoc is also working on obtaining environmental certification under ISO 14001, and has also pledged to build most of its venues to a minimum LEEDS silver standard, she said. (LEEDS is a North American environmental equivalent to EMAS.)

Cody said every Olympics is different, even if the end goal in environmental sustainability is the same.

“There is no cookie-cutter plan for how you do this,” she said. “But I think we will be equally diligent in what we do.”

She said Vanoc’s map for its environmental programs will likely be ready by the end of the year.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Software developed by pros, so thieves need no training

BRIAN KREBS
Sun

ONLINE FRAUD I When Graeme Frost received an e-mail notice that an expensive camera had been charged to his credit card account, he immediately clicked on the Internet link included in the message that said it would allow him to dispute the charge.
   As the 29-year-old resident of southwestern England scoured the resulting Web page for the merchant’s phone number, the site silently installed a passwordstealing program that transmitted all of his personal and financial information.
   Frost is just one of thousands of victims whose personal data has been stolen by what security experts are calling one of the more brazen and sophisticated Internet fraud rings ever.
   The Web-based softwa re employed by ring members to manage large numbers of illegally commandeered computers is just as easy to use as basic commercial office programs. No knowledge of computer programming or hacking techniques is required to operate the software, which allows the user to infiltrate and steal financial information from thousands of PCs simultaneously.
   The quality of the software tools cyber criminals are using to sort through the mountains of information they’ve stolen is a clear sign that they are seeking more efficient ways to use stolen data, experts say.
   “We believe this to be the work of a group, not a single person,” said Vincent Weafer, senior director of security response at Cupertino, Calif.-based computer security giant Symantec Corp.
   The data thieves use the IE flaw to install programs known as “keyloggers” on computers that visit the specially coded Web pages. The keyloggers then copy the victims’ stored passwords and computer keystrokes and upload that information to a database.

Easy to do, often lucrative, real estate agents say it is growing quickly across Canada

Mario Toneguzzi
Sun

CALGARY — Mortgage fraud has become a billion-dollar industry in Canada and a growing concern to the real estate and financial sectors.

Although difficult to put an exact number on, organizations such as the Quebec Association of Real Estate Agents and Brokers suggest the criminal activity amounts to an estimated $1.5 billion a year across the country.

“We believe that only criminal prosecution of mortgage fraud will deter unscrupulous operators in the marketplace,” said Bev Andre, chairwoman of the Real Estate Council of Alberta, “and that only through prosecution can those who commit fraud be made to bear its costs.”

Ron Esch, executive vice-president of the Calgary Real Estate Board, calls mortgage fraud a “huge problem because it does involve a lot of money — ill-gotten gains.”

“It’s relatively easy to commit mortgage fraud,” said Esch. “Obviously you’re doing a criminal act but it’s a criminal act not that difficult to do.”

In B.C., independent mortgage lender Gordon Altman gave an elderly White Rock man a $250,000 mortgage against a $500,000 house he said he planned to sell.

The man and his identification had already been verified by a lawyer who provided legal advice, and by a mortgage broker known to Altman.

It wasn’t until Altman checked with the White Rock realtor who was handling the listing that he discovered the man didn’t own the house and had fooled them all in a brazen scam.

When Altman told the realtor he held a mortgage against the property, she said that would have been impossible.

“She said ‘There is no mortgage, and couldn’t be because the owner is dead,’ ” Altman said in an interview.

Mortgage fraud occurs in two ways.

– The first involves individuals fabricating their qualifications for a mortgage when buying a house.

– The second involves fraud for profit — a growing concern — where someone intentionally defrauds a lender or a homeowner of their interest in a property.

The latter is often accomplished by identity theft. Ownership of a property is transferred fraudulently from the rightful owner to the criminal who then sells or mortgages that interest and makes off with the funds.

The problem is becoming more prevalent as technology makes it easier to falsify documents and create identities, say experts in the field.

“It’s huge,” says Det. Robbie Robertson of the commercial crime unit with the Calgary Police Service. “I’ve been aware of it for over three years . . . There’s a huge, huge effect of this.”

For example, following a six-month investigation last fall, the police commercial crime unit in conjunction with Alberta Government Services charged Lloyd Lewis Mason, 33, of Calgary, with one count of fraud and one count of fraud in relation to making a false registration of title.

