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Olympic Open House

The impact of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games on Whistler would not be "that huge" weighed up against the summer games in Sydney or the winter games in Salt Lake City.

The impact of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games on Whistler would not be "that huge" weighed up against the summer games in Sydney or the winter games in Salt Lake City.

That was the message from the Vancouver-Whistler 2010 bid corporation at an open house held June 27 and 28 at the Whistler Conference Centre.

Approximately 130 people in total attended six half-hour presentations held over the two-day period.

The bid corporation’s Peter Jones said the goal was to try and define the "actual scope" of the two-week event for Whistlerites.

Other key issues discussed included transportation and process.

"We had some good questions and a lot of good dialogue," said Jones.

"One of the core parts of the presentation was trying to explain the scope of what is being proposed for Whistler in terms of that two-week period in February 2010 and we had some numbers and comparisons."

Jones said a winter Olympics is about one-third the size of a summer Olympics in terms of the number of athletes, coaches, officials, spectators "and everything else that goes with it."

He noted in the Vancouver-Whistler case, the "load" would be split 60/40 respectively.

"The load, scope or the volume is actually not that huge," he said. "For example, the number of athletes and officials for Whistler would be less than 2,000. We don’t have a fix on spectators yet. It depends where you are in the world," said Jones.

"It would, for example, be unfair to compare Nagano and Lillehammer with Salt Lake City in terms of spectators. Salt Lake will be bigger just because of where it is located in the world and we think that ours will draw quite large numbers of people."

Jones noted, however, tickets would be needed for each event, which will help with planning. "You don’t get in without a ticket so you don’t come without a ticket so you know exactly how many people to plan for," he said.

"It is also driven by the size of the venues. The cross-country skiing finish line stadium, depending on the design, will contain a set number of seats and that is how many people will come. There will be no standing room. It is the same with speed skating and so on so it is very easy to predict in terms of transportation," he noted. "People were thinking that this was going to be an overwhelming experience, and it is not."

Jones said it was important to note transportation plans will be for the two weeks only. "It is not about providing a transportation plan for the future of the Lower Mainland." He said however, the bid could be a catalyst for long range traffic solutions. "We can help move things forward in a time frame that will have an impact on a broader basis than just what we need to run a successful Olympics."

Jones said once the bid corporation started to explain process and methodology to the public, people stopped looking for specific answers, like: "Will there be a high speed bullet train?"

Jones said the corporation can’t give those specific answers yet. Those types of answers will come from the experts who participate in about 60 different work groups to be set up within the next six months.

"A major part of our presentation was to talk about process and how you prepare an Olympic bid. We are basically three years from a decision date now and essentially the methodology we are going to put into place uses work groups comprised of professionally-qualified volunteers."

One of the groups will focus only on transportation. It will likely be comprised of stakeholders including BC Rail, TransLink, the Ministry of Highways and other professional transportation planners. There will also be a group for each venue, each sport and one for communication and one for medical services, among others.

The focus of each work group will be narrow and each group, said Jones, will prepare recommendations that will be written into the bid book.

The work groups will have budgets to hire, in some cases, experts. "For example," said Jones, "you don’t design a speed skating oval without an expert architectural firm. The work groups will have a budget to take plans to a certain level," he said. "The IOC doesn’t want an artist’s rendering. The IOC wants to know specifically what your building is going to be; that you have budgeted to build it and that you have budgeted to pay for its operation after the games."

To keep the public informed as the bid progresses, the bid corporation is planning on holding similar public information and discussion sessions in Whistler on a regular basis. "We think we will be doing that about every three to four months," said Jones.

The corporation will also be hosting focus groups in an attempt to get a reading on specific demographic opinion.

"For example, we might do a retail merchants focus group and invite representatives from the retail community to sit with a trained focus group moderator and go through an agenda of discussion issues to get the feeling of retail merchants."

The same will likely be done with other special-interest groups like the accommodation sector, full-time residents and second-home owners.

Jones noted the Resort Municipality of Whistler is also preparing specific guiding principles upon which council and the municipality will support the bid. "In other words, if the bid violates a guiding principle – like adherence to the Official Community Plan – then they are not going to approve it."

Jones said it will not only be the bid corporation involved in the public consultation process. He noted individuals like Doug Forseth of Whistler-Blackcomb, Suzanne Denbak of Tourism Whistler and Alan Stager of Mount Currie are all on the board.

"They will also be taking information out to the public and bringing information in to the bid corporation," said Jones. "There is good representation from the corridor."