Morgan:News:2010:Bronze Edition: April 2007

Monday, April 30, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |General| #2281
FOUR HOST FIRST NATIONS FIRST OFF THE BLOCK WITH 2010 PAVILION CONSTRUCTION PROCESS

The Four Host First Nations Secretariat (FHFN), the organization representing the four aboriginal bands officially taking part in the 2010 Winter Games, has become the first to start the formal part of the construction process that will lead to a 2010 pavilion in downtown Vancouver.

The secretariat has begun the search for a group of professionals to construct the pavilion, which may take the shape of a native village comprised of several buildings within an 1,858-square metre (20,000 square-foot) useable space, possibly two storeys, likely in the new Cultural Precinct being created in Vancouver near the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. But it's a snap call: the invitations for professionals - there are six of them -- were issued today, but require a response by Wednesday.

The professionals are asked to present their credentials before being shortlisted and given a formal Request for Proposals, include architects, consulting chefs, event programs, interpretive-display consultants, retail consultants and sustainability experts.

The 2010 Games are taking place on the traditional territories of the Lil'wat, Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh tribes, which are all part of a larger family group called the Coast Salish. Although nominally representative at the Games of all aboriginal groups in Canada, and elsewhere attending the Games, the pavilion design and feel would primarily focus on the Coast Salish and the Salish tribal groups in the southern Interior of BC, as well as Metis, a group primarily located in Manitoba that grew out of intermarriage between French settlers and area aboriginals in the late 1800s. There is scant mention, for instance, of a focus on Inuit, who are located in Canada's northern regions, or the wide swath of aboriginal tribes across Canada outside of British Columbia.

The FHFN hopes to have the pavilion ready by about the summer of 2009. The buildings would be designed and constructed to be transportable to other locations after the 2010 Games are over, in March of 2010.

FHFN officials have been talking about creating the pavilion for about two years, but it's taken the time to get the organization started and funding issues sorted out with senior levels of government and, potentially, corporate sponsors.

Here's what FHFN officials envision:

A "Great Hall" that would be themed around First Nations and be large enough to host banquets and receptions for between 150 and 200 people, and be flexible enough that it could be divided into smaller spaces as needed for sponsor- or government-hosted events. When not reserved for special functions, the "Great Hall" would be open to the public as the FHFN hope to have various types of aboriginal displays and exhibits

A "Feast House" -- a restaurant that would provide seated meals to the general public for lunch and dinner, as well as cater private and public events hosted in the Great Hall, which is envisioned for the moment as adjoining it;

A "Theatre," with stadium-style seating for about 150; and,

A "Business Centre" that would provide meeting rooms and a small number of offices.

The intent is to design pavilion complex so that it looks similar to the traditional buildings used in southern British Columbia for thousands of years, the Coast Salish "Longhouse" and the Interior Salish "Pit House."

The FHFN wants to create a retail program that will run in the pavilions that "in part" shows off Coast and Interior Salish, other tribes in Canada, Inuit and Métis cultures.

It also wants an outline of approaches to the retail concepts "in an innovative, original and adaptable ways" to celebrate aboriginal culture, both by programming and delivery. They want to know the processes used during the Retail program's development and implementation and the consultant's general retail experience, but highlighting expertise with product delivery, particularly from aboriginal cultures.

The approach is almost exactly the same with the other consultants and professionals. The FHFN also plans to give more weight to firms, partnerships of organizations that have experience with aboriginals, either as employees, clients or partners.

RESOURCES

Some of the previous stories we've written about the aboriginal pavilion:

'BC still mulling aboriginal pavilion for 2010 Games'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:2251; Published on Thursday, April 12, 2007]

'Aboriginal longhouse pavilion, with sponsors, contemplated for Vancouver 2010 Olympics'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:1658; Published on Thursday, May 11, 2006]

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 30, 2007

Friday, April 27, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Business
Government| #2280
TOURISM VANCOUVER, CITY OF VANCOUVER COMPLETE PROTOCOL ON 2010 TOURISM MARKETING STRATEGY

The City of Vancouver and Tourism Vancouver have developed a formal protocol on how they'll work together on marketing Vancouver as a Host City of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The protocol, which is in effect until June 30, 2010, is a coordination document, rather than a formal agreement or commitment of either entity. It outlines the kinds of projects the two will focus on, leaving it up to each to organize the resources and deal with contracts.

Dave Rudberg, head of the City's Olympic office, reports, "In our discussions with Tourism Vancouver, a number of cooperative initiatives have been identified which will assist in maximizing the tourism benefits with the available resources. [The] Collaboration Protocol establishes the means for both parties to work together more effectively on these initiatives." It's the second similar arrangement reached between the City and Tourism Vancouver in recent days; the first involved development of a separate Cultural Tourism Strategy that's related to the 2010 Games because of its cultural mission, but is more wide ranging.

There are general concepts in the first part of the protocol [see BACKGROUND, below], while the second part deals with some specifics. For instance, when the Games are running, Rudberg says tourists to Vancouver will generate a large demand for information on the City, its attractions, visitor services, Olympic and Paralympic Games and the like. Tourism Vancouver is proposing to develop some 2010-themed kiosks to provide some of that information; the City can help by locating these kiosks at key locations on City property.

The City's also about to do the work necessary to update its directional and street sign systems, particularly in the downtown core, as part of its preparation for the influx of tourism connected with the Games; Rudberg expects Tourism Vancouver to help out with design and placement ideas. Work has begun on how the City and Tourism Vancouver can promote the City from the BC pavilion at next year's Beijing Summer Games, and there's also work underway between the City, Tourism Vancouver and 2010 Legacies Now to deal with various accessibility issues in the hospitality industry that stem from the 2010 Paralympics.

Rudberg indicates other protocols are in the offing. "There are a number of agencies which have tourism responsibility and it is important to have their goals and objectives aligned," he reports. Tourism Vancouver has been meeting with its counter parts of Tourism BC, the Canadian Tourism Commission, Tourism Whistler and Tourism Richmond, with a similar idea of coordinating 2010-related marketing.

The objectives of the protocol, according to Rudberg, are to create "great Games, being the best possible Host City and telling our story to the world. In this way, we can collectively maximize the tourism benefits by establishing Vancouver as a premier global destination." The protocol, he says, makes it easier to "coordinate complementary branding and develop shared messaging that raises the profile of Vancouver in key markets due to increased exposure from the 2010 Games," and for both organizations to be more effective and efficient in connected 2010 and "visitor experience, marketing, events, communications, and research."

The protocol suggests the two organizations will meet each year about the end of June to review how things are going and what adjustments have to be made.

BACKGROUND

Here are the general concepts of the protocol:

Sharing of information that is relevant to the successful hosting of the Games and creating a positive visitor experience
• Best practice's guide for tourism and general businesses
• Visitor (and/or other) guides and way-finding (online and offline)
• Servicing of visitors during Games period
• Advertising in core markets
• New marketing initiatives
• Sales missions and 2010 themed sales events
• Media relations activities
• Central clearing house for off-site hospitality requirements for VANOC stakeholders
• Sponsor relationship building
• Programs and themes for activities within the public realm
• Visitor accommodation services

==

Here is the full set of specific actions coordinated by the protocol:

Specific tactical elements of the plan include but are not limited to the following:

Affirm Tourism Vancouver's official status as primary supplier of visitor services by facilitating both temporary and permanent locations for dispensing information and services during the Games period. Tourism Vancouver to provide staffing, operations, training and management

Consultations with Tourism Vancouver on the City's way-finding study and collaboration on consistent execution of way-finding which is primarily directed towards pedestrians in the downtown area

Collaboration on the preparation of information materials for visitors and residents during the Games period

Exploration of joint initiatives in the training of volunteers and City staff in preparation for the 2010 Winter Games

Investigate the development and delivery of an "Invite the World" e-marketing campaign which leverages the City's status as Host City for the 2010 Winter Games

Permit Tourism Vancouver's use of the "Host City" Mark in various marketing material as approved by the City of Vancouver (and VANOC/IOC where required)

Consult on ways to develop a coordinated response to the opportunities presented by the Beijing Summer Games to promote Vancouver

Jointly contribute to "Vancouver Stories" which provides material to the media on our values, culture, history and people with coordination lead by Corporate Communications

Communicate timely and relevant 2010 information about the other Party to the stakeholders of each Party (e.g. residents, members) where appropriate

Identify sponsorship opportunities which could be pursued in support of joint initiatives to offset costs or leverage marketing resources for 2010 initiatives, as approved by the City (and VANOC/IOC where required)

Further develop 2010 opportunities for the Arts and Culture sector as per the Partnership created between Tourism Vancouver and the City (Office of Cultural Affairs)

Work together to develop accessibility criteria for businesses as well as collaborating on a product service guide to assist businesses in upgrading their premises to accessibility standards by Games time. A visual rating system would be explored to assist visitors in identifying levels of accessibility.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 27, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2279

Here are three moguls we ran into today:
PACE OF VANOC OVERLAY DESIGN TO PICK UP SOON

VANOC is expected to expand work on designs for its venue overlays in the next few weeks. The overlays are applied to each venue starting in late 2009 for the most part, to turn them into places that will look and feel like the Olympics, as well as incorporate a number of VANOC functions, such as security, broadcasting, ticketing and accreditation.