The case involved the unlawful transfer of a title to a property to another person without the knowledge of the true owner. That person then took out an almost $110,000 mortgage on the property.

The fraud came to light when the true owner attempted to pay property taxes and the City of Calgary notified them that they no longer owned the property.

This was a case of identity theft where the object of the stolen identity was to fraudulently obtain mortgage money.

According to Alberta Justice, the accused was recently convicted and sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to make restitution of $109,905.

Wayne Proctor, regional director, Pacific region for First Canadian Title (a title insurer), said the magnitude of the problem is a rough guess because most of the fraud victims are mortgage lenders and in a lot of cases they may suffer a loss and may not know it’s mortgage fraud or not specifically identify it as mortgage fraud.

“The rough estimate of the problem that the Canadian Institute of Mortgage Brokers and Lenders made a few years ago was $300 million,” said Proctor. “But there’s more recent estimates that would indicate it’s probably closer to a billion dollars.

“In our discussions with regulators, with mortgage brokers and realtors and others connected to the real estate industry, it is pretty well a consensus that it is a growing problem. One of the reasons could be the awareness of potential fraudsters that this is a relatively easy fraud to commit. The payoff is very large as compared to other types of minor crime.”

Esch said there needs to be more resources committed to the problem here and more “serious jail time” for those convicted of mortgage fraud.

“The problem won’t go away until there are more checks and balances put in place,” Esch said.

– – –

Real estate fraud developments

– First Canadian Title estimates the average case of real estate fraud to be in the range of $300,000 while in comparison the RCMP estimates the average credit-card fraud case in Canada to average about $1,200.

– In 2000, real estate-title fraud claims accounted for only six per cent of total dollars paid in claims at First Canadian Title.

By 2005, that number reached 33 per cent.

– Law-enforcement officials and lenders believe that 10 to 15 per cent of all mortgage applications contain false information.

– According to the Quebec Association of Real Estate Agents and Brokers, mortgage fraud amounts to an estimated $1.5 billion a year in Canada.

– The Real Estate Council of Alberta estimates there were about $275 million in fraudulent mortgage loans in Alberta in the 2001-2002 fiscal year based on transactions investigated.

Source: First Canadian Title and Real Estate Council of Alberta

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

The YMCA has operated the legendary camp for 60 years. But business is business, and the Y is willing to give up Howdy

Peter Clough
Province

Do a Google Earth zoom down to Farrer Cove on the eastern shores of Indian Arm and you’ll almost hear the sound of campfire songs.

Over the past six decades, hundreds of thousands of kids from across the Lower Mainland have bounced along the logging road that leads to Camp Howdy — lugging along guitars, sleeping bags and hiking boots.

The camp, owned and operated by the YMCA, has given many of those kids their first taste of the B.C. wilderness.

It’s where they’ve learned to water ski, chop wood, climb rocks and make friends out of strangers — miles away from the comforting arms of moms and dads.

This summer, however, the air at Camp Howdy will be tinged with sadness. Late-night talks around the campfire will no doubt turn to the obvious topic:

Why does this have to be the final year for Greater Vancouver’s only overnight wilderness experience for kids?

This may well be the summer that the camp’s young guests learn more about the ways of the city and big business than about surviving in the great outdoors.

They’ll learn all about capital development funds, sustainable growth, zoning bylaws and how B.C.’s real estate boom has made the 74-acre piece of West Coast paradise irresistible to developers.

And some of them may well go home wondering whether Camp Howdy is being traded away as part of a complex deal to put up a 42-storey apartment building in downtown Vancouver.

For five years, the YMCA has been involved in negotiations to sell at least part of the Camp Howdy site north of Belcarra for condo development. Their aim has been to raise about $10 million from the sale, funds they claim are needed for other camps and community projects.

Under the plan, the Y would keep the camp running as a day centre — but even that is now in jeopardy.

So gather ’round, kids. This is a story that takes more twists and turns than the trail to Sasamat Lake — a trail that, according to some, leads to the 2010 Winter Olympics.

n n n

Belcarra resident Murray MacDonald, whose 11-year-old daughter Kaity is looking forward to staying at Camp Howdy again this summer, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the Y’s handling of the issue.

