Go to the mobile version of this Web site.

Login | Contact Us | Site Map | Paid archives | Electronic edition | Subscription Questions | Extras

TEMPLE: In Vancouver, Denver ears perk up

By John Temple, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published October 11, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.
Updated October 11, 2008 at 1:05 a.m.

Text size  
Canada's national long-track speedskating team takes to the ice in the spectacular Richmond Olympic Oval, built for the 2010 games in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Photo by Jeff Vinnick / Vancouver Sun

Canada's national long-track speedskating team takes to the ice in the spectacular Richmond Olympic Oval, built for the 2010 games in Vancouver, British Columbia.

A massive village to house Olympic athletes is under construction in the heart of Vancouver. The village, which will convert to residential housing after the games, is being built to the highest environmental standards.

Photo by Ian Lindsay / Vancouver Sun

A massive village to house Olympic athletes is under construction in the heart of Vancouver. The village, which will convert to residential housing after the games, is being built to the highest environmental standards.

More Business Columns & Blogs

More stories »

CORRECTION: This column should have made clear that the Leadership Exchange '08 trip to Vancouver was sponsored by the Metro Denver Chamber Leadership Foundation, not by the chamber itself.

Sometimes it takes traveling to another city to learn about your own.

That was the case last week when 165 Colorado leaders went to Vancouver, British Columbia, as part of the Denver Metro Chamber's Leadership Exchange '08 trip.

It was my first time on such a venture. I went in place of Business Editor Rob Reuteman, who usually attends, because Vancouver is my hometown and we thought I might be able to bring a special perspective to the group.

So let me take you along and share a few of the things I heard and insights I gleaned.

While the election and financial meltdown dominated our conversations, behind the scenes many of the leaders already are looking ahead to two other huge local issues: a possible Olympic bid for Colorado and the way-over-budget FasTracks project.

They found encouragement on both fronts in what they saw in Vancouver.

Denver and Vancouver have much in common. The two cities have stunning settings. But while in Denver space for growth seems to stretch forever, at least if you're heading Kansas way, Vancouver is constrained, surrounded by sea and mountains.

This means that greater Vancouver, with some 2.2 million people vs. metro Denver's 2.7 million, has a density per square mile of 2,000 people, almost four times that of Denver.

While it's impossible to get a complete picture of a city in just a couple of days, a trip like this is a gauge by which leaders can measure their own progress.

In Vancouver right now, the 2010 Winter Olympics are the highest-profile public project. The area's leaders see the games as a significant milestone. They view it as a transforming moment on the scale of two earlier critical events: the decision in the early '70s to preserve the region's rich agricultural land in a land reserve and the hosting of Expo '86, which transformed the city's downtown.

Denver's Olympic organizers walk a fine line. It's clear that much has been done to prepare a bid for the 2018 Winter Games, but they appear reticent to discuss the plans in too much detail because they don't want to sabotage their efforts.

It's not ultimately up to a city or state to make the bid. That will be up to the national committee, which could choose Denver to represent the country.

One lesson from Vancouver was that it's a tremendous amount of work just to win the games. It cost more than $30 million for Vancouver to prepare its bid. Capital construction for a Colorado Olympics is estimated to cost $350 million.

But Vancouver organizers think it's been worth the effort, even before the first event has been held. The reason is the approach they took, one Denver probably would emulate. And that is that every step of the way should create a legacy that will benefit the region, whether it gets the games or not.

Vancouver's organizers advocated adopting a very open approach, involving all parts of the community. They said it was critical to establish a set of values and then live by them. In their case, another key value was sustainability.

The Colorado group visited a spectacular new speed skating arena in Vancouver's southern suburb of Richmond that, after the games, will become a sort of town center, with views of the Fraser River and the Coast Range in the distance.

It will not stand empty as a speedskating rink. Instead, it will become a major fitness draw for the area, with facilities for the expert and amateur alike. It will have eight full-size basketball courts, a 60-meter sprint track, a 200-meter track, two Olympic-size hockey rinks and a fitness center with multiactivity rooms for everything from yoga and Pilates to aerobics and child care. It'll include an indoor rowing tank and a sports medicine clinic. And, oh, yes, if they need it for speedskating, it can be used for that again, too.

The financing flummoxed many of us, but bottom line we were told no new taxes were imposed to build the $178 million facility.

Among the building's sustainable features was its lumber, taken from trees killed by the same pine beetles that are ravaging Colorado's forests, and used to dramatic effect in its construction. Water from the roof will drain into a pond and be reused. The design encourages access by foot and bicycle instead of cars.

Another symbol of the environmental ethos that permeates the region's bid is a massive Olympic village in the heart of the city. It will house the athletes and then be used for housing. The community and buildings are being built at the highest environmental standards - LEED Gold - a model for the city of what its housing and neighborhoods could look like in the future. They even built a bird sanctuary in the harbor as part of the reshaping of the landscape.