IOC TO MEET IN VANCOUVER IN LATE 2009

The IOC president Jacques Rogge has made, and VANOC CEO John Furlong has accepted, the traditional suggestion that the IOC executive hold a meeting hosted by the 2010 organization in Vancouver in late 2009, a few weeks before the start of the Games. The invitation/acceptance formality was exchanged in Beijing yesterday after Furlong reported on the status of the 2010 preparations to the IOC executive committee meeting underway there. The official statement from the IOC is that everything's doing fine with VANOC, although they have a few unspecified "challenges."

SOLUTIONS NEEDED TO OFFSET DECLINE IN SPORTS' RELEVANCE TO YOUTH

Quote without comment: "Coming not far behind on the list of challenges we face today, is the growing trend in sport's decline in relevance. In a world where so many other temptations and leisure activities compete for young people's attention, the appeal of sport finds itself under question. We have a duty to find solutions to this issue. Why? For two key reasons; first, in order to shift young people away from a sedentary way of life towards an active lifestyle, and thereby tackle the frightening increase in obesity amongst many populations. Second, because the values sport can teach -- friendship, respect, and excellence -- are arguably more important than ever in today's world. It is our duty to make sport an inspiration, to help young people discover why sport matters. Sport is a social movement that has the power to offer young people the chance of a better and more meaningful life. By collaborating around the same vision, the sports bodies and governments can play a meaningful role in ensuring that generations, young and old, have a healthier and more wholesome lifestyle based on physical activity and physical education. Let us all focus our energies in this direction." -- IOC president Rogge, speaking to hundreds of people at an international sports conference, Sport Accord, in Beijing, China, yesterday.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 27, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2278

Here are three moguls we ran into today:
VANCOUVER OLYMPIC VILLAGE WATERFRONT LANDSCAPING TO COST C$12.2 MILLION

Wilco Landscape Contractors of Edmonton is expected to be handed a C$12.2 million contract by the City of Vancouver's Property Endowment Fund on Tuesday to reconstruct and landscape the waterfront in front of the city's Olympic Athlete Village. The money for the firm, which also has a Greater Vancouver office in the suburb of Surrey, would come from a C$14-million fund expected to be created on Tuesday as well (The extra C$1.8 million is to cover federal and provincial taxes, which bring the total to about C$13.7 million.) The City only received one other bid, for C$17 million, from JJM Construction, of Delta, a Greater Vancouver suburb. The work involves a continuation of the walkway that follows the False Creek waterfront, soft and hard landscaping, granite seating blocks, a pedestrian bridge across a small inlet in front of the Village, along with a timber walkway around it, viewing platforms at the shoreline edge, a footbridge across the wetland in the Hinge Park area just to the west of the Village, some temporary connections to the existing waterfront pathway while construction work is underway, various architectural features, and lighting. It includes excavation, backfill, concrete unit pavers, plant material, timber decking, handrails, asphalt, steel beams and pipe piles, pedestrian bridge fabrication and erection, precast and cast-in-place concrete. About 80% of the waterfront will be constructed during Phase 1, from May to October. The remainder will be done in 2009, after the buildings on the development parcels north of Athletes Way have been constructed. It is expected that the waterfront will be opened to the public late this year. Two of VANOC's social goals is to include aboriginal participation in the development of the Games, and boosting Games development from businesses in a couple of poor parts of Vancouver. About C$250,000 of gravel is to be supplied to Wilco by an aboriginal gravel company, and one site administrative position to be filled with a person from an aboriginal band, and "three to four" labourer positions for about five months will be provided by an unidentified "inner-city business." Intriguingly, The "surface treatments and waterfront structures" will be under a two-year warranty to be provided by the Southeast False Creek and Olympic Village Project Office.

VANCOUVER STAFF SUGGEST MORE COMMUNITY INFO FOR 2010 CELEBRATIONS

Dave Rudberg, the general manager of the City of Vancouver's Olympic and Paralympic Operations Office, will be reporting to council next Tuesday about the possibility of increasing community involvement in celebrating the 2010 Winter Games over the next few years. He's making the comments as VANOC is planning to spend the first part of May doing various things as it leads up to noting the 1,000 day mark, May 19, before the Opening Ceremony of the Games. Planning is underway, Rudberg reports, for a "Host City Village display" at the annual Pacific National Exhibition, although funding isn't yet set up for that or a number of other things the city might do, thanks to a political split within council. The City, along with the BC and federal governments, plus some of VANOC's official sponsors, suggests Rudberg, are proposing to establish an area during the popular PNE "where the public can learn more about the Games." That's the most elaborate of possible things to do this year, however. Others include developing a portable kiosk that can go from mall to mall, soliciting public input on what might happen, or a web page or two with a questionnaire on the city's website. It also appears that the City has been offered the possibility by VANOC of having the Torch Relay -- which starts about 100 days before the Opening Ceremony and will travel internationally, across Canada and BC and through Whistler, West Vancouver and Richmond before arriving in Vancouver in early February -- travel through some of the City's major neighbourhoods before it ends up at BC Place stadium in downtown Vancouver. But whether it does, and through which neighbourhoods, depends to an extent on where the City wants it to go. The city earlier canvassed about 40 community-centre staff about things they'd like to see promoted to help them leverage the Olympics in their area. Rudberg says he'll report back to council in about six months on further plans. The city is also planning a large Live Site in the city's planned cultural precinct leading up to and during the Games. The Live Site will be incorporated within about a city block's worth of property near the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. "The vision is to program the Live Site with cultural and recreational activities, a large screen to watch live broadcasts of the Games competitions, as well as live stage entertainment. The purpose of the Live Site is to give residents and visitors the opportunity to participate in, and experience the 2010 Winter Games at no cost." Various other Live Sites have been funded by the BC government in various BC communities during the last two years.

COKE TO CO-SPONSOR 2010 TORCH RELAY

As expected, the Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) confirms it will sponsor the Olympic Torch Relay for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. In fact it has agreed to sponsor the relays for all Olympic Games until 2020, including the one next year in Beijing. The firm, based in Atlanta, said it has been the longest corporate sponsor of the Olympics, dating back to 1928 (in Canada, the Royal Bank started supporting the Games in 1947). Coca-Cola has been involved with the torch relays, which are sponsored separately from the Games themselves, since 1996. Starting March 2008, the Beijing Olympic Flame will travel through at least 19 cities around the world. It will then travel throughout mainland China before arriving in Beijing in August. Coca-Cola, at least for 2008, will be co-sponsoring with Samsung and Lenovo, the Chinese-owned desktop and laptop computer company. All three companies are worldwide partners of the International Olympic Committee and sponsors of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, but only Lenovo has not yet confirmed if it will sponsor the 2010 Games in any capacity. Coca-Cola says it will modify its global advertising campaign slogan "Coke Side of Life" in all marketing communications for the Beijing Olympic Games to "Live Olympic on the Coke Side of Life."

RESOURCES

Art Maat - Vice President
Wilco Landscape Contractors
13540 156 Street
Edmonton, AB T5V 1L3
Phone (Direct): 780.699.4056
Phone (Main): 780.447.1199
Fax: 780-447-2330
E-Mail: ArtMaat@Wilco.ca
www.wilco.ca/index2.htm

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 27, 2007

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #2277
LOGISTICS MANAGEMENT RFP EXPECTED TO OUTSOURCE MAJOR 2010 OPERATIONAL REQUIREMENT

The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games (VANOC) has decided to contract out one of its key management systems, and is expected to shortly issue an Request for Proposals (RFP) for running its logistics.

The core purposes of VANOC logistic-management system are to "accurately and efficiently manage the planning, allocation, distribution and asset tracking of equipment and materials required to stage the Games."

Once the RFP is posted, companies are expected to have until early June to read through the lengthy documentation, and file their equally detailed response with VANOC. Whatever firm wins the contract will be intimately working with a wide range of VANOC personnel, consultants and volunteers for about three years.

The system has be up, running smoothly and well tested by next March. In 2008 and 2009, VANOC will literally be spending millions of dollars on hundreds of thousands of individual items, materials and equipment to help it run the Games. It involves all of its consumables, furniture, fixtures and equipment, machinery, tents and portable structures, overlay, all the technology pieces, sport equipment, medical, ceremonial items -- all sorts of things.

They'll be stored in a number of locations around the Greater Vancouver area and Whistler as they arrive by truck, boat, train (via VANOC sponsor CPR) and plane (via sponsor Air Canada) from around the world, During late part of 2009 and the early weeks of 2010, all of those assets will be hauled out and assembled into place around all of the competition and non-competition venues. During the Games, thousands of people will be handling them, moving them, using them, taking them up, taking them down and replacing them. Following the Games, they all have to be recovered and returned to the warehouses, so they can later be sold, given away or auctioned.

