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Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #933
CHIEF LAWYER SAYS VANOC DETERMINED TO BE FIRST ORGANIZERS TO PREVENT LOGO FROM BEING LEAKEDThe General Counsel for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), Keith Bagshaw, says VANOC is determined to be the first Olympic organizing committee to make its emblem public without it first being leaked.
VANOC is planning a TV special for April 23 from GM Place to launch the emblem, and has ordered companies supplying items such as signs, banners, various public relations materials, and various types of pins, all of which have the new logo on it, to sign detailed non-disclosure agreements regarding the emblem, and, in one contract being offered for printed materials, says the contractor would be hit with a C$50,000 minimum penalty should one of its employees leak the logo.
"This is a very sensitive topic right now," says Bagshaw, whose title at VANOC is equivalent to senior vice-president. "We get our toes cut off if we talk to anyone about it. Not to our wives; we can't even talk in our sleep." Bagshaw sidestepped the question about whether the logo has been trademarked and, if so, how it's been done. "Well, that's one of the secrets. Arrangements have been made to make sure that, when it's launched, it'll be protected." He would not go further to describe what legal methods are being employed that would bypass the standard pubic trademarking methods of the Canadian government.
On other trademark matters, Bagshaw says the issue over Olympia Pizza Restaurant's long-time use of the Olympic rings and torch logos on its Vancouver operations, "is sitting there waiting to be dealt with in due course. Other things have occupied our attention." On the other hand, he says, the case involving a website that's using the Vancouver 2010 combination in its name, "is progressing favourably. Things are being worked through. We have some expectation that one will be settled."
VANOC, meanwhile, has re-registered or clarified the registration of a number of trademarks this week, and it's also added several other trademarks, although most are variations on the theme. These are now being advertised in volume 52, issue 2632 of the
Trademark Gazette for comment, and include: "2006 Canadian Olympic Team", "Génération 2010", "Vancouver 2'10" and "Vancouver 2-10", the Latin version of the International Olympic Committee's slogan " Citius Altius Fortius", the words "Olympus", "Olympia" and the phrases "Winter Games", "Olympic Team", "Olympic Winter Games" and "Olympic Games". It also includes three logos: the Olympic rings on their own, as well a simple, flowing, stylized torch design with a maple leaf at the base of the flame and the torch itself in a deep "V", for Vancouver, as well as another logo, this one a short, flat torch sitting above the Olympic rings, with two bursts of flames emerging from the torch with a large maple leaf in the background. [Morgan:News:2010 has asked VANOC if either of the logos is the new emblem, although it's doubtful that's the case, but it has not yet had time to respond.]
Bagshaw says that while he hasn't been focused on any one issue, he's been heavily occupied in oversight over a variety of legal issues. Besides trademarks and construction, "we've been supporting our Human Resources people, sponsorship agreements, corporate-policy development -- it's a whole range. If you think of all the inside departments in an organization like VANOC, Legal gets involved in all of them."
RESOURCES
The two new logos are in the Canadian government's trademark database. For the stylized "V" torch (scroll down the page a screen or two to see the logo):
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/0916/trdp091641400e.htmlAnd for the maple-leaf torch:
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/0916/trdp091641300e.htmlThe Olympic rings-only logo is here:
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/0916/trdp091641500e.html
Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 7, 2005
Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC, IOC| #932
COORDINATION COMMISSION HEADS BACK TO EUROPE SATISFIED BUT VANOC BUSINESS PLAN STILL IN THE WORKSThe International Olympic Committee's Coordination Commission for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games completed its second visit with a relatively cursory look at the state of operations of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC).
Spokesman for the IOC said the 11-person Coordination Commission also made it a priority to meet with all Games' major stakeholders, including city, provincial and federal governments, and aboriginal groups. VANOC now is large enough, and has so many things going on from construction to sponsorships, that the Commission now can only get a general overview of the major aspects in that relatively brief time.
