Updated plans for the athletes village will be ready early in the New Year.
An open house had been planned for this month but the business plan for the village, which will become a new Whistler neighbourhood post-Games, won’t be ready in time.
The municipality’s general manager of community services, Mike Vance, said they are investigating a number of approaches to delivering the project within the current budget.
The biggest choice council will have to make at the end of January or in early February is whether it makes enough sense financially to build a permanent village-neighbourhood. Once the numbers are in it may make more sense for the athletes village to be temporary. Alternately it could be a mix of the two.
"The fundamental question is: is this temporary or permanent and if it’s permanent then Whistler 2020 (Development Corp.) and the municipality are committing to delivering it," said Vance.
If the development is permanent there will most likely be a series of price tiers on the restricted housing post-Games. In other words, there will be more expensive employee housing with higher quality finishing and more square footage and there will be some housing offered at a cheaper level.
Council must also decide what kind of community facilities it would like to see in the Lower Cheakamus area.
Vance said the board of the Whistler 2020 Development Corp. has also been working on refining the master plan, which the community saw in the fall.
"We’re refining the master plan to reduce costs," said Vance.
That work is very time consuming he added and that’s one of the reasons why they have pushed back an open house to January.
The funding for this project remains unchanged, with $26 million coming from the Vancouver Organizing Committee, along with other monies for specific parts of the village.
Meanwhile construction costs are rising every month.