It's the job of the logistics-management system, essentially a sophisticated SQL-style database that VANOC wants running on a Microsoft operating system, to keep track of all that. It will be used to ensure the assets are "identified, ordered, received, allocated, delivered, recovered, and disposed of in the most efficient means, while tracking cost and timeframes." It will also have to deal with lost or damaged inventory, and have automatic backordering functions. The cost-tracking will need to show variances against budget.

It means that hundreds of pieces of information will needed to be entered about each item in ways so that it can be sorted and reported according to such categories as venue, location, who transported it, when, on whose orders, where it's destined (and where it ultimately ended up), its dimensions, weight... sport, sport discipline, cost coding... you name it.

The contractor will be providing something it's essentially going to operate as an in-house service for all of VANOC's 60 or so functional areas (think of them as departments, but more fluid), including VANOC's government connections and its sponsors. The Material Planning stage will focus on preparing, detailing, allocating and controlling the Games' assets. VANOC says in-house operations are needed to allow VANOC management staff "maximum control over inventories, receiving schedules, allocations, deliveries, distribution and recovery of all materials as well as management of logistics staff-resource requirements."

There are three core parts to the system VANOC wants, and it's hoping for proposals to provide essentially turn-key types of systems that readily cover all three parts: materials planning, space planning and warehouse management. (There's actually a fourth -- auditing, in which the other functions are tracked and verified -- but it supports the other three.) Those core parts, in turn, cover a dozen functional sections to the system [see BACKGROUND, below]. The corporate operators of the system will have to provide a number aspects to keeping such a system running and useable. They include: analysis & design, development, system integration, testing, training as well as licensing & support.

One other things: much of it, particularly data entry, will be operated by inexperienced computer volunteers and that means it can be used effectively with minimal training, but still only give information, or allow modification to it, according to various security levels of accreditation. And although it will be a stand-alone system, it still needs to be operated by any accredited person anywhere on VANOC's internal network. That, of course, brings up the matter of data security, which is separate from personnel security. Only those who have the proper accreditation will be able to see the commercially or corporately sensitive data on the system.

So how does VANOC know what kind of information needs to be captured and subsequently displayed? Its Logistics executives will go through a needs-assessment process that involves having a look at the databases created for previous Games, part of the IOC's knowledge-transfer process, as well as the modifications that will be needed to deal with the geography and nomenclature used by VANOC for the way it does business. It will also work with its own venue-model exercises, as it tests how venues operate over the next year, to further refine what it needs the database to do, and establish data-processing benchmarks. The steps will go from needs assessment to model planning, and from there to detailed planning and, finally, operational planning, all by next March.

VANOC procurement staff say that if there are no proponents who are able to deal with all three core components, they are OK with firms tackling only parts of the core, but if that's the case, they'll need to be able to integrate comfortably with whoever else might chosen to complete the trio of needs.

BACKGROUND

Intriguing tidbits:

-- The logistics system will be designed to communicate the delivery plan to the security department, which controls the entry-checking points at the venues.

-- The system will also be expected to help establish loading plans for trucks in order to maximize capacity and efficiency"

-- The system is expected to be able to track the delivery of items that are easily carried to a specific person, and back again when it's time for it to be returned.

-- Sponsors and governments will also have their own warehouse locations, and the system will need to track things going to and from them as well.

The major functions VANOC wants from a logistics-management system:
- General System Requirements;

- Material Planning;

- Venue Load-In Process;

- Inventory Catalogue;

- Warehouse Inventory Management;

- Venue Space Details;

- Delivery Receipt;

- Reporting;

- Front End Capability;

- Budgetary Guidelines and Cost Control;

- Recovery Tracking; and

- Dissolution Tracking and Reporting.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 26, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2276

Here are three moguls we ran into today:
VANOC VENUE-USE PLANNING TO START LATER THIS YEAR

VANOC's detailed venue-use planning is expected to start sometime between July and September and be underway until the summer of 2009 in Vancouver, West Vancouver and Whistler. The work consists of cycles that involve each of the 60 or so functional areas of VANOC -- think of them as departments -- tour each of VANOC's competition and non-competition venues to figure out what people are specifically needed where and when, and figure out how to resolve various issues for each of the groups and how they work with each other. There will also be one-on-one workshops during that time with each function to review workforce numbers, space, technology and furniture, fixtures and equipment requirements. Each cycle will focus on the operations of a function at a specific venue over a four-week period. They will also be holding more venue testing exercises -- one was held earlier this year -- to collect information that will be used as a bench mark in the development of each functions operation at each venue. In essence, each function develops and confirm their operations at Games Time at each venue.

JAPANESE SKYCASTER LINES UP TO BROADCAST 2010 GAMES

The Yomiuri Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, is reporting that a Japanese-based communications satellite broadcasting company, SkyPerfect Communications Inc., has decided to broadcast the Olympics, starting with the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. "This will be made possible by signing a contract with the Japan Consortium, according to company sources," says the report. The Japan Consortium -- which comprises Japan's government-owned broadcaster, NHK and its five television channels and three radio services, and the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan, which represents all the rest of the Japanese commercial radio and television broadcasters, is expected to buy the rights to broadcast the 2010 Winter Olympic games from the International Olympic Committee, but has not yet done so. SkyPerfect, according to the report, expects to broadcast some of the 2010 events by "obtaining" a sub-license from the Japan Consortium. "By adding SkyPerfect to the list of Olympic broadcasters, viewers will be able to watch live broadcasts of events that regular Olympic broadcasters are unable to cover, such as preliminary ice hockey games," says the report. SkyPerfect, the company has not yet commented one way or the other on the report. The Tokyo-based multi-channel communications firm, as of March 31, had 4.2 million subscribers.

UNITED REPLACES SAATCHI AS IOC'S AD AGENCY

The IOC executive board, meeting in Beijing, China, today selected Voluntarily United Group of Creative Agencies (United), an agency of the British-based WPP Group, to create and implement its marketing communications campaign world wide. IOC President, Jacques Rogge said United, a group of nine agencies headquartered in London, England, was chosen from a shortlist that included three other agencies -- Havas, Leo Burnett and the incumbent Saatchi & Saatchi. The companies gave their final pitches in March at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. The IOC's promotional campaign objective this year and next is to communicate the key Olympic values of "Excellence, Friendship and Respect" to a youth audience around the world. Earlier research shows that the international Olympic movement's demographic is weakest among youth around the world. As Rogge put it today, "Engaging the youth audience in both the Olympic Games and values is essential to ensuring the future of the Olympic Movement. The promotional campaign is an important part of a wider approach by the IOC to communicate, engage and inspire a new generation of Olympic fans and participants." IOC Marketing Commission chairman Gerhard Heiberg said, "The Executive Board was impressed by United's ideas, their understanding of Olympic values and passion for them. With this campaign, we aim to relevantly communicate the meaning of the Games to young people around the world. We want to give them unique ways to experience the Olympic Games and the Olympic values.... We are confident it will provide us with a distinctive, meaningful and fresh approach to developing such a campaign." The IOC will work with United on what it calls "a multi-dimensional campaign approach" -- it includes TV, online, viral promotion, experiential concepts and public-relation activities. The campaign is due to be launched in October or November.

RESOURCES

Skyperfect:
skycom.skyperfectv.co.jp/Default.aspx?id=70

--

WPP Group:
www.wpp.com

United:

The Griffin Building
83 Clerkenwell Road
London, EC1R 5AR, United Kingdom

Telephone: +44 (0)20 7150 3300
Fax: +44 (0)20 7150 3301

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 26, 2007

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |International| #2275
IOC ISSUES TOUGHEST SANCTIONS EVER IN ANTI-DOPING CASE INVOLVING SIX WNTER OLYMPIC AUSTRIAN ATHLETES

The International Olympic Committee has permanently banned from the 2010 Winter Games and all future Olympics six athletes from the Austrian biathlon and cross-country skiing teams who competed at the Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games.

It is the strongest set of sanctions ever levied by the IOC. It's the first time the IOC has punished athletes without positive or missed doping tests, and the first time athletes have received lifetime Olympic bans. An IOC spokesman says, "The severity of the sanctions is motivated by the fact that these cases go further than straightforward possession of prohibited substances and methods, and are clear instances where a network, including athletes, colluded to manipulate blood and to engage into doping practices."

The Austrian athletes also had their competition results from Turin revoked, although none won a medal. The sanctions also prevent them from serving in any other capacity that requires accreditation, such as a coach or other support official that needs to get through security.

The sanctions came from the IOC's formal disciplinary tribunal system for alleged violations of the IOC's anti-doping rules during the Games. It was the tribunal that proposed the sanctions at its conclusion, and it also disqualified the Austrian Men's 4x10 km Relay team and the Austrian Men's Sprint Team as part of the process.

Those sanctioned were Roland Diethart, Johannes Eder, Juergen Pinter, Martin Tauber, Wolfgang Perner and Wolfgang Rottmann. The case against a seventh member of the Austrian team, Christian Hoffmann, who was accredited but who didn't take part in the Games, was dismissed, but his file was transferred to the International Ski Federation with a recommendation that it consider whether his absence from the Torino Olympic Games "constituted a violation of his obligation to provide accurate whereabouts information," which is one of the rules all Olympic athletes are required to follow.