MacDonald has accused Y officials of behaving like bottom-line businessmen in their effort to raise money from their Howdy property. He says the Y’s claim that they need the money to improve Camp Elphinstone on the Sunshine Coast and support numerous community programs is little more than a smokescreen.

“They want as much money as they can possibly extract from Camp Howdy in order to finance the new building downtown,” says MacDonald, referring to the YMCA’s plan to modernize their facility on Burrard Street and add a private 42-storey residential tower in partnership with developers Concert Properties. “The story they’ve given us, of course, is slightly more skewed toward how this money will improve things for other camps.”

Under the Y’s plan, endorsed by Belcarra Mayor Ralph Drew and village council, 27 acres of the site was to be sold to a private developer for the building of between 80 and 100 homes. Another 47 acres was to be handed over to the GVRD as parkland.

Belcarra changed its official community plan, opening the door for future residential development on the site. But before any zoning change could be made, they needed approval from neighbouring Port Moody to allow direct and paved road access through that municipality’s portion of Belcarra Regional Park.

The plan to put up condos in such an isolated area caught the attention of GVRD policy and planning manager Hugh Kellas, who opposed the plan, citing transportation and environmental concerns.

Then last month Port Moody councillors rejected Belcarra’s road request, effectively killing the Y’s proposal. After all, who wants to live in a condo at the end of a long dirt road?

Port Moody’s refusal did not, however, mean that Camp Howdy was saved.

Saying the status quo was simply not an option, the Y’s president and CEO Bill Stewart announced that his organization would put the entire property on the market. Some Belcarra residents scoffed at what they saw as a bargaining ploy — saying that without a road and a zoning change the land is worth no more than $3 million and of little interest to developers.

But in an interview with The Province, Stewart says the Y has already received two unsolicited offers to buy the land outright, along with a third expression of interest.

He refuses to divulge details of the offers but says he estimates the Camp Howdy property to be worth between $8 million and $12 million regardless of road and zoning issues.

“There are people in our community and around the world who buy pieces of property for the future and not for the present,” says Stewart. He says the Y will not seek a commitment from prospective buyers to keep Camp Howdy running.

Stewart insists that the sale of Camp Howdy is not directly linked to the Y’s ambitious project, in partnership with Concert Properties, to modernize the Burrard Street YMCA and add a 42-storey private residential tower.

The tower?

Five years ago, Y officials approached leaders of the First Baptist Church, their next-door neighbour on Burrard Street, with a view to seeking zoning changes from the City of Vancouver.

First Baptist agreed to waive any concerns about the building of the tower in exchange for expanding its property through the acquisition of a parking lot the Y owned right behind the church.

The city gave its blessing to the project last fall, and the Y went ahead and sold the airspace above its building to Concert Properties for an undisclosed sum.

Concert is an award-winning B.C. development company wholly owned by unions and pension plans. It specializes in building luxury condos and upscale apartments — such as Tapestry, at the former Vancouver General Hospital nurses’ residence.

In its deal with the Y, Concert gets a new apartment building and a contract to complete the Y’s $35-million transformation of its aging facility at the tower’s base — right down to a state-of-the-art swimming pool.

Stewart says he’s counting on the project being completed by the fall of 2009 in time to showcase it during the 2010 Olympics.

In 2003, when the Y presented an online overview of its plan to sell Camp Howdy, “replace the Downtown YMCA” was listed as one of the major benefits. Stewart now says it’s “erroneous” to link the Howdy sale with the Y’s development deal. He says the non-profit organization needs between $6 million and $9 million to fulfill its obligations on the project, money that will be raised through a capital funds campaign.

“That’s going out and asking people to give us money,” he says. “We’re doing that now.”

Stewart says the YMCA has been in the process of building a $50-million capital development fund aimed at expanding its services. The money raised from the sale of Camp Howdy is part of that overall plan but he says the proceeds will be directed specifically to community projects such as a new child-care centre in Mount Pleasant as well as to much-needed improvements at Camp Elphinstone.

“We’re going to build some special lodges out there so we can handle kids and families with challenges and also fix up our general camp,” says Stewart. He promises: “We’re going to be bigger in camping than we are today.”

