The Olympic Villages of Vancouver and Whistler officially opened and will welcome the world’s best Olympic winter athletes for the next month. The Olympic Villages will provide accommodation and a full range of services to the athletes and team officials, allowing them to focus on their competitions and produce some spectacular sporting performances during the Games.
Vancouver Olympic Village
The Vancouver Olympic Village is located on the southeast side of False Creek in Vancouver. It has extraordinary views of the city’s skyline and the Coats Mountains. It is also directly opposite theCanada Hockey Place and BC Place stadiums. It features newly constructed low and mid-rise apartment buildings, which will welcome about 2,730 people during the Olympic Games. Once the Olympics are over, the Village will form the first phase of a model sustainable community, with the units housing about 3,000 residents in 1,100 units, including 250 affordable housing units and 100 rental units. The Village has been built on a former Brownfield site and was built to LEED standards. It features a number of environmental and sustainability initiatives including the creation of wildlife habitat, green roofs, water efficiency programmes and heating captured from a sewage line.
Whistler Olympic Village
The Whistler Olympic Village is located in the Cheakmus Valley and is less than 20 minutes from all Whistler competition venues. The Village is a mixture of apartments, townhouses and hostel accommodation, and will host about 2,850 athletes and officials during the Olympic Games. After the Games, the Village will provide affordable housing for Whistler and social housing for a number of communities around British Columbia. It will also contain a high-performance training centre for elite athletes. The Village is a pilot project for the new LEED Neighbourhood Development green standard, and contains a number of sustainability attributes, including heating from the local municipal waste water treatment system, a storm water retention system and an aboriginal art programme.
VANCOUVER 2010
Vancouver and Whistler will host the XXI Olympic Winter Games from 12 to 28 February 2010 and the 2010 Paralympic Winter Games from 12 to 21 March 2010. The seven winter Olympic sports that will be on show in Vancouver are luge, skiing, skating, ice hockey, biathlon, bobsleigh and curling.
