Richmond to build $118-million Olympic Oval

The Olympic Oval for the 2010 Winter Olympics is going to be built right across from the Vancouver International Airport in the City of Richmond, B.C.
The Oval was originally planned for Simon Fraser University, but after the projected costs for that development rose, the Vancouver 2010 Organizing Committee opened the project to bids from other cities.
The Richmond plan is to develop a multi-purpose facility on River Road on the waterfront. It will part of a 29-acre Olympic precinct, with a new City Centre Waterfront Park and large outdoor plaza linking directly to the Fraser River and waterfront trails.
Robert Gonzales, Director of Engineering with Richmond, says they are hoping to have the Oval built and open well before the Olympic Games – by October 2007 – giving them a very tight time frame. They were to call for expressions of interest from design teams (architects, urban designers, consulting engineers etc.) on August 25. They are hoping to select a short list from those teams by mid-September.
The $118-million building will be more than 33,000 square metres, including two Olympic-sized ice rinks and an indoor sports field. The entire slab for the main activity area will be refrigerated to allow for different activities and ice surface configurations, including for ice hockey, figure skating, sledge hockey as well as the speed skating circuit.
Cannon Johnston Architecture Inc. helped Richmond prepare its successful proposal that won them the project.