Appeals are expected, with Austrian officials saying they will review the cases before deciding whether the defend the athletes, or giving them further sanctions. The IOC's decision only affects Olympic Games.

The tribunal found that the Austrian athletes possessed prohibited substances and took part in a doping conspiracy, based on materials seized by Italian police during a raid on the athletes' living quarters during the Games a year ago.

Italian police raided the Austrian lodgings outside Torino on February 18, 2006. The raid was triggered by the presence of former Austrian coach Walter Mayer, who was himself implicated in a blood-doping case at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games and who had been banned by the IOC from the Torino Olympics.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 25, 2007

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2274

Here are three moguls we ran into today:
CPR TALKS MONEY, NOT GAMES, DURING 1ST Q COMMENTS

Canadian Pacific Railway Limited (TSX/NYSE: CP) this morning reported net income growth of 18% to C$129 million in the first-quarter of 2007, compared to the same quarter of 2006, but it made no mention in its overview of operations that it became an official Tier-2 sponsor of the 2010 Winter Olympics during the quarter. Nor, in its outlook section, did in mention anything about what it might be doing to activate its sponsorship, although it noted that it expects its revenue to increase between 4%-6% this calendar year. Operating expenses during the quarter were C$887 million, up just 0.3% from the same time last year.

VANOC TELLS POTENTIAL CONTRACTORS TO STOP TALKING TO NEWS MEDIA

VANOC has added a new clause to its standard gag orders for companies thinking they want a contact with the organization. Up to this point, VANOC has ordered in a specific lengthy clause that potential contractors keep quiet and tell no one about any aspect of the process of obtaining a contract, and fulfilling it. Now, it's gone a step further, telling them to stay mum around pesky reporters. Here's the additional language: "Any public representation or announcement regarding VANOC, [the various contracting processes] or the response thereto, or any subsequent contracts arising therefrom, shall be made only by VANOC, and any requests for information made to any respondent by the news media shall be referred to VANOC."

VANOC'S VISA SPONSOR OFFERS TRIP TO 2010 GAMES FOR CONTEST WINNER

Visa International, which will be in charge of VANOC's official payment system, says that one of the grand prize winners in its new contest for artists will win a trip for two to the Vancouver 2010 Games. The main thrust of the contest is to focus attention on the Beijing Summer Olympics. The child whose art is chosen on "artistic merit" as decided by a judging panel, gets to go to the 2010 Games instead of Beijing. The eighth Games contest, called the Visa Olympics of the Imagination, will, as usual, result in Visa sending 30 children between the ages of ten and 14 from 18 participating countries to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games as its guests, based on participants submitting a drawing from their imagination on the theme of "global unity". The program runs until May, 2008. Submissions can only come from children living in these countries: Canada, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Hong Kong, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. Vladimir Oratovskyi, age nine, from Kiev, Ukraine, was chosen Grand Prize Winner during the Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games and so accompanies the rest of the program’s winners to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. The program is expected to be promoted through international multi-tiered marketing and public relations campaigns, as well as using outreach to schools, with cross promotions involving national Olympic committees and Visa's member financial institutions and their merchants.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 24, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2273
CANADIAN MILITARY HAS FORMED A TASK FORCE TO OVERSEE ASPECTS OF 2010 SECURITY

The Canadian military has formed Joint Task Force Games to supervise the military aspects of security required by the 2010 Winter Games.

The man in charge of the naval aspects of the Games Task Force is Roger Girouard, the rear-admiral and commander of Maritime Forces Pacific, based in Esquimalt, near Victoria on Vancouver Island. He says such a force should not surprise anyone. "That the Canadian Forces will come to Vancouver in support of the Games is a given."

Girouard says the JTFG is intended to support Canada's Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada agencies, the RCMP and provincial authorities who, he says, are the lead agencies. And, he adds, "Though we remain in the early days of forming the detailed calculations which will in turn determine the force mix and localized deployment of forces, in my opinion the relationships with the key agencies are trustful and profoundly productive. The discussions are fruitful and moving at a pace sufficient to meet the timeline before us."

Girouard, who is expected to retire in the next few months notes that "In fact, no formal request for assistance has arrived in the department. This is because the assessments and calculations are ongoing." He says that while the process in new, "I should also note that in these early days and as we advance toward the actual date of the event, much of what we are discussing and calculating relates to operational security. Certainly at this point, I am not at a position where the numbers are available to me. I am not in a place where I can comment on specifics of what those numbers may look like. These capabilities are in the process of being requested in support with the Canadian Forces and the [VANOC's Integrated Security Unit, VISU]. All of the current planning efforts around 2010 are very solid."

Girouard says the model that will be used by the military is also still being developed, and it's far too early yet to talk about how much it will all cost federal taxpayers, "What is clear is that we will be supportive to Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada and specifically the RCMP who are doing the detailed work... Certain members of my staff and I are supporting the early planning process. Specifically I have a colonel on staff who is my senior staffer for 2010. We have a full-time member in the integrated security unit. We are in the process of augmenting that army officer with a navy officer to look at the maritime domain... What has yet to play out is a definition and an announcement relating to the actual command and control construct for the Canadian Forces. That is imminent, and I expect that the minister will be making an announcement regarding that very soon. What that will describe is which flag officer will have responsibility as Joint Task Force Games and how that will fit under the Canada Command umbrella... The actual wiring diagram and the identification of the team has yet to be made."

No matter what happens though, Girouard believes the way the new force is structured will be unique to the 2010 Games. He says the model used for the Montreal Olympics can't be used because, as he puts it, "Canadian Forces went there to do everything from cook meals to drive trucks, and we do not have that manpower today. We will not do that kind of thing this time. Our approach is very much about augmenting the security side, cooperating with the general public and bringing in specialist skills whether equipment or individual skill sets. We can bring special forces, haz-mat specialists, et cetera. If we look at the specialized piece, that may be reasonably inexpensive."

Girouard says that he's looking at the way things work in the Greater Vancouver area these days, "What I look at is the domain that we have at play. It is a very intricate, very complicated, mountain, domestic, urban domain, and our part of that, whether it is the Joint Task Force (Pacific) side or the CF at large, will be about delivering specific skill sets, not the all-up, basic, fundamental, open-the-gate kind of roles. That is the kind of conversation we have already had with the RCMP. This is certainly within the envelope that the [Canadian Forces] will have in 2010. As it pertains to costing, three years out, we are in such a grosso modo, big-hand and small-map assessment, that any kind of number that I come up with for costing would be just an aberrant guess."

The rear admiral says the cost may be difficult to separate from more usual things the navy normally does. "We may have a way to avoid some costing, or to mitigate costing to have things in the neighbourhood that are in fact doing other roles but can respond, and that is how we will go about this. Between now and the Olympics in 2010 we have, for instance, a fairly significant exercise plan. That exercise plan would in many cases be what we are doing anyway. The fact that we will toss in a 2010 scenario does not mean that it is a 2010 expense."

Rear admiral Tyrone Pile will take over from Girouard on July 26, and Girouard wants 2010's planning in a much more advanced state. "We're building a home for staff this summer, and setting the groundwork of my expectations of the [2010] plan, which I want rolling when Admiral Pile shows up. He can tweak and steer as he will, as he should, as he must, but it won't be something he'll have to haul up."

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 24, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #2272
ON-LINE STORE TO START SELLING 2010 BRANDED PRODUCTS BY THE END OF THIS YEAR

The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games (VANOC) expects to establish an on-line store to sell its full range of branded material by December at the latest. And, it also expects millions of visitors to the site between now and the end of 2010 will purchase products.

At the moment, VANOC's Retail Operations Program is oriented to supporting the sale of officially licensed Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games merchandise through dedicated retail channels set up by VANOC when it awards a specific request for proposals to license a company to make and market various categories of branded products, such as souvenirs. This is to be the primary focus until the web store comes on line, perhaps as early as October.

The second support stage for those approved distribution networks will be the new online store, plus "a limited number" of Olympic stores in key locations that are to be managed by third parties. The online store, however, will be the only place where all of the products licensed for sale by VANOC can be purchased. All of the physical outlets will only sell a subset of the list. That second support stage will take place from the time the on-line store begins operations until shortly before the Games begin.

The third stage -- known internally VANOC as Games-time -- is expected to see VANOC create and establish extensive, short-term retail operations through the presence of what it calls "Superstores" managed by third parties, as well as through kiosks and stores at all of VANOC's competition and a number of the non-competition venues, such as the Olympic Athletes Villages, in addition to the other stores and on-line retail.

The official online store will be the only place online to buy the full complement of official Vancouver 2010 merchandise in Canada. Furthermore, the online store can feature merchandise sourced only from Vancouver 2010 licensees.

The store, which will be tied directly into the main Vancouver2010.com site and will appear seamless with that site when it's entered, although it will be hosted on separate equipment, with separate software and secure servers. VANOC says it is expected to be the only online place to buy the full complement of official Olympic Games merchandise.