But Pat Godwin, whose now-grown sons both attended Camp Howdy, is not convinced.

“What Bill Stewart really wants the money for is this highrise downtown,” she says.

The Coquitlam mom has started a group called Save Camp Howdy and is hoping that the thousands of British Columbians who learned so much during their stay at the facility will join her campaign to keep the camp running as an overnight wilderness experience.

She says this is the last chance to save one of the Lower Mainland’s irreplaceable treasures.

“You drive there and you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere, even though you’re 20 minutes from civilization,” she says. “To me, the whole thing about camp is that you’re away from home. You don’t go back home every day. You don’t have mommy and daddy backing you up. You’re learning to co-operate and make friends.”

Her son Jesse, a UBC student, has fond memories of his summers at Camp Howdy. “Every night you’d go down to the campfire and we’d have singing,” he says. “Every group had to produce a skit or do a song or whatever. It was just a fun communal thing.”

As a young adult, Jesse worked at the camp as a counsellor. He’s a firm supporter of the Y’s programs and says he understands the organization’s need to keep pace with modern realities.

“They’re strapped for money and they need facilities to service other communities that need it,” he says. “They’re not doing it for the wrong reasons, but it’s sad what’s happening. It would be best if there was a solution where the Y could get the money to do what they need to do with their downtown building — as well as maintain the camp.”

Vancouver lawyer Roy Millen, also a Camp Howdy counsellor in his youth, says it will be a tragedy to lose the facility or see it turned into a day centre. “There were a lot of kids who’d never been out in the forest before,” he recalls. “Lots of kids had never been in a canoe before. They’d never done any hiking.”

He says day camp simply cannot offer the same kind of experience.

Mayor Drew of Belcarra, meanwhile, says it’s too bad the original deal was killed — just one step from being completed in a way that would have left the camp running as a day centre.

Now, he says, the best hope is that the GVRD will ride to the rescue by buying the land outright and finding someone — possibly the Y — to operate the camp.

While the Y is considering offers from private developers, it is also negotiating with the GVRD, which has expressed an interest in acquiring the property. But will the GVRD be able to match the offers the Y says it has already received from private developers?

Drew says he’s hoping to hear an answer from the GVRD by the end of March. “At this point, my speculation is even odds,” he says. “We’ve got our fingers crossed.”

So, too, does Kaity MacDonald. Her Camp Howdy hat is hanging by the front door and she’s hoping to wear it this summer — and next summer, too.

Kaity talks of the friends she met there and of the memories she’ll treasure all her life.

“Camp Howdy should be standing for my children as well as my grandchildren so they can have the same great experiences as me,” she says.

© The Vancouver Province 2006

Daphne Bramham
Sun

Richmond‘s leaders have megaprojectitis that has infected B.C. politicians forever.

The current economic boom (which everybody agrees is completely unsustainable) seems to have brought out the inner Wacky Bennett in all of them.

They are forging ahead with a $178-million Olympic oval on a site so soggy and unstable that its probable lifespan as an international venue is little more than a decade.

“In some places it takes a mob in the streets to stop government in its tracks. Elsewhere, the army does the honours. B.C. must be the only jurisdiction where administrations are periodically shaken up by accountants.”

That’s what my perceptive colleague Vaughn Palmer wrote back in 1998, which ironically was about the time that the first twinges of Olympic lust were awakening in the province.

The point he was making is that too often governments — especially in B.C. — plunge in with little concern for the consequences.

Politicians sweep the public along with them and their dreams. But when the bills come in, forensic accountants are called in to sort out the mess and taxpayers end up a little poorer.

The list is long. Suffice it to mention only fast ferries, the Expo land sale and the Coquihalla Highway.

Richmond‘s road to the Olympics is paved with the familiar hyperbolic flourish and few details.

City manager George Duncan has called the oval project “Times Square on the Fraser”. Communications manager Ted Townsend described it as a signature building more grandiose than B.C. Place and on par with Sydney, Australia’s opera house.

What they avoid saying is that the oval was the single most expensive Olympic venue even before Richmond decided to double the size and triple the cost.

