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West Vancouver offers $1 million for 2010 Games support

Several West Vancouver families will give 2010 Olympic organizers $1 million so that the District of West Vancouver is recognized as a host venue for the Games.

Several West Vancouver families will give 2010 Olympic organizers $1 million so that the District of West Vancouver is recognized as a host venue for the Games.

“This contribution demonstrated the solid community support for the 2010 Winter Games,” West Vancouver Mayor Pamela Goldsmith-Jones said Monday.

“Council is very pleased that West Vancouver is now officially part of (the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Games) planning effort — we look forward to being part of the team.”

West Vancouver could not be recognized as a host community without a minimum $1 million contribution but municipal leaders refused to use tax payers money to fund the initiative.

The six families involved in the donation have formed a leadership team and hope to find others to chip in so they don’t have to bear the whole burden themselves. However, they have guaranteed the whole sum.

  The donor families are represented by Andrea Southcott, president of ad agency TBWA/Vancouver, Stuart McLaughlin, president of Grouse Mountain, Tony Allard, of Hearthstone Investments, John Brodie, a chartered accountant, John O’Neill, president and CEO of O’Neill Hotels & Resorts, and Richard Warke.

West Vancouver has also recently received $500,000 from the provincial government towards the construction of 325-square-metre Spirit Square atrium, which will provide a covered outdoor celebration space for special events and will serve as a natural community-meeting place for residents using recreation facilities.

“We are tremendously grateful to the citizens of West Vancouver who have joined together and made an unparalleled personal commitment to the Games and their community,” said John Furlong, VANOC’s CEO.

The privately raised funds will go toward staging the Games and will also support snowboard and freestyle World Cup events scheduled to be held at the Olympic venue on Cypress Mountain in 2009.

Cypress, which is in West Vancouver, is the official venue for freestyle skiing and snowboarding at the 2010 Games.

Surrey recently paid $2 million to Vanoc to become a venue city and agreed to provide a facility as a volunteers training centre for the Games.