"The online store will feature thousands of items, including branded apparel, collectibles, and souvenirs, displayed in a manner that appeals to a wide demographic. Welcoming, secure, comprehensive and easy-to-use, the online store will delight those who visit the Games in 2010, as well as those who cannot attend in person, with a superior online shopping experience worthy of the world’s most prestigious sporting event," according to documentation discussing it.

VANOC has been tracking traffic trends of on Vancouver2010.com in the past year and, based also on previous Games traffic, it estimates that visitor traffic to the the main website will be heavy over the next three years, and that, because of the store linkages on the main site, will draw a heavy flow of customers into the store and that this will peak during the run of the Games, but drop off considerably afterward.

VANOC's website traffic forecast:

Pre-Games (September 2007 – January 2010): 41,000,000 visits

Games Time (February 2010 – March 2010): 86,000,000 visits

Post-Games (April 2010 – December 2010): 11,000,000 visits

VANOC says it will contract out the design, construction and maintenance of the online store, and that the contractor will be expected to supervise all inventory management, fulfillment, distribution, hosting, as well as deal with online customer-service operations. At the moment, VANOC is asking companies interested in providing the service to respond to a formal expressions of interest process that ends May 11. Those firms will be shortlisted, and an RFP going into more detail will be offered to them.

VANOC says it prefers the contractor use a revenue-sharing business model in the contractor would assume responsibility -- and the associated risks -- for running the online store, in exchange for a percentage of the store's revenues. As usual, those firms who work into their EOI-response VANOC's aboriginal, environmental sustainability and social agenda will get bonus points.

BACKGROUND

Here are the primary goals of VANOC's Retail Operations Program, along with their objectives:

Revenue and Sales:
-- to operate an online store designed to maximize sales opportunities,
-- online merchandising and marketing that drives consumer demand, and
-- online product mix and navigation strategy that maximizes cross-selling opportunities within the online store and other Vancouver 2010 online initiatives (ie. ticketing).

Brand Integrity and Extension
-- to create powerful, personal connections between consumers and the Vancouver 2010 brand, and
-- to maintain integrity and visual standards of the Vancouver 2010 brand.

Positive Retail Experience
-- to ensure a consistent, first-class retail experience for consumers,
-- to operate an online store that is easy to navigate and promotes repeat visitors,
-- to have a shopping cart / check-out that is easy-to-use, and
-- to deliver exceptional customer support.

==

VANOC says the licensees that are expected to provide merchandise for the online store will be slotted into these categories:

Apparel (e.g., knitted sweaters, t-shirts and sweatshirts, scarves, gloves, etc.)

Headwear (e.g., ball caps, toques, women’s fashion headgear)

Hardgoods (e.g., lapel pins, umbrellas, key chains, travel mugs, etc.)

Luggage and bags

Chocolates and confectioneries

School supplies

Household goods

Publications (e.g., books, calendars, posters, postcards, greeting cards, etc.)

Toys and games

Electronics

CDs and DVDs

Video games

Sporting equipment

RESOURCES

The expression of Interest document for the on-line store is here, in PDF format:
tinyurl.com/2dpz2g

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 24, 2007

Monday, April 23, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2271

Here are three moguls we ran into today:
US FIGURE SKATING INKS AD-TIME BROADCASTING DEAL WITH NBC TO 2010

The United States Figure Skating Association today reached a deal with the broadcaster that has the American broadcasting rights to the 2010 Winter Games that will see it split the sale of advertising time with NBC for the next three years -- to 2010 -- but it will not be paid rights fees by the network. The arrangement was developed after the organization's 43-year-old arrangement with broadcasting rival ABC was dropped after viewership of skating reportedly declined. The USFSA was collecting US$12 million a year in rights fees from ABC and ESPN, which shared programming on the national championships and Skate America. Both of those events are part of the three-year contract with NBC, which will televise 10 hours of competition and plans to carry live all the finals at nationals. That includes the women's final in prime time. Under the contract, all finals at nationals will be rescheduled to occur on the weekend, instead of weekday nights. Figure skating is expected to be among the most-watched events during the 2010 Winter Games.

WADA MEETS NEXT MONTH TO TALK ABOUT ATHLETE'S PASSPORT CONCEPT

The Board and Executive Committee of the Montreal-based World Anti-Doping Agency will meet May 12-13 to discuss, among other things, what it calls the Athlete's Passport, a method of tracking biological data from athletes over a period of time to more easily identify abnormal profiles during doping tests. WADA is running pilot projects to study the technical, scientific and legal feasibility of the concept. It will also discuss strategies to tackle organized doping schemes and trafficking and figuring out better ways government agencies and the sports movement can co-operate on those issues. The executive director of WADA, Dick Pound, is a member of the IOC and sits on the board that oversees VANOC.

NEWS VIDEO SHOWS PROCESS FOR MAKING 2010 COINS

Canadian Press reporter Rachelle Bergen has produced a short video on the process of how the collectable 2010 Olympic coins are made by the Canadian Mint. The video is posted on Canoe Money's website [See RESOURCES, below, for the link].

RESOURCES

Here's the web page where you can see a short video of how the Olympic coins are made:
money.canoe.ca/Video/2007/04/20/4080308-cp.html

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 23, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |IOC| #2270
SAMSUNG SIGNS ON AS INTERNATIONAL MOBILE-PHONE SPONSOR OF 2010 GAMES AND THE IOC

South Korean conglomerate Samsung has become the latest international sponsor of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, and it's expected to be the vanguard of several additional international sponsors renewing their agreements this year with the International Olympic Committee to cover 2010.

Samsung, an official The Olympic Program (TOP) Partner of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in wireless telecommunications equipment, today extended its existing a sponsorship contract during a ceremony at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, China, as the CEO of the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games (VANOC), John Furlong looked on.

According to the new contract, Samsung will sponsor the Olympic Games for the next eight years -- including the 2010 Games, the London Summer Games in 2012, the 2014 Olympic Winter Games -- the city will be chosen in early July -- and the 2016 Summer Games. Samsung becomes the seventh company to sign up as a global sponsor for the 2010 and 2012 Games, joining juice and pop giant Coca-Cola, networking firm Atos Origin, General Electric, fast-food's McDonald's Corporation, Omega watches and timekeeping, and Visa, the credit-card firm. (Coca-Cola's deal goes through 2020.) Each company has exclusive product-category deals within the Games so, for instance, Games tickets can only be purchased on Visa credit cards, and only McDonald's offers fast food.

The deals have been running around US$60 million to US$80 million, as valued by the IOC, through cash and value-in-kind arrangements that are apportioned to each of the Games included in a particular package and the IOC, but there is not yet confirmation that Samsung's arrangement is in that range.

Felicity Shankar, the CEO of Javelin Europe, a marketing consulting firm that supervised the development of Samsung's large pavilion at the 2006 Winter Games in Torino, and who toured BC giving speeches this month for 2010 Legacies Now, says there will be more such announcements to come this year, which are somewhat later than usual. "Because of the way the IOC broke the Games apart so that there is a Summer and a Winter Olympic Games every two years, it's caused some issues around renewals, so there are a number of international sponsors that we would expect to see renewed, but have, as yet, not renewed."

Lenovo, for instance, a Chinese-owned maker of desktop and laptop computers, has been expected to make a renewal decision for about five months to it's contract which expires after the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. Others expected to make decisions this year include electronics giant Panasonic, health products manufacturer Johnson & Johnson and Kodak, the imaging firm which, among other things, provides medical equipment and image processing to the big athlete clinics at each Olympic village as part of its usual sponsorship.

The British-based Shankar, in Vancouver and Whistler last week on her first trip to the area, said she was also doing some initial scouting for possible pavilion locations. "We look at where the venues are, where the likely traffic flows will be. We prefer not to be left in the hands of some nice government official to tell us where we can be, but rather we want to say, 'This is the place that is actually going to work for all the stakeholders.' "

The Samsung signing ceremony in China involved the company's Board chairman Kun-Hee Lee, who arrived in Beijing after a three-week business trip to Europe, IOC president Jacques Rogge and London Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Board chairman Sebastian Coe. All those officials, Furlong and about 400 other sports executives weren't there specifically for the Samsung signing. This week marks Sport Accord, an annual conference of organizations connected to the IOC's Olympic Games and the movement, and it's being held in Beijing this year, along with an executive committee meeting of the IOC.

Samsung first became a full sponsor of the Olympic Games during the Nagano Olympic Winter Games in 1998, based on a marketing strategy developed by Kun-Hee Lee two years earlier: "Devise strategies that can raise brand value, which is a leading intangible asset and the source of corporate competitiveness, to the global level." Samsung decided to sponsor the Olympic Movement to strengthen its global corporate image and brand value and has been carrying out a global marketing campaign using the single Olympic theme ever since.

Samsung's brand value grew more than five-fold from US$3.1 billion dollars in 1999 to US$16.2 billion dollars in 2006, according to the annual company brand value ratings by Interbrand, the world's largest brand consulting company. According to Strategy Analytics, a market research organization, Samsung's global mobile-phone market share went up from 5% in 1999 to 11.6% last year; its sales volume increased seven times from 16.7 million units to 114 million units.

