British Columbia makes plans for 2010 Winter Olympics

Consulting engineers who are hoping that British Columbia’s bid to host the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games will succeed got a boost of morale in November. An independent study by InterVISTAS Consulting found that the games will provide major economic benefits to the province, amounting to $6.1 billion in economic activity and up to 244,000 full-time jobs.
Many of those jobs would be in construction, as the bid plans include building a number of new facilities. The most significant construction element would be the long-awaited and much planned expansion of the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre on the waterfront.
The city of Vancouver would also be the locale for many of the events, with the ski-ing, bobsleigh etc. taking place at Whistler and Blackcomb, 120 kilometres north of the city in the Rocky Mountains.
According to the official website of the Vancouver 2010 Bid corporation, current plans are for the opening ceremonies to take place at B.C. Place in Vancouver. Ice hockey would be at a refurbished GM Place, and short track speed skating in the Pacific Coliseum, also to be refurbished.
At Whistler new facilities would be built to accommodate events such as bobsleigh and luge, biathlon and cross-country skiing. A new speed skating oval would be built at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby.
The Olympic Committee will make a decision about where the 2010 Winter Olympics will be held in July 2003. Toronto was the last Canadian city to make a bid to host an Olympic Games — the 2008 summer Olympic Games. Toronto lost to China’s Beiijing.