[News] UPD: Calgary City Council approves exploratory bid study for 2026 Olympics

[Muta]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814

I just want a train that goes to the airport.

The design for that route is currently underway. Not saying it'll get built, though.

[GordonBlue]

hanson said the security cost will be far less than Vancouver. do you agree? I don't.

he's correct that Calgary wouldn't have the ports to patrol and there would be savings in that regard. but as London has recently shown (and the USA) things seems to be getting worse, not better. you'd have significant security costs to try and keep those types of acts to a minimum. not to mention the simple cost of inflation from 2010 to 2026.

[Northendzone]

so Vancouver games in 2010 cost $7b but we can do it for about 65% of the cost 16 yrs into the future? alrightly then......

remember, these numbers are mythical, because it always depends on what stuff you include or choose not to include.

I can't believe security could be less (even without the port). the world has changed in the 7 yrs since Vancouver. seems that attacks in London and paris are starting to become regular occurances now - so move the yardsticks another 7 yrs into the future......

to me once you head down this path, it is a very slipperly slope as there is no way to put the brakes on anything and you need to finish.

based on every governemtn project I have seen I'd have to believe the real cost will be $10B with a deficit of $4B.......

to me the city would be better off skipping the games, and just upgrading facilities so you are left with the same net result.

[Barnes]

Originally Posted by Muta

Rumour has it Nakiska is still tall enough to hold the ski events, although certain parties are pushing for Lake Louise or nothing. Parks Canada, so far, is giving it a hard 'no', but who knows what the future holds.

Nakiska isn't suited for downhill anymore. It's not challenging enough. It may have the vertical but no way the olympians riding that platter to the start house in 2026. The plans in Calgary's 2010 bid exploration had new runs and lifts added to the peak north of the Current resort.

Halfpipe, skier/boardercross, new school freestyle events should all be at COP.

The traditional alpine events can be at Nakiska/LL.

Cross Country/Biathlon/Jumping can be in Canmore.

They can bring back Ski ballet and it can be in Edmonton.

[cam_wmh]

Originally Posted by Muta

Honestly, I'm probably supportive for selfish reasons. I love sports, I love the Olympics (not necessarily the IOC), and I believe there isn't a better opportunity to massively upgrade our outdated facilities (including transportation infrastructure) at once than doing it in this manner. I am a big fan of development and seeing the potential for our great city take its place on the world stage once again. Sometimes that costs money, but I think for the long-term. I see this as a long-term economic, social, health and wellness benefit. I don't think the price tag is outrageous, either, versus other hosting cities and what they've spent. We can learn from their mistakes during the process and avoid them where possible.

The price tag is definitely a concern to me, like it is to everybody... but I do believe there's so many other benefits to doing this than just looking at the numbers. These upgraded facilities will benefit Calgarians and Albertans for future generations to come for sports, athletic, leisure, recreation and social purposes. I do completely understand I'm in the minority on this though.

I imagine you've seen the report

As I haven't seen the full report, and can only provide my basis upon the CBC & Macleans articles; I understand the report did not include significant capital projects (arena, field house, LRT expansion)

Which "sports, recreation, & updated transportation infrastructure" are you referring to?

[cam_wmh]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Does Parks Canada have a veto if one of the privately owned resorts wanted to do it? I mean, maybe they do but do they have a practical veto? If LL, for example, decided, "Yep, we'd be totally down to host all downhill, freestyle, ski and boarder X events", would they really have the political capital to say "No chance, you're not doing that"?

Originally Posted by Joborule

LL already hosts an annual event where it's part of the downhill circuit tour. So if Parks has a problem with them doing the Olympics, doesn't it kinda fall on deaf ears since the precedent has already been establish in hosting major sporting events there?

Having spent many days at LL during various events they've hosted, I feel in WC/Winterstart, SBC/Kokanee, Monster Ruckus, SuperPark, are pretty much pedestrian in comparison to the Olympics; ie; a trickle to what that stage would bring.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by GordonBlue

hanson said the security cost will be far less than Vancouver. do you agree? I don't.

I actually do. The port security is a huge cost that we don't have, but moreover, facilities for this can be more localized and contained. Vancouver actually did a pretty poor job of this - the entire downtown was littered with "houses" for various countries, events spread south of False Creek because that's where Olympic housing was, and events were held in Richmond (curling and speed skating related ones mostly) which is a 45 minute drive from downtown in traffic. Trying to localize everything in certain areas that can be more easily managed is a strength here and it significantly reduces the amount of security that's necessary. The threats are more or less the same in nature as they've always been, it's just the likelihood of an attack that's gone up, and when putting together a security strategy you have to treat the risk of an attack as 100% regardless.

Originally Posted by Northendzone

so Vancouver games in 2010 cost $7b but we can do it for about 65% of the cost 16 yrs into the future? alrightly then......

Originally Posted by cam_wmh

As I haven't seen the full report, and can only provide my basis upon the CBC & Macleans articles; I understand the report did not include significant capital projects (arena, field house, LRT expansion)

This is, as the article describes, a bare bones bid. I would suspect that if we were spending the same way Vancouver did on similar sorts of projects and infrastructure, it would be about double, if not a little more. I think that would be the better bid.

[Muta]

Originally Posted by cam_wmh

I imagine you've seen the report

As I haven't seen the full report, and can only provide my basis upon the CBC & Macleans articles; I understand the report did not include significant capital projects (arena, field house, LRT expansion)

Which "sports, recreation, & updated transportation infrastructure" are you referring to?