Samsung normally demonstrates its wireless technology at the Olympic Games, but it also underwrites Wireless Olympic Works, first developed by Samsung for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, which is a service that enables the real-time transmission of Olympic Games information to mobile phones. The concept on which it's been working is moving from a voice-based, "mobile phone-centered" sponsorship to delivering all forms of information via the mobile phone as part of its sponsorship activation activities.

Samsung Electronics's vice-chairman and CEO, Jong-Yong Yun, and the IOC's Marketing Commission Chairman, Gerhard Heiberg, signed the contract, as Canadian Ana Yang gave a bubble performance based on a theme entitled "Dreams of the Olympic Games and Samsung."

BACKGROUND

The main businesses of Samsung Electronics are in the semiconductor, telecommunication, digital media and digital convergence industries. The 2006 parent company sales were US$63.4 billion and net income of US$8.5 billion. The network of companies operating under the name employ about 138,000 people in 124 offices located in 56 countries.

The company's five main business units are: Digital Media Business, LCD Business, Semiconductor Business, Telecommunication Network Business and Digital Appliance Business. The company produces digital TVs, memory chips, mobile phones and flat-screen monitors of various types.

RESOURCES

Samsung's website
www.Samsung.com

Anna Yang does her bubble performance in this short video:
youtube.com/watch?v=gtUrV9-PSN8

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 23, 2007

Friday, April 20, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2269

Here are three moguls we ran into today:
VANOC AWARDED FIRST LEED CERTIFICATION

The Vancouver 2010 headquarters has been given Gold LEED Commercial Interiors certification, according to VANOC. The organization has pledged that all of its construction and renovation will be at least to LEED-silver standards, but this is the first LEED certification it has received. The City of Vancouver, which owns the building, is reported to have contributed to the rating by improving the water-usage efficiency by upgrading the existing washrooms, improving heat monitoring when it replaced some of the building controls and also installed controls that respond to daylight in areas close to the windows. One of the international sponsors of VANOC, General Electric, supplied Energy Star-rated equipment and appliances in the kitchenettes on each floor. VANOC supplier-sponsor Haworth provided some systems furniture and office seating that was certified as under air emissions quality levels. Other office renovations included: increased natural light which reduced the need for lighting fixtures between 40% and 50%; various energy-saving fixtures were installed; recycled materials were used; and a carpet tiling system that means only tiles need to be replaced instead of recarpeting entire rooms. There are also systems for the stream of recycling and composting on every floor as well as employee-based waste-management methods and cleaning systems. Meanwhile, VANOC's Olympic Athletes Village, being built by a development subsidiary of Whistler municipality, the municipal landfill that was closed and is adjacent to the site will be set up so the buildings to be built for the Village will have systems to capture and use the methane gas produced by the capped landfill. Heat produced by the nearby municipal wastewater treatment system, which is to undergo a major upgrade, will also be captured for use by Village. At the City of Vancouver’s Hillcrest/Nat Bailey Stadium Park curling venue, waste heat from the refrigeration plant is expected to be used to heat other building spaces and the nearby aquatic centre. At the Richmond sports complex that will house VANOC's long-track speedskating oval, rainwater will be captured and used for irrigation, ice-making and toilets. There are also plans to construct an wetland for storm water treatment at the site; a similar system is being set up for the Vancouver Athletes Village.

VANOC HR AND RECRUITMENT SPONSOR IN NOVA SCOTIA

VANOC's executive vice-president of the Human Resources, Sustainability and International Client Services division, Donna Wilson, will be in Halifax, Nova Scotia, next week. The reason for her visit is not yet known, but she's be with Patrick Sullivan, president of VANOC's official recruitment and job-search supplier, Workopolis.

VANOC SEEKS 'SPEAKER TRAINERS'

VANOC has issued a 41-page Request for Proposals in order to hire "one or more speaker trainers" to coach "key executives and personnel" as necessary over the next three years on how to give better presentations. The trainers need 10 years experience "training senior executives from well-recognized organizations." They should also have a "strong ability to extract personal stories from participants and teach them how to successfully incorporate these at speaking opportunities." The trainers will also need "flexibility to respond to urgent requirements." The closing date for the RFP's window is May 17. The contract is to be awarded in June.

RESOURCES

LEED's Commercial interiors requirements
www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=145
--
Here's the link to download the trainer-speaker RFP document:
http://tinyurl.com/ysddz3

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 20, 2007

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2269

Here are three moguls we ran into today:
VANOC AWARDED FIRST LEED CERTIFICATION

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 20, 2007

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #2268
ENERGY DIRECTOR TALKING TO BC HYDRO ABOUT "BIG PROJECTS" TO INCREASE POWER RELIABILITY TO VENUES

The director of Energy for the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games (VANOC) says negotiations are underway with BC Hydro about the possibility of the utility being involved in several "big projects" over the next two years to increase power reliability to the venues of the 2010 Games.

Paul Toom told the Vancouver branch of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) that the total Games Time electrical load will be approximately 140 megawatts of power delivered to about 120 VANOC sites in Greater Vancouver and the Whistler area, of which 17 are major competition and non-competition venues. It's those venues, he says, that have "extraordinary reliability requirements." Of that, 54 megawatts are split: 32 megawatts will be for mission-critical services, and 22 will be supplied by "cold" backup power systems, such as diesel generators.

Toom says he's heard the head of VANOC's Olympic Broadcast System, Nancy Lee, describe the Games as "a 400-hour TV show", but there's another description he likes: "One NFL Superbowl times 15 venues times 17 days." He knows that because one of the consultants working with Toom on planning power for the Games also worked on doing the same thing for the Superbowl.

Toom, who has been working with Hydro for two years on planning power for the Games and in the process is set to become one of Hydro's biggest customers, says some of the big projects they're discussing involve bringing kilometres of overhead power lines underground, where they can't be affected by weather or other hazards, with the specific amounts dependent on the circumstances of each venue. If these projects go ahead, they will be done within Hydro's current and 2008 construction-budget years, and the decisions on them will have be made, "virtually immediately."

"We have to look at that in two categories," he said. "There's work that's being done as part of the basic delivery of service by BC Hydro to venue owners, and a lot of that 'undergrounding' happens by basic BC Hydro policy, or because it makes sense, or because the owner wants it. Then there is additional work that is being looked at, and all I can say at this moment is that BC Hydro and VANOC are discussing it. When I talk about big pieces having to fall into place, there's a big piece there." The numbers and extent of the projects involved were the subject of talks between VANOC and BC Hydro, he said, so he wasn't able to discuss that publicly yet.

But he noted that it isn't always a matter of taking what is overhead and putting it underground, "because we're talking about new venues, so if you have the choice, why not just put it underground to begin with. And it doesn't always mean you have to dig into the ground, there is often existing duct banks in the ground with spare ducts, such as pipes you can run cables through, so you don't have to do any of the civil work, or you just need a limited amount of civil works. Those opportunities are being looked at. And when we talk about improvements beyond that, we're talking about increased reliability and the costs associated with that, and all issues associated with that are being discussed between VANOC and Hydro."

Toom notes, however, that VANOC has been making improvements to the power delivery for all of the venues in a number of ways, and making detailed reliability calculations for each one -- including a variable that estimates what Toom calls the "Murphy factor," based on Murphy's law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. The main feeds to the venues will be 12 kilovolt lines with reliability factors that predict only one failure in 30 years. Planning is also taking into account scenarios that involved fire, flood, "human actions", seismic events and various emergencies.

Toom says that for a variety of technical and economic reasons, only a small portion of the power systems VANOC needs to have in place will be available during the major test events that are scheduled for the early and late part of 2008 and early 2009. But he has set a deadline of having all of VANOC's major components installed and online by December 1, 2008. Then, about three weeks before they are needed, VANOC contractors will begin installing dozens of rented diesel generators that will form the back-up power supply to the venues and their overlay components.

The rental and the time frames for their use were determined by the economics of using them, he said, but the fact that he won't be able to put the systems VANOC will use for the Games to a full-load test until shortly before Games time doesn't significantly concern him. "The major parts of the system... will be in place by the end of 2008," he says, "and we'll have a year or so to confirm those. We're pretty comfortable. We're working with a proven technology, and we're working with experienced partners -- BC Hydro and whoever is going to provide our temporary power supply in the form of generators and power distribution. We're not expecting anything unusual, and we will have several weeks to deal with anything unusual that does happen."

VANOC considers some events mission critical: the Opening and Closing ceremonies, which will be televised to about three billion people and all of their lighting, sound and technical systems. They will all have the three levels of power supply.

The reliability of power becomes an issue because there are a number of parts to each major complex, including VANOC's own headquarters, which requires assured power. These include power to television broadcast facilities and particularly the commentators booths, Games-management technology such as the computers that power event timing and competition results, and security. In those cases, they will be supplied by a main power-delivery system, a secondary system, both of which are on the BC Hydro power grid, and a third system that also involves back-up generators and uniterruptible power systems.