They were briefed for three hours yesterday morning in a closed-door session by B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell and VANOC officials. VANOC executives, for their part, primarily discussed with the Commission how they intended to build their portions of the organization. The Commission members then toured the site of the proposed skating oval in Richmond, were involved in a number of private discussions with various VANOC executives, and concluded with a formal lunch of cold salmon steaks and salad at the Squamish Recreational Centre in North Vancouver, complete with aboriginal songs and dancing. It's the first time the Commission has met with all leaders of the four main aboriginal groups involved with the 2010 project. "We were very, very busy," says Commission chair Rene Fasel. VANOC CEO John Furlong called them "two enterprising days."
Fasel praised VANOC's organization on a number of fronts -- and had "no concerns at all" -- but particularly on the decision to hire senior executives first. "In the past, organizing committees often started with lower-ranked people, just to save a little bit of money," says Fasel. "But it's better to start with the top people, so you do the right things right at the beginning. It takes so much time, energy and money to correct the decisions made at the beginning if they are the wrong ones."
Fasel says VANOC, is moving now from the planning stage to what he calls "the challenging phase", which involves the actual construction of the organization that will put on the Games, as well as actually construct venues. "This is a challenge, but I'm really confident [these] people will do the right thing."
Fasel says he and VANOC officials are currently working on VANOC's first major business plan. "It's a huge budget, but we're specialists on that. We're going to help them put together a realistic business plan."
Furlong says the discussions so far with the Commission on the business plan has focused on giving them "a sense of when this planning process will be at a point where they can add considerable value to it for us." And he says, VANOC has talked to the IOC on how its being built, as opposed to the details of it, "and the various measures and drivers that are being driven into it."
VANOC Board chairman Jack Poole says the business plan now is being discussed by the Board's finance committee. The co-chairs of that committee are Ken Dobell, the deputy minister to the Premier of British Columbia and one of the provincial government's appointees to the Vancouver 2010 Board. The other co-chair is Brian Dolsen, who is assistant deputy minister of the Province's Olympic Games Secretariat. Also on the committee are Tony Tennessy, Judy Rogers, Jim Godfrey, Chris Rudge and Gibby Jacob. "Once the finance committee signs off, there will be a recommendation to the whole Board," says Poole, "so it's out there in the future a little bit." Poole is not expecting the business plan to get to the board for "a couple of months... Whenever they're ready," although previous planning indicated it would be ready either in April or early May. "I doubt it very much," he says, that it will be ready for this month's Board meeting. "It's whenever John [Furlong] needs approval of it that it'll go to the Board. If necessary, he can ask for a special meeting, but it's still at the committee level." Poole says that once the business plan is finalized, it'll be made public. The plan needs approval from the federal and provincial governments, and from the International Olympic Committee. "The coordination commission hasn't seen the final document yet, but they'll have to sign off on it."
Poole says there will also be a second phase to the business planning process, which he calls "Business Plan Two".
Gilbert Felli, IOC Executive Director for the Olympic Games, who was also with the Commission, says he is impressed that VANOC's planning includes the financial as well as the strategic. "It's a fully integrated financial and strategy plan that works together. Often, in the past at other Games, financial people were working on one side, and operations people on the other side, and maybe only two or three years later would they start to join them up. But the teamwork done by VANOC today is excellent." Felli said he's truly impressed with the way VANOC, compared with other such organizations, is working. "Yes, and we'll see the results."
Commission members are now heading back for Europe, where most of them live, and the Commission itself isn't expected to return to Vancouver until either late May or early June in 2006, when a relatively large turnout of various IOC officials and organizing executives will arrive to hear the official debriefing of the Torino Winter Games, which will be held next February. VANOC officials attended a similar week-long session in Beijing last November following the Athens Summer Games.
However, Fasel will be back for VANOC's April 23 broadcast launch of its new logo. And Fasel will return in June for a more-detailed working review, again in September for a project review, and in December for the World Junior Hockey tournament, as he's head of the International Ice Hockey Federation.
The brief meetings, however, belie the fact that the Commission is regularly briefed with documentation via Fasel and Felli about the state of the VANOC preparations, and the IOC's formal Transfer of Knowledge program, which includes visits like this, Fasel says, appears to be working well, considering Vancouver is the first host city to be able to use the system that first began developing in 2000. "The messages are getting through to the right people," says Fasel.
Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 7, 2005
Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #931
SVP OF SPORT AND CEO BOTH ALLOWING RICHMOND TO WORK OUT WHAT WILL HAPPEN WITH SPEEDSKATING OVALThe senior vice-president of Sport for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), Cathy Priestner, says that while the City of Richmond may not been convinced that the speedskating oval will be permanently in place after the 2101 Games, she is.
But she's willing to hear what Richmond has to say about plans for the sports complex housing the oval when it completes the first major programming step by the end of this month. The second of a series of public-comment meetings is scheduled for Saturday; the first of the series was held last Wednesday.
Priestner, who is a former Olympic speed-skater, "It's certainly our understanding that the oval would stay after the 2010 Games. We haven't seen anything that suggests they wouldn't have the capacity to put ice in the facility. We know the facility has a multi-sport component to it, and that they're trying to attract three to five national-level team sports. Our understanding is that there certainly would be something on the ice-side for that. But they're in the process of determining this now, looking at what makes sense, and talking to the national sport organizations."
Preister cautions, however, that she hasn't seen the program that Richmond is preparing that will show how the facility will be used in detail. "We're expecting they'll come to us with a program that will let us know what they think is the potential for the facility."
Calgary is currently the international centre for speedskating and it hasn't given any indication that would change, which could have the effect of relegating the 2010 oval to that of an ancillary rink. "What has to be figured out how does Vancouver compliment Calgary, and how does it participate in that as part of the delivery of sport. That's the process they're in right now. There are good conversations that have occurred with Calgary, as well as looking at what's happening in Quebec. It's a process to determine what's the ideal post-Games operating model might be."
Richmond has to have the basic program in place in order to design it, and they know what the Olympic requirements are. "It's important, of course, what they want to do with it afterward, of course. And they'll design those together now. They won't have a business plan for a while, but Richmond's target is for the end of this month for the program."
VANOC CEO John Furlong says the Richmond oval, once constructed, "may well be one of the finest in the world, and with the potential for a variety of uses. Today, the plan is to build the oval [complex] with the capacity to do many things, such as long- and short-track speedskating, ice hockey and with other sports. Yesterday, in the presentation that Richmond made to the IOC's Coordination Commission, Richmond explained they're studying the situation, and taking on as much advice and knowledge as they can from venues like it around the world. As the venue comes on stream [in April, 2008] and they can gauge the reaction of their own community and communicate with high-performance sport in a whole variety of ways, their own legacy plan will evolve. But Richmond's obligations to VANOC are to make a significant contribution to high-performance sport, and that can come in a number of ways. They're doing exactly the right thing today, by leaving all their options open on how this will all play out in the future... We need that venue to be a remarkably powerful force for sport, and for the community, after the Games are over."
Furlong noted that the sports complex organizers will also be considering what summer sports may be able to use portions of it. "This is the largest venue of its kind that has ever been built, with an oval inside it, at 300,000 square feet, so we've got to make sure we're looking at every possibility during the planning to take advantage of it."
Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 7, 2005
Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #930
FIRST MAJOR VENUES ON TRACK FOR JUNE CONSTRUCTION START: MATHESONThe senior vice-president of Venues for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), Steve Matheson, says that venue construction for the Whistler Nordic Centre, VANOC's own first major project, and the Whistler Sliding Centre, its second, are on track.
Whether they'll be on budget won't be known until the tenders are opened over the next few weeks.
"Both projects will be in full gear, construction-wise, by June," he says. Earlier planning indicated the Board of Directors would be signing off on the designs for both the WNC and the Whistler Sliding Centre by last month, and it hadn't done so by the end of the month. However, Matheson says the actual process turned out differently.
"For both projects, we've done Project Definition Reports, and that's what VANOC is approving; it's not being approved by our Board of Directors, per se; the actual plan, that is. We [the Venues department] approve the PDRs after we've canvassed the stakeholders -- broadcasting, accreditation, security, and so on -- we have to do all of that to sign off on the schematic design, which is part of the Project Definition Report. And everything on that is on time; we're in good shape."
Matheson expects there will be a shovel-in-the-ground ceremony in the Callaghan Valley, possibly as early as June 9, but, he says, the actual date hasn't been decided yet. June 9 is the date in the tender documents when the construction crews are told to be assembling on site.