The oval is also the only project that if it goes over budget, the provincial government will not pay for the overruns.

At this point, Richmond taxpayers are on the hook for $118 million for a facility that appears to have more risks associated with it than many, if not all, of the others.

Geotechnical engineers told the city in September that there is “considerable risk” that the 400-metre track could have enough wobble in it by 2018 that it won’t meet the International Skating Union’s rigid standard.

That standard is that the track cannot vary by more than 20 millimetres over its length or by three millimetres in a distance of three metres.

Those geotechnical challenges help explain why the Richmond oval is estimated at $178 million, while Turin built its oval for $100 million.

But what’s hard to understand is why Richmond council — knowing the extent of those challenges — agreed to go ahead with such an expensive facility that might quickly be obsolete.

Of course, nobody bothered to tell taxpayers the risks. Nobody bothered to tell them that council, the city manager, the project manager or whoever had accepted those risks and forged on anyway.

Just last week Coun. Bill McNulty, all flushed with enthusiasm after his trip to the Turin Olympics, wrote in the Richmond News that “post-2010 [it] will be a world-class venue available for use for elite-level sports competition and training.”

The only reason people know is because the geotechnical report was given to me in response to a request under B.C.’s Freedom of Information Act.

Maybe residents are happy spending $3,000 per household on a big, barn-like structure that won’t be up to its principal use in a decade.

But maybe had they known the cost and the risks in September when council did, they might have demanded that since its use as an international venue may be limited, the venue should be scaled back to the size required by the Olympics rather than being twice what’s needed.

They might even have voted differently in the November civic election.

But keeping the geotechnical details quiet is just part of the pattern.

Richmond devised its gold-plated offer behind closed doors. It didn’t even mention it to citizens until the deal was signed, sealed and delivered.

It was an offer Vanoc couldn’t refuse since it allowed Vanoc to cap its cost at $60 million (in 2002 dollars).

The city worked it out so that taxpayers would never get a chance to vote on the oval. With no plan to borrow money, no plebiscite was required.

The money was initially to come from casino revenue, sale of adjacent land, the development fund and sponsorship revenue.

However, it was just a few months ago that the city admitted that because of the rigid International Olympic Committee rules on sponsorships, no sponsorship or naming rights can be sold until after 2010.

When the $23-million underground parkade was added to help stabilize the oval and bumped the oval’s cost to $178 million, taxpayers were told it wasn’t an additional cost. They were told it was a cost-saving because more of the adjacent land would be freed up for sale to the private sector.

Ask city officials anything about the oval and what they’ll tell you is that it is on-time and on-budget.

They’re, of course, not counting the two recent decisions made in camera to spend $14.2 million to buy the Canadian Pacific Railway spur line for road construction around the oval and $2 million to hire several employees to work on projects including the oval.

It’s also hard to not be on-budget when construction hasn’t started and major contracts haven’t yet to be tendered.

As for being on-time, Richmond signed a contract guaranteeing completion in time for the Olympics regardless of what it costs.

Maybe we’re damned for all time to repeat our history of megaprojects.

But the whole point of knowing history is to not repeat the mistakes.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

People aren’t taking care of the public realm, a friend says

Bob Ransford
Sun

We may have created in Vancouver the most livable downtown in North America in the last 15 years, if measured in simple numbers alone. The downtown peninsula population has increased by 40,000 to 80,000 and will probably reach at least 110,000 by the end of the decade, double the population before Expo 86.

But what is life really like for downtown dwellers in the new Vancouver?

Recently I received an e-mail from a friend who is a keen observer of just about everything that goes on around her. She and her husband have lived in the West End in a beautiful apartment in a heritage building for as long as I have known them. They are true urbanites, appreciating everything about downtown living.

She was lamenting what she sees as the deterioration of Vancouver’s downtown, especially the West End.

You should know that she is someone who cares deeply about something most people don’t really understand — community. She understands much better than most the interrelationships between the physical environment, the built environment and the way people interact and the way our institutions that represent “community” evolve.

Vancouver‘s new look is “tired and scruffy”, according to my friend. She attributes this appearance and new feeling to the fact that people are simply not paying attention to what’s going on around them on the street. People aren’t taking care of the “public realm”.

