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International
Vancouver Will Transform LEED-Rated 2010 Winter Village Venue into Mixed-Use Neighborhood
Selected to host the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver will accommodate the expected 3,000 athletes in a 100-acre eco-friendly Olympic Village being built on its waterfront's last vacant post-industrial site, reports Architectural Record writer Brian James Barr, with all 16 residential mid-rises designed to meet the U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC's) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) requirements for Gold certification, a 30,000-square-foot community center prepared for Platinum, and the whole complex turned later into a mixed-use neighborhood featuring both market-rate and affordable housing.
''Hardly any retrofitting will be needed after the Games,'' said Southeast False Creek district development manager Ian Smith about the Village, all its structures planned and designed by Vancouver-based firms.
Though some host cities, including Barcelona (1992) and Athens (2004), failed to capitalize on Olympic investments and their specially built facilities are neglected or empty, the writer notes, Vancouver set up a sustainable post-Olympic course, as Beijing did before its 2008 Summer Games and London is doing for the 2012 Olympics.
The Village's ground-level halls and rooms, in which athletes and team officials will dine, prepare for events or use for tests and medical care, will become restaurants and shops, while upper dormitories will be transformed into 737 residences, some for low-income buyers, but some expected to go for more than $4 million.
Almost all of the first 300 units put on the market are already sold, with the rest slated for sale after the Games. -- Architectural Record 5/15/2009
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