Why This Is Vancouver's Last Super Spectacle
For over a century, the region has used mega-events to spur growth. That's over.
Olympic rings over Burrard Inlet. Photo by Tom Wiebe from the Tyee Flickr pool.
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Expo Schmexpo
Vancouver should stop gorging on delusional nostalgia.
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Olympics Well Worth It: Harcourt
Former premier comes out swinging against naysayers, says billions invested will pay off. A Tyee interview.
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A Weekend in the Future
As Shanghai readies its massive urban green Expo, a visitor peers through the haze.
It started with a gold rush and it will end with a gold rush.
The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics will be the last mega-event in the Interstate 5/Highway 99 corridor, a region dependent for more than a century on epic spectacles to stimulate infrastructure spending on buildings and transportation.
Mega-events rely on massive infusions of capital and large tracts of real estate on which to build. But the region has densified, and wide-open, accessible spaces available for development are harder to find. Though they will leave a substantial highway, rapid transit and sport venue legacy, the staggering costs and minimal benefits of February 12-28 Games will mean little appetite for anything on such a scale in this region.
101 years of expos and games
Seattle was the terminus of the Klondike stampede of 1897-1898, when 120,000 prospectors hopped aboard ships for Skagway, Alaska and made their way by foot and steamer to Dawson City, Yukon. Many came home empty-handed.
A group in Seattle proposed a 10th anniversary fair. The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition took place more than a year late in 1909 and drew 3.7 million over four and a half months to a 101-hectare site eventually turned into the University of Washington.
Vancouver's 1954 British Empire Games will forever be known for the Miracle Mile at Empire Stadium. If anything put Vancouver on the map in the English-speaking world, this was it. The first big summertime multisports event in North America after World War II was featured in the first edition of Sports Illustrated. Empire was demolished in 1992, but the University of B.C.'s outdoor pool is one of the last remaining legacy venues.
Seattle's science-themed 1962 Century 21 World's Fair is the best example of a nearly intact legacy. The monorail, which goes from the Westlake Centre food fair to the Centre House food fair (through the Frank Gehry-designed Experience Music Project) is not the only remaining legacy. The landmark Space Needle, Pacific Science Centre and fountain are just several of the functioning remnants on the Seattle Centre campus. The futuristic fair drew 10 million visitors. Plans are underway for a 50th anniversary celebration in 2012. No doubt it'll include a screening of Elvis Presley's It Happened At the World's Fair.
Washington scored a world's fair hat-trick a dozen years later when Spokane hosted Expo '74 on 100 acres of downtown Spokane.
A dozen years later, Vancouver had Expo '86 along a former railway site that stretched from the Granville Bridge to Quebec Street. It was the last great expo in North America. Elements of Expo '86 are in use for the Olympics, such as Science World (temporarily Sochi World), the Roundhouse (Casa Italia) and Canada Place (main press centre). The inukshuk designed by Rankin Inlet's Alvin Kanak stood at the northern pavilion in 1986 and was moved to English Bay. It also moved graphic artist Elena Rivera MacGregor to design the winning logo for the 2010 Games.
Timing was perfect for Expo '86
Expo '86 is credited with being the catalyst for Vancouver's makeover, though the timing couldn't have been better. In 1984, Britain agreed to shift Hong Kong back to Chinese control by 1997. Three years after Expo, the Tiananmen Square massacre unfolded while the world was watching, prompting tens of thousands of Hong Kongers to search for the most convenient safe harbour. Tycoon Li Ka-Shing already found it when he bought most of the old Expo site in a controversial sale. Masses followed him to begin new lives in Vancouver and further transformed the city and its suburbs into a Pacific Rim powerhouse.
Ted Turner of CNN fame brought his Goodwill Games to Seattle in 1990. It was a cold war alternative to the Olympics, which hit another low in 1980 with a U.S.-led boycott of Moscow during that version of an Afghan war.
Victoria hosted the Commonwealth Games in 1994 -- 50 years after Vancouver 1954. When that was over, some on the mainland predictably said "what's next?"
Sport B.C. executive director John Mills wanted to fix the city's aging sport infrastructure -- especially the demolished Empire Stadium property -- and thought a bid for another big Games would do the trick. Consultant Roger Jackson concluded Vancouver could try for either summer or winter, but winter would be easier to win because of Toronto's desire for the Summer Games. Tourism Vancouver jumped on board and the torch was eventually passed to Arthur Griffiths, who received the Canadian Olympic Committee nod over Calgary and Quebec City in 1998.
Cost-benefit ratio has diminished
The strategy behind Vancouver's Games was actually not so much about sport as it was to stimulate real estate and tourism in a province that had long wanted to diversify from a resource-based economy. But at what cost?
