Category — 2010 Olympic Games

Did the 2010 Winter Games Cultural Olympiad bring long-term benefits to Vancouver’s arts and culture infrastructure?

The answer is no, according to research conducted by Duncan Low, former executive director of the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. His careful assessment, set out in this paper, was submitted in 2010 as part of his Masters of Arts research in the SFU Urban Studies Program.

Low traces the story of Larwill Park from Olympic live site to empty lot to projected location of a new Vancouver Art Gallery as part of the grand “cultural precinct” study launched by Sam Sullivan’s NPA council. (There is much more, but Larwill Park is a key part of the story.)

The site for millions of dollars of “cultural” investment for the live site next to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Larwill Park now sits empty. Sports legacies, in contrast, are obvious at the Richmond Oval, Hillcrest and elsewhere.

Here’s Low’s provocative and thoughtful conclusion at the end of nearly 100 pages of analysis:

[Read more →]

Almost three years to the day since Sam Sullivan’s NPA council voted in camera to bail out Millennium’s Olympic Village project, city council has received a brief update on the receiver’s work to recover the city’s investment.

(Moody’s was so impressed with progress in resolving the financial issues related to the Olympic Village that it upgraded the city’s credit rating last spring in the wake of a May report by the receiver.)

Here are the numbers in terms of unit sales: [Read more →]

In the mountains of coverage of The Night the City Became a Stadium, the remarkable report on the Stanley Cup riots by Douglas Keefe and John Furlong, three key sets of recommendations on riot prevention have been almost entirely passed over. They are:

1. Professional hockey and the NHL

Riots have occurred in four out of the last five Stanley Cup final series, twice in Montreal. (There are some who will claim Mayor Gregor Robertson caused them, too.) Is there a connection with hockey? A Facebook friend writes on my wall that “nobody seems to mention the violence and remarkable lack of sportsmanship that characterize professional hockey.” [Read more →]

The annual crisis over continuation of Amtrak’s second train on the Cascades route from Vancouver to Seattle was quietly cancelled this year by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews announcement in Winnipeg that he’s found permanent funding for Canadian border clearance of train passengers.

It was the cost of  border clearance — a charge Ottawa thought Amtrak should pay because of the special shift required — that had put the second train in doubt after the 2010 Games and again last year. Mayor Gregor Robertson lobbied hard with local businesses, US rail supporters and fellow mayors in Washington and Oregon to keep the service and twice won extensions of the 2010 pilot program.

Now Toews has solved the problem, good news for both Vancouver’s tourism industry and the future of sustainable transportation, perhaps even higher speed trains, along the Pacific seaboard. The second train is the equivalent of several cruise landings in positive economic impact.