The Building Of Olympic Village

The building of the Olympic Village began in February, 2006, and is slated to be completed and have everything operational by November 1, 2009. At this point, the area will be turned over to the Vancouver Organizing Committee, also known as VANOC, who will use it during the winter games. On April 7, 2010, it will be returned to the City of Vancouver, after which point it will be converted into residential housing, a daycare center, retail outlets, and service spaces. This is all assuming that everything goes relatively smoothly, although at this point construction is well on its way to completion and there have been no major holdups.

There were a few hitches concerning funding for the construction of the village, and on Sunday, January 18, 2009, an emergency meeting was called by the British Columbia Legislature. This meeting approved Bill 47, which allowed the City of Vancouver as a single entity to access unlimited funds in order to complete the development of the Olympic Village. The new estimated cost is roughly one billion Canadian dollars as far as completing the Vancouver Olympic Village is concerned, although the city itself had to borrow roughly half of that. Another hiccup includes late last year, when Fortress Investment Group, a controversial New York hedge fund, stopped delivering payments to the developer working on the Olympic Village.

Although Bill 47 is somewhat unusual to the Olympics charter in that it alters the original requirement that additional borrowing is not allowed without a public referendum, and also that until this legislature was passed it was illegal for the city to pursue borrowing money at all, it became clear that without the legislation allowing the city to use this money the construction would not be completed on time. The building of the Olympic Village thankfully now appears to be going according to plan, and is set to be finished on time.