The last tally by the Office of the Auditor General found it was costing taxpayers at least $2.5 billion, but anyone with a calculator can add up $6 billion in direct and indirect Olympic costs. The recession, the inconveniencing of a whole city to make way for a 30 percent bump in downtown traffic and the inevitable post-Games paying of the bills will mean that memories of the Canadian gold medal-winners on home ice and snow will ultimately be the reminders of the last mega-event.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers estimated the Games would pump $4.2 billion into the B.C. economy from 2002 to 2020. That sounds like a lot until you consider that the province's gross domestic product was almost $198 billion in 2008 alone. If the retail industry suffers in B.C. during the Games like it did in Utah during Salt Lake 2002, then the benefits will melt further.
Vancouver and Seattle have reached a maturity -- not to mention a density -- that will end that reliance on mega-events. No active bids are on the table, nor are they likely to be. The nearest big event could be 2017 in Edmonton. Land and community will in the Alberta capital could be enough to support a bid for a world expo on the theme of energy sustainability, supply and demand. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
Takuan
08-02-2010
let me fix that
"My parents, and their parents, and their parents paid for the 2010 olympics and all I got from the estate was this lousy T-shirt"
Polakite
08-02-2010
Just sad...
So many are out there trying to ruin the games.
Whether it's the anarchists... or the BCNDP-Tyee Axis of the Far Left...
No matter what the Olympics do, somebody has to snipe.
Yes, there are flaws in the IOC. Yes, sometimes there is scandal during the games (remember Sele-Pelletier getting their gold late due to judging scandal?). Yes, VANOC has been a tad bit or more heavyhanded.
But let's enjoy the Games. They're here. Enjoy them. THEN move forward and capitalize on the investments made... as well as the money now freed up to spend on I daresay EIBI for ALL autistics, mass transit, the Gordon Campbell Memorial, the Mary Polak Gold Line running thru Langley, tax breaks for newspapers, et al.
ReeferMadness
08-02-2010
Make that
"My parents attended the 2010 Olympics and we still have the unpaid bills to show for it".
barney
08-02-2010
Polakite
I get a kick out of the line that protesters are trying to "ruin" the Games. You know why you and supporters say that? So you can lay blame at someone's doorstep, other than your own, if the Games do fail.
Why should critics roll over and enjoy an event they view as a bloated boondoggle? Anti-Olympic sentiment is not some fringe anarchist plot to ruin the party. Such sentiment is a democratic expression, and a vital one at that.
I personally do hope the Games are a big success, because if they aren't, I, and my grand-kids, as taxpayers, will be paying for it; paying for what I see as little more than a corporate branding exercise and exhibition of jingoistic, professional sporting pride. But if these Games fall hard on taxpayers and the most vulnerable in our society, don't blame those of us who tried to warn you, and who tried to demand a full, transparent accounting of this mega-event.
For what it's worth, I'm not an anarchist, an NDPer or a Tyee evil doer. I'm generally a fiscal conservative and all the economic data I've seen in the lead-up to this event tells me this is turning out to be a huge financial mess. The expected benefits have been way over-stated by VANOC propagandists who have zero training in economics and lots of training in PR.
Skywalker
08-02-2010
Polakite
I for one will be glad if this is Vancouver's last super spectacle since I keep having to pay for them even though I have never lived there. The denial that these games cost a lot more than the value of any benefits is a localized arrogance that makes Vancouver look like a huge gathering for all the provincial parasites. If it wasn't for the skeptics I would wonder if the world had gone insane. I would enjoy the games if I did not have to be one of the millions paying for the excesses of Campbell and his appointed VANOC,
I also think that it was a bloody good thing the earthquake in Haiti didn't happen during the Olympic games. If it had there might have been two minutes of silence at the events and then the world would have focused on the games and its cheerleaders.
So Polakite, I will give up my mythical Olympic benefit if you will pay my real tax increases to pay for them. Deal?
Fiat lux
08-02-2010
Expo 86 cost me $5,000 and I
Expo 86 cost me $5,000 and I haven't been near the damn thing. All businesses in the interior have lost and many went bellyup, because it killed tourism, nobody came in 6 summer months and the locals wen to Vancouver to see the show and spen their dough.
Dictatorships need spectaculars, democracies can't afford them, because they have to look after their own people.
I mean real democracies, not these phony dictatorships by elections, who can do anything they want for 4 or whatever years.
Ed Deak.
bfearn
08-02-2010
Polakite...
you don't get it!! It is not the job of citizens in a democracy to support bloated and wasteful government spending, even if it is inevitable. If you were a compassionate citizen you would realize that these games will only benefit the haves. Good governments spend taxes on real needs not games.