This is a term planners use to refer to those public spaces and the bits in between buildings — the places that are special places in highly dense mixed-use neighbourhoods.

“What about stores [especially major chains] that do not bother to sweep the street, pickup garbage or wash down the street in front of their stores – ever? One cannot help thinking that the managers do not live in the neighbourhood or do not care what happens outside the walls of their stores” my friend states, pointing to the lack of concern shown for those areas downtown dwellers should cherish.

The street and sidewalk is the family room or den for many apartment dwellers that lack this kind of informal space in their small apartments.

She also wonders why police aren’t dealing with the “the drunk or drugged panhandlers who hassle the public as they shop at their neighbourhood stores.”

“How can we get people to look around them and pay attention to there surroundings?” she asks with some desperation.

It is interesting that my friend also commented on the “tacky apartment buildings – glass towers, where the backs of computers, cords, backs of desks and other ‘stuff’ are located in front of the window.”

And, “What about people who use their balconies as an additional room to their apartment? The storage of bicycles, kids’ toys, the untended plantings/planters? Everything looking sloppy and untidy and thereby eliminating them for their intended use — outdoor living?”

Her observations about the architectural style of downtown residential towers and the way people live in the space that architects and planners designed might just be a telling commentary on how downtown life is evolving in Vancouver.

There is undoubtedly a connection between the way people value their private living environments and the way they value the public realm.

Is there also a connection between how people perceive the architecture of the built form they are living in and the way they value the place in which they live?

Does Vancouver’s brand of the modern architectural style as embodied in the downtown high-rise residential buildings speak to a lesser sense of value that people attach to their individual living environments — an attitude reflected in a public realm people don’t really cherish?

Bob Ransford is a public affairs consultant with COUNTERPOINT Communications Inc. He is a former real estate developer who specializes in urban land use issues. Email:

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

World’s Fastest Growing City.

Other

Proposed development east of Highway 97

Michael Kane
Sun

Vancouver‘s Co-operators Development Corp. has been selected to design a $75-million “Wine Village” for the town of Oliver in the South Okanagan valley.

The proposed development on 4.3 acres east of Highway 97 is expected to showcase 15 local wineries and make the town the destination of choice for Okanagan wine tourists.

Internationally recognized producers in the area include Burrowing Owl Vineyards, Black Hills Estate Winery, Jackson Triggs, Tinhorn Creek and Gehringer Brothers.

The project will be a mixed-use development which may include multi-family residential, commercial, hotel and restaurant facilities, said Les Lawther, economic development officer for the Oliver and District Community Economic Development Society.

It is expected to create about 200 permanent jobs for the 10,000-strong Greater Oliver community and straddle the major access road to both the four-season mountain resort of Mt. Baldy to the east and the proposed national park of Mt. Kobau to the west.

South Okanagan tourism generates $58 million annually and about 350,000 overnight visitations, mostly in Osoyoos.

“We are a greenfield waiting to happen,” Lawther said. “It would be a marketing executive’s dream to have a four-season mountain resort on the east, a national park to the west and in the middle, a destination wine village anchoring Canada’s premier wine-producing area.”

Conceptual planning and approvals will take place over the next six months with public review meetings planned at key milestones. Co-operators will then submit a proposal to the town and site work could begin as early as November.

Oliver bills itself as the Wine Capital of Canada with British Columbia’s largest concentration of both vineyards and commercial wineries, mostly located along the “Golden Mile” of Highway 97 south of the town.

New wineries and additional lands are being put into production in what is expected to be a growth industry for the next five to 10 years.

Co-operators Development Corp. Ltd. has been involved in the development of condominiums, resort properties, seniors’ residences, and office, industrial and commercial properties for more than 20 years. Recent developments include The Terraces at 7th in Vancouver, the Sausalito at 3rd and Lonsdale in North Vancouver, Casa del Lago in Osoyoos, and Gloucester Industrial Estates in Langley.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

After 400 years of deadly excursions, sea may soon be navigable

Randy Boswell
Sun

Stunning for its polar seascapes, rich in history and resources, yet still one of the planet’s most mysterious places, the Arctic Ocean is an immense but largely overlooked part of Canada.

