Quote:
Originally Posted by corporatejay
What? Your comment was that upgrades are usually more expensive than building from scratch and you used BC place as an example.
My point was that even for $500 million dollars that's way way cheaper than building a brand new building.
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My comment was based on this idea that it would somehow be cheaper for Calgary to host the olympics than it would be for a competitor because things like the Oval already exist in Calgary.
My point about upgrades often being more expensive than new construction is based on personal experience. This holds true in my experience when dealing with residential/commercial construction.
It CAN be cheaper to renovate than to build from scratch but this isn't some rule of renovation. It's very easy for renovations to eclipse the cost of a new build, especially when budgets are determined based on deadline rather than on being cost effective.
It's in the links I already posted, coming from the City Manager in Vancouver and from the Province. The necessity of having the majority of renovations completed prior to the Olympics is the primary reason for the inflated cost.
Renovating the Oval or Max Bell or wherever else on an Olympic timeline will invariable increase the construction costs because of the deadline to have them finished. The pressure from these deadlines will force the hand of politicians at the municipal and provincial level to authorize funds they otherwise wouldn't to avoid an negative political impact.
I'm not blaming the olympics for BCs bad economy, but since Vancouver won their bid for the 2010 Olympics in 2003, the provincial debt level has very nearly doubled to over 60 Billion dollars. A massive component of this debt level is a result of the infrastructure projects implemented as part of the vision towards 2010. A light rail line to the airport was and is awesome, a big boon for the city. However, because that investment was predicated on the Olympics, it was an infrastructure project that didn't address Vancouver's greatest need, light rail along North America's busiest transit Corridor (Commercial Drive to UBC along Broadway). As a direct result of the line out to the airport, a planned transit line that would connect more of the Greater Vancouver Regional District was delayed by a decade.
Because of the schedule to open the new light rail infrastructure, the project couldn't be done exclusively by underground tunneling but instead involved surface excavation and construction which had a very negative effect a large segment of the city (Cambie corridor).
I'm not trying to make this Vancouver-centric, but when any city engages in these kind of activities, they develop infrastructure that isn't necessarily based on need. This CalgaryNEXT proposal / Olympic bid parallels this.
The city of Vancouver would have developed the Olympic Village neighbourhood over a period of decades instead of a few years were it not for the Olympics and Calgary is looking at the same scenario with the West Village. According to their own internal discussions posted in these threads, they don't want to do anything with the West Village until the East Village is more established, which makes complete sense. In Vancouver, developing the Olympic village too quickly and taking on the loan for completion cost the city hundreds of millions of dollars.
The infrastructure that the Olympics brought to Vancouver is nice. The skyline is prettier now than it was, I love using the Canada Line, The Sea to Sky Highway is a bit less dangerous the one time a year I use it. But let's not be delusional about what it costs to do it.
It costs a ####load of money.