1y ago

The Vancouver Winter Olympics 2030 bid

The Vancouver 2030 bid was killed by the BC government back in late 2022. It was expected to cost about $1.2 billion in direct costs (38.5 billion for Beijing, 12.9 billion for Pyeongchang, 50 billion for Sochi, 7.7 billion for last Vancouver).

Vancouver already has most of the sports-related infrastructure built. It would facilitate the construction of more density in Olympic Villages, which could help ease the housing crisis. It would motivate the development of better public transportation and would bring attention to the BC interior through Sun Peaks in Kamloops. It would also drive more hotel development in Vancouver, which is already severely lacking in hotels.

Vancouver is uniquely well-suited for an Olympic bid given it already has the infrastructure in place. Such an event could help drive economic growth and stimulate job creation without paying for the excessive costs of having to build everything from scratch. Instead, Vancouver can focus on important projects such as housing development, transportation, and social welfare under the guise of it being Olympic development.

5 comments

Or, we can not hold another olympics and still do those things.
Commonwealth Games? Various world championships in winter sports?
The olympics were a net negative last time; they’d be worse a second time.
- That argument is based on the assumption that things like the Canada Line, the Convention Center, and the Sea-to-Sky Highway were net negatives to Vancouver's economy. The games themselves were net neutral on their own and the lasting economic impact of the games was not insignificant. The Canada Line improved connectivity in the region and is already running up to it's ridership limits. The Convention Center has attracted world-renowned conferences like NeurIPS and continually brings massive amounts of economic impact to the city. The Sea-to-Sky Highway helped expand Whistler's economy and is enabling the development of a new ski resort near Squamish. It's hard to argue that these infrastructure projects were harmful for BC today.
  Plus, Vancouver doesn't need to re-build the Canada Line or Convention Center or Sea-to-Sky Highway.
  Also, Cypress (a big cost of the last games) isn't a venue this time around.

Didn't we convert a lot of the 2010 facilities to other recreation centres already? Like Hillcrest - used to host curling, I believe, but now it's part pool.