It is immensely important, too — even hailed as a “new Mediterranean” by those who envision this country as the key portal to a new circumpolar sphere of geopolitical power in an age of climate change.

But the sea that didn’t make it into our national motto remains, for now, at the margins of Canadian consciousness, despite its sprawling presence across our northern frontier, despite its increasing strategic significance, despite the fact that much of our early history unfolded there — and much of our future is expected to.

The Arctic Ocean is the ice-lined edge of home for tens of thousands of Canadians — mostly Inuit and other first nations people — and the fragile domain of polar bear and narwhal, signature species of the North.

And it is, undoubtedly, a sea of superlatives.

It includes the great Arctic archipelago from Banks Island in the west to Baffin in the east to Ellesmere in the north — a 1.3-million-sq.-km. swath of land, ice and water comprising the world’s largest group of islands.

Its mainland shore stretches some 30,000 km from the northwest corner of the Yukon to the tip of Labrador peninsula, sculpting the saltwater coasts of the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec along the way.

Yet scientists have described this Arctic vastness, as recently as 1990, as “Canada’s missing dimension” — a little-understood ocean, with an almost unexplored seabed, swirling around largely unstudied lands.

Mythologized in the 19th century as a fatally inhospitable corner of the planet, the traditional image of the Arctic as a frozen wasteland is only now melting away — and still more slowly than the permafrost and polar ice are thawing from global warming.

“The Arctic is in the process of transformation from a land of the imagination to a place in the real and everyday world,” archeologist Robert McGhee has written in The Last Imaginary Place, A Human History of the Arctic World. “This clear-sighted view of the Arctic will be needed if the peoples to whom it is home, and the national governments that claim sovereignty in its territories, are to cope with the problems that are converging on the region from several directions.”

The transformation McGhee identified is being hastened, above all, by the increasing likelihood of a reliably navigable Northwest Passage in the near future — with oil tankers and other freighters plying an unfrozen ocean.

Remarkably, the prospect of a clear sea route across the top of North America was the original impetus for exploring Canada’s Arctic waters more than 400 years ago.

Frobisher, Hudson, Davis, Baffin — the English sailors whose Arctic expeditions are still prominently commemorated on Canada’s maps — failed in their quests for a shortcut to China.

But they did chart a path toward the heart of North America. And fur-trading forts along Hudson Bay gave the British their first serious foothold in the future Canada, and set the stage for the European settlement and development of the old northwest.

Seeking an Arctic sea passage remained an obsession for British, American and Scandinavian explorers throughout the 1800s, as the ill-fated Sir John Franklin and a steady stream of would-be rescuers sailed to glory or doom throughout the ice-choked archipelago.

But even by the early 1900s, as Sir Wilfrid Laurier was famously declaring that the 20th century would belong to Canada, it still wasn’t clear whether the Arctic islands did.

In 1902, the Norwegian explorer Otto Sverdrup discovered three large islands west of Ellesmere. And in 1906, the year “From Sea to Sea” had its first ceremonial use in Canada, Norway’s Roald Amundsen became the first explorer to traverse the Northwest Passage — a feat that raised further alarms about Canada’s territorial claims in the North.

Ironically, it was not until 1921 — the year Canada adopted A Mari usque ad mare as its motto — that Icelandic-Canadian explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson truly awakened the nation to its forgotten Arctic Ocean frontier.

It was his publication of The Friendly Arctic — an account of the polar expeditions during which Stefansson led several crewmen to their deaths but discovered some of the world’s last major land masses — that nudged the North into the Canadian psyche.

THE THIRD SEA:

Northern aboriginal leaders and top Arctic scientists are echoing a call by the three territorial premiers to rewrite the national motto to reflect the true vastness of the country and formally declare Canada a nation that extends ‘from sea to sea to sea.’

The premiers — Dennis Fentie of the Yukon, Joe Handley of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut’s Paul Okalik — say it’s time to amend A mari usque ad mare, the Latin version of “From sea to sea” that appears on the country’s coat of arms.

The change, they say, would acknowledge the country’s Arctic Ocean frontier along with its Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and symbolically assert Canadian control over the Northwest Passage and other disputed sites in the North.

Source: CanWest News Service

© The Vancouver Sun 2006