It is just sad that so many in BC do not realize what democracy really is or how to ensure its existence.
alive
08-02-2010
never-ending
I doubt that these Olympics will be the last spectacular boondogle infested on us citizens.
As long as there is a dollar to be made, some asshole will promote whatever might catch the fancy of the media.
I remember sharing space in an old building downtown with the "directors" of a then one week event at the beach.
I found it hard to believe, but those people had full-time jobs with all the perks, by "managing" that one event!
People are gullible: make an event where they can guzzle beer at the beach, and they will support you.
make_up_another...
08-02-2010
This Time It's Different!
The average home price is sitting somewhere around 700k, yet we are still in a recession, but don't you dare talk about a bubble! Not to mention the mounds of debt being generated around the Olympics.
Somehow we're supposed to believe that this can be sustained, because Canada is somehow different from the US, UK and Australia, who all tried the housing bubble trick and crashed and burned.
Slowly, slowly, bankruptcy by bankruptcy, we will be forced to admit that the world economy is held up with spit and duct tape. No, wait, cancel the duct tape, that's an insult to duct tape.
Dr Alexander
08-02-2010
Don't worry Polakite
The Games are ruining themselves.
All the critics and "spoil sports" are barely making a dent on the image of the Olympic Games. Besides, it is their right to complain as they are paying for it as much as any cheerleader is.
At any rate, the inconvenience, the budget overruns, the security, the Fortress-Intrawest b.s. and the so-called "anti-ambush marketing" exploits of VANOC and the IOC are doing to the Games more than what a whole army of Chris Shaws could possibly ever dream of doing.
It will be an interesting exercise to see how the games actually turn out for us here in Vancouver, and how they are being broadcast.
Alice
08-02-2010
Super Spectacles
I certainly hope you're right about this being the last spectacle. Enough already! Can't we just let growth happen (or not) at its own pace. Why do we always have to push it til it goes over the cliff?
DNA
08-02-2010
Last games?
Bob, I'm not sure why you say Vancouver will never have another mega event like the Olympic games, or another Expo. The Games are often held in quite dense and well-developed cities, and London, where the summer games are being held in 2012, is hardly an area of large tracts of empty real estate. I suspect that within the next century Vancouver will see a summer games, certainly not in my lifetime (I'm 68) but possibly in yours. As for the huge cost, it's only money...
vince byfield
09-02-2010
No reference to the Calgary Games in 88?
In 2003 only 46% of the eligible voters in Metro Vancouver, with 14% of the province's population, showed up to vote in a referendum on whether or not to host the 2010 Olympics. 64% of those 46% said yes. According to the City Clerk's department there were 280,000 eligible voters in 2002. So 64% of 46% of 280,000 means 82,000 people votes for these games.
But these games are being paid for in large part by British Columbians, and the debt this will leave behind will take decades to pay off. According to the 2006 census there are over four million people living in B.C. now meaning that even thought only 82,000 Vancouverites voted 'yes' for all this debt they comprise only 2% of the population of British Columbia.
It's quite depressing to see democracy given such short shrift. Had these games been put to a provincial referendum there simply would be no games here today.
I propose that since the rest of the province was denied the opportunity to vote against this boondoggle that all provincial and national 2010 olympics-related debt be transferred to Vancouver's books.
As a side note, if the core of Vancouver can not even show a two-thirds majority then that should have been a cue for a resounding 'no' right there. I was at the 1988 Winter Olympics and the spirit in Calgary was completely differen. Over 50,000 Calgarians volunteered to help out: real volunteers who were paid nothing for their work--not provincial and municipal employees being paid to allow their regular work pile up so they can 'volunteer' for these games.
Yes, let's definitely move this debt over to Vancouver where it deserves to fester. After all, they wanted it.
vince byfield
09-02-2010
Proposal to Transfer All Olympic Debt to the City of Vancouver
Regarding the proposal to move all Olympic-related debt from B.C. and Canada governments to the muncipality of Vancouver.
It's only fair we have a provincial referendum on this matter. Let's see how many voters show up for *that* vote.
I'm pretty sure the turnout will be better than 46%.
snert
09-02-2010
Frank
So if this were the case and we went ahead and had the Olympics then there would be no whining?
It seems to me that bad choices can get made no matter what kind of utopian democracy we wish for.
Frank
09-02-2010
snert
"It seems to me that bad choices can get made no matter what kind of utopian democracy we wish for."
Well of course but that doesn't mean we're living in a political utopia now. I think the system can be improved.
A large part of what you call "whining" is because people feel they had no input, their opinions were ignored and even sneered at, yet they have to pay for a party they can't attend.
Surely Ed's right and we can do better than this.