In the case of the two primary power deliver systems, if the main line fails, a machine known as a Vista Switch shunts power from the secondary system automatically within nine seconds, although Toon concedes that such a short time frame is pushing the switching technology. If either the main or secondary lines fail individually, the series of cold-start diesel generators automatically begin running, although they can take several minutes to come to full power and synchronize with other generators that together provide the full backup system.

The redundancy is built into several critical areas of the power delivery systems and, wherever possible, even substations supplying the two redundant feeds also have redundant ties.

It's also a theme in the venues themselves. For instance, the lights that supply broadcast-level lighting to the IOC's standard of 1,400 lux in the competition areas, which VANOC calls the Field of Play, are supplied by two separate circuits, half the lights are on one circuit, half on another, so that if one circuit fails, there will still be sufficient lighting complete an on-going competition.

There are a couple of special cases among the venues. The International Broadcast Centre is one, where TV broadcasting power demands will vary with the number of crews and their equipment, but VANOC intends to design 'plug-and-play' power methods, where additional power can be "injected" into the system using generators if need be. Another is at Hastings Park, where the short-track ice-skating venue is located. Power has to be brought from the Rupert substation almost entirely across the huge park and at the moment there's only one elderly cable. More work will be done by VANOC to increase the reliability of that system.

Toom and his staff have also done calculations that show, much to their surprise, that most of the temporary facilities can use electrical space heaters, instead of what has been done in other Games, where natural gas or propane heating systems outside tents and temporary buildings have pushed heat into them. He says the calculations show that because of electrical availability in BC, it would cost about C$30,000 for electrical heating, about C$100,000 for oil and about C$800,000 for propane heating.

Sustainability is also an issue that affects everything that happens with the Games power delivery, and VANOC expects to have a net zero impact greenhouse gas emissions. "We plan to use green electricity and minimize the role of temporary generators. We have the opportunity to use BC Hydro power, which has low greenhouse gas intensity, and for that little bit of carbon in BC Hydro's power, we plan to purchase green-power certificates." Such certificates help to finance the generation of power creation methods that don't produce greenhouse gasses. The sustainability calculations also take into account the greenhouse-gas generation of electrical materials VANOC uses in their construction.

The International Olympic Committee has now hired additional staff for its offices at VANOC headquarters in Vancouver to be involved in the power planning, and reviews began last October, with more sessions scheduled later this year.

BACKGROUND

This table shows the relative constant-dollar costs of power generated by diesel for VANOC compared with the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games and the 2006 Torino Games:

Salt Lake City -- 350 generators burning about 5,000 litres of diesel fuel. Total power cost: C$55 million
Torino -- 620 generators, about 10 megalitres of fuel. Total power cost: C$75 million
Vancouver target -- less 100 generators, about 300,000 litres of fuel. Total power cost: C$49 million

--

Generators, although the third level of power supply, also have their own reliability issues: starting, contaminated fuel, fuel affected by cold temperatures...

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 19, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2267

Here are three moguls we ran into today:
VANOC'S BUSINESS PLAN GOES PUBLIC MAY 8

VANOC CEO John Furlong says the organization's long-awaited business plan and operations budget will be made public and posted on VANOC's website on Tuesday, May 8. Furlong, who made the comment during a speech to a luncheon at the Urban Design Institute in Vancouver, indicated that he's hoping the document, which will be a government summary report backed by "volumes and volumes" of supporting material, will allow the public a look inside the way VANOC intends to run and operate the Games at the competition venue sites it's either building or refurbishing, and supporting with the non-competition venues, such as the Olympic Athlete Villages in Vancouver and Whistler. Furlong called it VANOC's "lock on the door" and the "road map to the finish line." He said the document has been approved by the BC and federal governments, as well as the International Olympic Committee. The luncheon was co-sponsored by the BC Cement Association and Concert Properties.

VANOC'S DEMSCHAR TO JOIN UTAH-BASED SKI RESORT COMPANY

Powdr Corporation officials report that Herwig Demschar, currently the vice-president of Venue Management, will join the Utah ski resort operator May 15 as the company's chief operating officer. "We have talked with Herwig before about coming to work at Powdr, but the Olympics are a formidable lure. We're fortunate that the situation and timing was right for him and his family to come back to Utah," said John Cumming, the president of Powdr. "As we continue to grow, we're very pleased that we have an opportunity to utilize his extraordinary background in this industry." Demschar said, "In German, there is a saying that I will be leaving 'with one crying eye and one laughing eye.' I am sad to leave the great group of people at the Vancouver Olympic Committee, but I am thrilled with the great opportunity presented to me by Powdr Corp." The former coach of the U.S. women's alpine team is going to work for a company that owns several ski resorts including Park City Mountain Resort in Utah; Mt. Bachelor in Bend, Oregon; Nevada's Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard Resort; Alpine Meadows at Lake Tahoe; and Boreal Mountain Resort and Soda Springs at Donner Summit in California. The company recently announced its intention to purchase Killington Resort and Pico Mountain in Vermont. Demschar has Olympic experience on both the administrative and athletic levels. He was previously the Director of Sports for the Torino Olympic Games and Director of Alpine Sports for the Salt Lake Winter Olympics. He's the second senior executive this week to end his relationship with VANOC. We reported yesterday that the 2010 organization's director of Ice Sports, Dan Moro, resigned after two years to return to the Canadian Olympic Development Association.

COC LOSES BATTLE OVER TRADEMARK USE OF "SEE YOU IN VANCOUVER"

The Canadian Federal Court has granted the an application by a charity once known for its brands "See You In Torino," See You In Beijing," and "See You In Vancouver" for judicial review with costs. In doing so, it quashed the Canadian Olympic's claim in 2004 to the trade marks that had raised more than C$4 million dollars for more than 500 Canadian athletes.. "This is a great victory for our Fund," says Jane Roos, Executive Director of the Canadian Athletes Now Fund, as the charity is currently called. "We won in the court, but no one really wins here because it has been distracting and such a waste of energy having to win your own name back." At the time, the COC requested Canada's Registrar of Trade-marks to publish the brands as official marks under Section 9 of Canada's Trade-Marks Act. The COC indicated that they had used the marks which is a requirement under the act. When challenged by Roos and her legal team in a judicial review application, the COC had to provide actual evidence that they had used the marks as they had represented, but they were either unable or unwilling to do so. "This case sets a precedent," says Terry McManus, Business and Intellectual Property lawyer of the firm Milton Geller LLP. "As the Court now requires the Registrar of Trade Marks to demand actual proof of adoption and use rather then taking an applicants word for it."

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 19, 2007

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2266

Here are three moguls we ran into today:
VANOC MANAGER QUITS TO RETURN TO CODA

VANOC's director of Ice Sports, Dan Moro, has resigned after two years to return to the Canadian Olympic Development Association to help manage the C$276-million Centre of Sport Excellence in Calgary as vice-president of facility development. Bob Nicolay, president and chief executive officer of CODA. "The new athletics and ice complex represents the heart of the Centre of Sport Excellence, and Dan has tremendous knowledge since he helped build the business plans for CODA on this project prior to joining VANOC two years ago." Moro adds that, "CODA's plan for these facilities and programs will help bring home more medals for Canada than ever before in 2010 and beyond." Moro was hockey director for the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, CODA's manager of sport from 2003 to 2005, and a consultant for the 2006 Turin Olympics hockey and curling programs.

WHISTLER OLYMPIC VILLAGE DEVELOPMENT SCHEDULE OUTLINED

The Whistler 2020 Development Corporation, the wholly owned subsidiary of Whistler municipality, has sketched some of its schedule for delivering the 2010 Whistler Athletes Village, now that VANOC has paid it all but C$2 million of its C$35 million contribution to the project, budgeted at C$130 million. The developer expects this year to do site servicing and construct the foundations for about 185 buildings -- townhouses, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and apartment buildings -- that will comprise the Village, located south of Whistler. Marketing the portion that is to be sold on the open market will also take place, with delivery in mid-2010; the balance will be assigned under Whistler's employee-housing process. Next year, 2010 Development will construct the buildings, finishing in early 2009, when the remaining C$2 million hold-back is expected to be paid out by VANOC upon completion. They will then be furnished for the 2,500 Olympic and Paralympic athletes, and, once the Games are concluded at the end of March 2010, the Olympic overlay and related materials will be removed and the buildings furnished for permanent use by about 1,000 residents. The Village will form the core of a much larger neighbourhood that Whistler expects will take nearly a decade to expand and complete.

VANOC SPONSOR COSPORT MOVES TO TICKET PHASE OF BEIJING OLYMPICS

CoSport, the packaged accommodations supplier to the 2010 Winter Olympics, has begun the next phase of its ticketing process for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Following a process its expected to follow for 2010, CoSport has begun the "Ticket Request Phase", no payments are collected although credit cards are authorized when those requesting tickets place their requests for specific Games in China. This phase is expected to end in the middle of July. In addition, a parallel phase is also underway, dealing with live sales of accommodations and hospitality packages; this phase continues until interest ends or packages are sold out. Tickets will be allocated and confirmed from mid-July to mid-September. After that, CoSport will be selling live whatever tickets remain. To reduce scalping and fraud, actual tickets won't be delivered for the packages until about a month before the Games begin.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 18, 2007

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2265

Here are two more moguls we ran into today:
VANCOUVER MAY USE VANOC HQ FOR POLICE HQ AFTER GAMES

The City of Vancouver is mulling over the possibility of using the city-owned building that's now VANOC's headquarters as the new headquarters for the Vancouver City Police once the Games are finished and VANOC has wound down. The police are currently split between two buildings in the central downtown area, and there's still quite a bit of work to be done in figuring out what is needed for a new headquarters. City staff say the VANOC HQ building, which is on the outskirts of the city, is just one of a number of options being considered for police.