The next big step on Colorado's path to a bid looks as if it will come in the spring, when an important international sporting convention, Sportaccord, is held in Denver. As advocates of a Colorado games repeatedly pointed out, every city that has hosted Sportaccord has either already held an Olympics or gone on to host one.

Vancouver organizers told us that it's an opportunity to show the world the spirit, energy and people power we have in Denver.

Sportaccord is not a huge convention. But it includes 1,500 leading representatives from international sport and groups from more than 100 international sports organizations.

It was impossible to tell how excited the average person in the Vancouver region was about the Olympics. But there's no question that those involved believe the games have "magical powers," that they can "inspire, change and lift people."

They were strongly supportive of Denver pursuing a bid. And it seemed Denver leaders were inspired for their own part by the energy the games had generated in Vancouver.

In addition to the huge housing development, the city also is building a $1.7 billion (U.S.), 19-kilometer rapid transit line connecting the airport and the downtown transportation hub.

That project was a model worth studying for the Colorado group as they consider what to do with FasTracks, in large part because it seems to be a successful public-private partnership, on-budget and on-schedule.

The Canada Line is expected to carry 100,000 passengers a day. The financing was a mix of public and private, with $1.1 billion coming from government and $590 million from private investment. A private firm is designing, building and financing the project and will operate and maintain it for 35 years. The line will remain public property, and a public agency will set the fares. The private company is compensated almost entirely for performance, not for ridership.

What we learned is that government carried the risk for ridership while transferring a lot of the risk for inflation in construction costs and materials to the private sector.

You could see the minds of Denver leaders turning as they heard details of the project.

I heard widespread concern that despite the apparent feeling of RTD's leadership that metro Denver voters would vote for a tax increase to make up the deficit and fund the build-out of FasTracks, that support won't be there. Participants privately expressed the view that tough decisions will have to be made.

With the cost of FasTracks having ballooned from $4.7 billion to $7.9 billion, I couldn't find anybody who had any confidence in current price estimates. There's also concern that the $1.2 billion in federal aid the project is counting on may be at risk, given the global financial meltdown.

Many seemed to be waiting for a metro mayors' task force to evaluate the project's costs, but it's clear that we could be seeing alternative proposals early next year when that work is done.

Don't be surprised if you hear calls for dramatic changes in FasTracks, such as the elimination of the northwest rail line that goes to Boulder and Longmont. There was much talk that Boulder could have either bus rapid transit or rail, but not both. You also could see serious questions raised about the DIA line, with some suggesting that for the time being that route would be better served by bus rapid transit.

Whatever happens, there is support for RTD's decision to explore as much private participation as possible. But the picture is different today from when Vancouver formed its partnership for the Canada Line.

It may be much more difficult to transfer the cost risk to the private sector under current financial conditions. But the bottom line is that Vancouver has a sophisticated approach to such partnerships from which Denver can learn. They've always found savings using such partnerships, and every project they've handled this way has been on schedule.

They advised that the best candidates for this approach pose significant technological risks, where it's better to let the private sector solve the problem after the basic goal has been established.

A final valuable lesson from Vancouver came in the way they thought of developing density in their urban core, which some likened to a mini-Hong Kong of glass towers.

They try to make density "delicious," as one planner put it. This means they try to create experiences that will entice the middle class to want to live in the city. They also focus on families with small children. One- tenth of the 100,000 residents of the downtown area are children. They've found if you design a city to be hospitable to children, everybody else will like it.

Their planners tout the benefits of having decided not to allow freeways in the city. And clearly there are some. But Denver should take note of how long it took to drive anywhere while we were there. Traffic is slow.

That's a cost many of us are reluctant to pay. It seems there could be a happier combination than either city currently offers.

I was more familiar with a different Vancouver than the one we visited, a Vancouver that I left in the early 1970s. I saw how far it had come and could tell my fellow travelers that it wasn't always so lively and cosmopolitan.

Denver leaders, in looking at Vancouver, saw they had much to be justifiably proud of in their own city. But they also saw the power of a vision in Vancouver and the room Denver has to become an even greater city.

The hope is that they can steal the best ideas they saw there and in so doing make our community an even better place to live. Based on what I saw, I think there are good odds they're prepared to do just that.

John Temple can be reached at editor@RockyMountainNews.com or by mail at 101 W. Colfax Ave., Suite 500, Denver, CO 80224.

Comments

  • October 14, 2008

    10:54 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    kafree writes:

    "It was impossible to tell how excited the average person in the Vancouver region was about the Olympics"

    Really John? Being familiar with Vancouver you should be able to see through the BS. A significant amount of Vancouver is very upset over how the city has handled the Olympic buildup. Promises broken, cost overruns, parks turned into parking lots, concerns about what the city is going to do with the homeless (for Expo86 they just arrested them all). And I don't know how you could spend more than a few hours in the city without seeing the everpresent "Riot 2010" graffiti.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Win...
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_L...
    http://www.google.com/search?&q=&...