But Matheson says there will be site-preparation work on the site before June 9. "The First Nations contract will start in the next couple of weeks."
Under the terms of a Shared Legacies protocol agreement between VANOC and the four aboriginal bands connected with various aspects of the land on which 2010 venues are being built, a small portion of the overall contact is being directed to aboriginal contractors. In this particular case, Matheson says, VANOC is working through the Lil'Wat Band Council (also known as the Mt Currie band), and a small clearing contract has been awarded to Creekside Resources Incorporated. "It's to create some access into the site so we can do some drilling further into the lands," says Matheson.
BACKGROUND
Creekside Resources is the business arm of the Lil'Wat Band Council, and shares the same contact information as the Council office; Creekside was formed in 1997. Since then, it's been involved in a number of social and environmental projects as well as various trade contracts. The B.C. Ministry of Forests in 2003, for instance, set up a couple of small partnership agreements with Creekside Resources. One was to manage and maintain the Alexander Falls recreation site, a small, quiet picnic site and campground overlooking a picturesque waterfall in the Callaghan Valley, and a small boat-launch and tent-camping recreation site at Twin One Creek.
It was also contracted in 2000 by the St'at'imc Nation, a confederacy of 11 aboriginal groups, to be in charge of conducting a number of studies regarding the St'at'imc's land, resources, history and interests that were submitted to the Environmental Assessment Office.
According to research done in 1999 by the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia, "The goals of CRI are to create economic development opportunities and employment and to ensure the proper care and management of cultural and natural resources for the Mount Currie Band and the Lil'wat people. A cultural-resource management division within CRI has been created to evaluate the potential impact on archaeological resources and traditional-use activities of both Band and third party development within their traditional territory. This division provides archaeological consulting services to industry, government, and other First Nations. Expertise is developed 'in-house' to manage and protect all aspects of the Band's cultural heritage."
RESOURCES
Lyle Leo
Chief Executive Officer
Creekside Resources, Mount Currie Band
P 0 Box 605
Mount Currie
BC VON 2KO
Phone: 604.894.6145 (long distance from Vancouver)
Lil'Wat contact info:
http://www.lilwatnation.com/sections/94114080/index.php?sec=12An interesting page detailing connections between a range of aboriginal businesses and other companies in B.C. is at the link below. The businesses are in alphabetical order by name; click a letter to get a page of business listings and contact information for companies whose names start with that letter:
http://www.nativeonline.com/aborigin.htm
Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 7, 2005
Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC, Government| #929
VANOC CLEARS FIRST ENVIRONMENTAL HURDLE BUT MORE TO COME AS SUSTAINABILITY PROMISES START BEING FULFILLEDThe B.C. Government has given the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) the environmental green light, as expected, to begin construction of the Whistler Nordic Centre in June. It's the first of a number of environmental reviews through which VANOC must go as it constructs or renovates its venues over the next few years.
B.C.'s Environmental Assessment Office said the project presented no significant adverse environmental, economic, social, heritage or health effects. The project also underwent a review by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.
The Nordic competition site will host cross-country skiing, the biathlon, Nordic combined and ski-jumping events at the 2010 Winter Olympics. The 250-hectare project is expected to create 520 jobs between now and 2010.
The formal environmental review process was held last fall and early this winter and involved a wide range of public input and review, both formal and informal, before the materials were analyzed and given to the B.C. Cabinet for approval.
The senior-vice president of Venues, Steve Matheson, says the Whistler Sliding Centre and the Cypress Mountain areas are the next to become involved in the environmental-review process. "For all of the projects that have federal funding, which is pretty much all of them, we have to go through a Canadian Environmental Assessment review. The Sliding Centre, we're just going through the preliminary screening now. For Cypress, we're just in the process of hiring consultants to help us with the environmental aspects. We'll have environmental for the athlete's villages in Whistler and Vancouver, UBC's new hockey rinks and the Richmond [speedskating] oval. For projects likes GM Place or the Coliseum, there won't be the requirement on a formal basis. Obviously, if there is something there that needs to be addressed environmentally, we'll need to do that, but the federal government has done a preliminary screening and they decided it wouldn't be necessary."
