The Hook

False Creek Flats' biggest vacant lot will become the Olympic parking lot that was rumoured for Little Mountain.

VANOC plans to turn a site bounded by Station and Prior streets and National Avenue into a parking, fueling, cleaning and repair area for as many as 300 motorcoaches.

The site will also be used around-the-clock for Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit inspections of delivery vehicles from late January to late March.

It's near the east end of the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts, which will be closed to public traffic during the Games.

The so-called Trillium Lands were eyed as a technology park until the 2001 dot-com bust.

Social housing activists opposed to the closure of Little Mountain Housing claimed it would become an "Olympic parking lot."

Repeated calls to B.C. Housing CEO Shayne Ramsay were not returned, but Ramsay's written response to a Freedom of Information request denied existence of any 2009 correspondence with VANOC about the Little Mountain site.

When sod was turned at a $21.6 million B.C. Housing Station Street project on July 28, housing minister Rich Coleman answered "not at all" when asked if the Little Mountain site would be bulldozed for Games-use.

Bob Mackin reports for Vancouver 24 Hours