My comment was more in general and not about what's included in the CBEC funding estimate. The type of infrastructure I'm referring to, in general, is an upgraded Olympic Oval, COP facilities (including bobsled, etc.), Nordic Centre, a new hockey arena (and hopefully an entire live/work/play district out of it) and civic infrastructure including a new train line to the airport, an underground downtown train system, upgraded public amenities such as Olympic Park and other associated facilities that may benefit.

[NiklasSundblad]

Originally Posted by Tyler

Pretty simple. We don't have a facility big enough to host curling that isn't already pegged for events like short track, figure skating, and overflow hockey. It's not really a toss in. It's actually needed.

This makes sense.

[killer_carlson]

I think a joint bid with Edmonton where a high speed train between the two cities is included is something we should contemplate.

Edmonton can host curling and figure skating.

It might be the only way we get a high speed train between the two cities built.

[stamps]

Originally Posted by killer_carlson

I think a joint bid with Edmonton where a high speed train between the two cities is included is something we should contemplate.

Edmonton can host curling and figure skating.

It might be the only way we get a high speed train between the two cities built.

How about instead of a high speed rail link to Edmonton we build a high speed rail link from Calgary to Lake Louise and host everything in our region ...

[Since1984]

Originally Posted by stamps

How about instead of a high speed rail link to Edmonton we build a high speed rail link from Calgary to Lake Louise and host everything in our region ...

This! And tthen in the winters I can go get drunk snowboarding and just take a damn train back home!

[killer_carlson]

Originally Posted by stamps

How about instead of a high speed rail link to Edmonton we build a high speed rail link from Calgary to Lake Louise and host everything in our region ...

or both.

[getbak]

The whole appeal of the Olympics is that you gather all the best athletes from every sport into the same area. Scattering the venues all over the map eliminates that.

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

There's one question: can the games break even, or come within striking distance, while allowing for new infrastructure to be built. That's all that matters.

If the answer is yes, and the city (and region, because Banff) gets new facilities and transit and road improvements built a large portion of which is covered by the revenue that the Games generates, awesome. Even if it takes a bit of a loss, that's manageable, because it's a great thing for the city to host and we end up better than we were before. If it's a money pit, then obviously, no dice.

The 2010 games were good for Vancouver. It was, in hindsight a good idea for that city to host them, and that's even with the many mistakes that were made in the process that increased the costs. That's possible here, too, isn't it? If not, hard pass, obviously.

I would agree, but based on the assessment delivered yesterday, it looks like they are predicting a shortfall just on the operations side of the games.

This doesn't account for the infrastructure wanted or needed.

As with Vancouver, the operations side just broke even. all the other projects were not covered in that assessment.

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by Zarley

I'd suggest not putting much stock into Markusoff's slanted article. Wait for the final report to come out.

why is it slanted? because his assessment disagrees with yours?

[Northendzone]

So if $4.6 b is the bare bones bid - what does the Cadillac cost?

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Northendzone

So if $4.6 b is the bare bones bid - what does the Cadillac cost?

If you take Vancouver and add inflation for 7 years ( I assume the bid is in 2017 dollars not 2026 dollars). You get about 8.5 billion for an average Olympics. Accounting for a 15% cost over run plus 1 billion for Calgary Next you get abou 6.5 billion for Calgary. So 75% of the cost of a relatively budget games is pretty good.

It's still expensive but if this is a reasonable estimate they did a good job of driving down costs.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Originally Posted by Muta

Honestly, I'm probably supportive for selfish reasons. I love sports, I love the Olympics (not necessarily the IOC), and I believe there isn't a better opportunity to massively upgrade our outdated facilities (including transportation infrastructure) at once than doing it in this manner. I am a big fan of development and seeing the potential for our great city take its place on the world stage once again. Sometimes that costs money, but I think for the long-term. I see this as a long-term economic, social, health and wellness benefit. I don't think the price tag is outrageous, either, versus other hosting cities and what they've spent. We can learn from their mistakes during the process and avoid them where possible.

The price tag is definitely a concern to me, like it is to everybody... but I do believe there's so many other benefits to doing this than just looking at the numbers. These upgraded facilities will benefit Calgarians and Albertans for future generations to come for sports, athletic, leisure, recreation and social purposes. I do completely understand I'm in the minority on this though.

I appreciate this post, I think for most people who support it it is more of an emotional reason, which is valid. Even though my position is obviously clear, I could live with it if it was coming with big infrastructure upgrades. But the current price tag with no infrastructure is obviously a major disappointment. Upgrading the sports facilities is a major luxury when compared to the infrastructure we could get instead for that $2.4 billion we have to spend just to host, which probably rounds up to $2.8 billion with overruns.

As I posted earlier today, the money for this really doesn't exist at either the federal or provincial level, and really doesn't if the North America bid wins the 2026 World Cup (which I expect it to), which is frankly better long term for Canada as an investment in sport even if I still don't really support it even as a co-host.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Cappy

why is it slanted? because his assessment disagrees with yours?

It's slanted by the way he just brushes off the plan for the athletes village, focuses on the pieces of infrastructure that are not included and the realistic economic spending numbers which are undefined as to whether it only includes the two weeks of the games or the run up and post games. So the definitely presents its stance and cherry picks data to advance an agenda.

So it is slanted, and we really need to see the full report, however even acknowledging the bias in the article the bid package does not look to promising.