Matheson also says environmental and sustainability concepts, both underscored in the Vancouver promises to the International Olympic Committee and the IOC's requirements of Vancouver, have kicked in when it comes to the seating at the Coliseum, destined to be a 2010 venue.
When VANOC, the Pacific National Exhibition, which controls the Coliseum, and the City of Vancouver, which oversees the PNE, made the decision to choose upper-end upholstered seating to replace the aging seating systems in the Coliseum, consideration also had to be given about what would happen to the old seats.
"The criteria for selection [of the seats and the contractor]," says Matheson, "included price, which was a big component, obviously, but it also had to do with adherence to the tight schedule before the World Junior Hockey Tournament in December, and it also had to do with our sustainability commitments. We're going to try and recycle as much of the existing seating components as possible. The metal components are going to be recycled. There's not a whole lot we can do with the fabric, so that's about the only part that can't be recycled. We looked at trying to reuse some of the seating, and maybe even move some of the old seating into the Agridome, to re-do the seating there. But the mechanisms of the seats have pretty well had it and, at the end of the day, it was better to convert the metal into something else."
Matheson says that for all of the renovation projects involving venues, "Recycling and sustainability is going to be one of the important things we look at."
Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 7, 2005
Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #928
VANCOUVER TO MEET DEVELOPERS, VANOC OVER NO-BUILD BOUNDARY FOR ATHLETE'S VILLAGE;
RICHMOND DOUBTS IF OLYMPIC OVAL WILL BE PERMANENT;
CALGARY FRETS ABOUT 2010 CONSTRUCTION IMPACT ON ITS PROJECTSHere are three moguls we ran into today:
- Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell has called a meeting with the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), its RCMP security advisers and several private developers to see if a compromise can be reached that would adjust the no-build zone around the downtown Vancouver athlete's village. The zone currently prevents developments along First Avenue's south side from taking place in the area south of the proposed village. The current boundary, which was first noted about a year ago during the city's Official Development Plan process, was set by VANOC after analyzing the security costs it would have to fund from its operating budget that arise depending on where the boundary was located, versus the interference with the property privileges of landowners in the area. Last Tuesday, we noted that Polygon was discussing the boundary's location with City staff. Other reports indicate that Bastion Development is another firm affected, and that there are 13 others, including Bruno Wall, who is a major Vancouver developer. Projects proposed for development in the immediate area include additional housing, retail space and a theatre, plus new warehousing space. The City finally approved the Official Development Plan in January for a much larger area that also includes the land set aside for the athlete's village, and is currently finalizing the necessary approvals to formally advise VANOC on the Organizing Committee's timetable that the village can go ahead as planned.
- Richmond City Manager Ted Townsend confirms that the city will build sufficient flexibility into the engineering and design of its new sports complex that the long-track speedskating oval that VANOC is funding so that the oval can come and go as needed once the 2010 Games are over. Townsend notes that Calgary, which is currently Canada's centre for speedskating, will likely remain so in the future, and that there isn't sufficient demand for the sport of speedskating to make Richmond's oval commercially viable as a long-term permanent facility. Richmond is currently holding another series of public open houses to get public comment on the Preliminary Site Master Plan for the Richmond Olympic Oval, as well as post-Games programming options for the facility and the environmental-assessment review. VANOC had originally sent November, 2007 as the date it wanted the oval opened, but this has now been reset to April, 2008.
- The City of Calgary, Alberta, is thinking about fast-tracking some of its large-construction plans because its staff are worried about the impact of the 2010 Olympics. Mike Gavan, of the Calgary Parks department told Calgary City Council, "As we get closer to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and they start drawing away our resources, this is going to be a tremendous challenge to do any kind of construction in this city." The comment came yesterday as Calgary council was discussing how to spend about C$102 million in GST refunds. Plans at the moment involve a new downtown library worth C$40 million, building an Arctic Aquarium at the Calgary Zoo for C$30 million, Heritage Park upgrades worth C$10 million, C$20 million for a new Science Centre building, and C$2 million to upgrade Deane House and the Fort Calgary site.
Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 7, 2005