VANCOUVER RESTRICTS BUSINESSES IN 2010 OLYMPIC VILLAGE

Vancouver City Council today rezoned the 2010 Olympic Village and, in the process, restricted the types of service businesses that can locate in the largely residential and community area. The new bylaw for the area allows for a variety of retail stores except for a gas station or a car dealership, but restricts service businesses to animal clinics, barber shops or beauty salons, bed-and-breakfasts, catering establishments, neighbourhood pubs, photofinishing or photography labs and studios, print shops, production or rehearsal studios, class-B repair shops, restaurants, as well as arts, self-improvement and business schools. The sizes of the businesses are restricted, depending on location within the Village, to areas no smaller than 1,300 square metres and no larger than 9,674 square metres.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 17, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2264
VANCOUVER CONTEMPLATES CITY'S OLYMPIC LIVE SITE COULD COST UP TO C$20 MILLION

The managing director of Cultural Services for the City of Vancouver says the 2010 Olympic Live Site proposed for the downtown business district will play "a very critical role" in the City's mid-term planning of the "cultural precinct" being developed in the area.

The federal government has budgeted up to C$20 million for live-site development in the two 2010 host cities, with Vancouver offered half and Whistler offered half, but it appears City staff are thinking the budget for the Vancouver Live Site alone could be as much as C$20 million.

Sue Harvey says the city's planning process is now looking at "a mix of cultural and other kinds of uses that are potential for the site" in Vancouver. City council today approved a budget of just over C$92,000 for a concerted three-month study that would gain enough information and establish a budget that could be used by the City to apply for the C$10 million.

The timing of the study, which includes public input, is critical, as it would allow the City's Olympic office to provide council with sufficient information and three options for the area's use that it could approve the application before council's summer break in June; council won't normally meet again until September.

Harvey says it would be a "real opportunity" for the planning to propose retaining some "physical legacies" of the Live Site for the city's use after the Games, "by way of open space or public art, perhaps." But she adds that whether it will be that type, or physical structures in the area won't be known until the study is completed. "We would be looking at using the whole bus-depot site, and retaining as much space as we could to accommodate the people that would be there."

Dave Rudberg, General manager of the City's Olympic & Paralympic Operations office and a co-manager of the Live-Site project with Harvey, says he expects the city's contribution to the Live Site could be as much as another C$10 million, bringing the total budget to C$20 million. But he says it's unlikely staff would recommend city money be entirely used to match the federal contribution. "Keep in mind there are two components, a capital component ad well as an operating component up to and including Games time," he notes. "We would also look to sponsors and look to VANOC [to share the city's load]. There are lots of opportunities -- because we are working with Whistler, Richmond, the provincial government to share -- to acquire equipment, but most importantly to share the programming of the space. by bringing in talent and using it in several different venues." He says that if those sources failed to come through, "we would have to scale the program to reflect the funds that are available."

Rudberg says his office would "like to maximize the amount of legacy that we retain," but he says it depends on what is both done on the site and the result of the long-term planning for the cultural precinct.

While he talks in millions of dollars for the site, however, Rudberg's own department is spending the bulk of its 2007 consulting budget on the C$92,000 study, and that budget is supposed to last his office until March, 2008. Rudberg hopes to refund his consulting budget when the City approves a 2010 Legacy Reserve fund, "but that's a different issue, for a different time... but we just can't take hits like this because the funding just isn't in the Office budget, it would have to come from some sort of Legacy Fund."

City Council established, but didn't fund, the Legacy Reserve Fund during this year's budgeting process, because of political splits within council. Rudberg says that if the Fund ever does have money in it, "We would take the C$20 million that was proposed for there to do this work, plus the community-outreach work; there would be enough funds to do that."

BACKGROUND

A Live Site is a public gathering space to hold a range of daily and nightly activities during the Olympic and Paralympic Games, centred around a large television screen with live broadcasts of Games' competitions, live entertainment featuring local talent, as well as recreational and cultural activities.

It's also expected there will be various pavilions, including possibly a C$20 million aboriginal pavilion in the area until the Games are finished.

The area proposed for Vancouver involves a large empty lot formerly occupied by a bus depot, combined with the nearby Queen Elizabeth Theatre plaza and intervening road.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 17, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2263

Here are three moguls we ran into today:
VANOC'S OWN RETAIL STRATEGY GLIMPSED

VANOC's retail strategy is expected to include a series of Vancouver 2010 Olympic Stores, as well as a web-based storefront on its main web domain, Vancouver2010.com, and is also expected to include event merchandising in a number of areas controlled by VANOC, such as at its venues and during test events leading up to and during the 2010 Games. VANOC also intends to develop and implement a marketing plan, co-ordinated by VANOC's Communications Department, to support the organization's own retail efforts, as well as the retail marketing of companies it's licensed to produce and sell VANOC-branded products. It also plans to be involved in trade shows, where its appropriate, to move its products. The stores, web and event merchandising will focus on its own licensed and branded products. The underlying concept is to ensure VANOC gets as much revenue as possible from the sale of the merchandise it's authorized, or intends to authorize in the next couple of years. The retail operations plan is expected to be developed this year, but it's still unclear whether the marketing plan would be developed at the same time. VANOC also intends to do third-party retailer procurement.

VENUE AGREEMENT REACHED ON WHISTLER ATHLETES VILLAGE

VANOC and the Whistler Development Corporation, the municipal organization charged with delivering the municipality's Olympic Athletes Village, have completed their venue agreement. Among many other things, it allows VANOC's main funding of C$35.5 million, from its capital construction budget that's split 50/50 by contributions from the federal and BC government, to be paid toward the total cost of what will be the eventual core of an extensive new Whistler neighbourhood. The total budget of the Village portion is expected to be about C$130 million. The rest of the funding, to be advanced in various ways, is expected to be recouped by restricted sales of most of the complex of townhouses and cluster houses as homes for local residents for use after the 2010 Games are finished. A relatively small percentage of the Village will also be sold on the open market to complete the financing.

YES, BCE IS TALKING TO SUITORS

BCE -- the parent company of VANOC's largest sponsor, Bell Canada, and its host broadcaster, CTV -- today officially confirmed rumours it's previously denied over the last couple of weeks. It's issued a terse statement that it has "entered into discussions with a group of leading Canadian pension funds to explore the possibility of taking the publicly-traded company private." This group is led by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and Canada's Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments). BCE's statement says they have signed "a non-disclosure and standstill agreement with BCE on a non-exclusive basis." Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, a private equity firm, has also signed the agreement is to be a minority partner.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 17, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2262
VANCOUVER EXPECTED TO APPROVE SEWER HEAT FOR 2010 OLYMPIC VILLAGE, AFTER SAWDUST OPTION STALLS

The City of Vancouver staff have concluded they can't get an air-quality permit in time, and are recommending to council that the 2010 Olympic Village use sewer-generated heat as the main source of warmth for the apartments and condos to be constructed there.

City Council is expected to approve the decision this afternoon, since it doesn't have much choice.

The City, for several years, had talked about heat from the sewer pipes that ran past the Village would be tapped, supplemented by natural gas heating during the coldest months. Last December, however, staff recommended the City spend C$50,000 on pursuing air-quality licensing through the Greater Vancouver Regional District for an alternative heating option that involved a furnace that burned sawdust because it might be slightly more sustainable, and that the sewer method had a number of technical issues.

However, the wood-burning option would mean about three trucks of compressed sawdust pellets per week would be provided to the Village, and another truck per week would be used to haul away ash. When neighbouring areas heard about the plan, opposition to the idea began to mount. When the sawdust system was touted, staff said the Village's construction schedule needed to have a deciion on the heating option by the end of March.

Staff say that the GVRD is now estimating it would take at least another two months and perhaps as long as six months to find out whether it would issue the necessary discharge permit.

As for the technical issues, staff now report, "In the past three months, further work has been done by the City's consultants to investigate technical challenges related to the viability of sewer-heat recovery. This work has determined that solutions can be found to key issues, and the technical risk associated with a sewer heat recovery system has been reduced significantly. These issues included:

Concerns about sewer flow limitations, which can be solved by using the Nelson Force Main Sewer as a source of "top up" supply

Concerns about the ability of the heat pump to operate in low heat-demand conditions, which can be addressed by adding a small condensing natural gas boiler to the design and

Concerns about the potential for delays arising from the need for certification of specialized equipment originating in Europe, which can be mitigated by early ordering of the necessary equipment."

Intriguingly, these were not the main technical concerns in December, the key one of which dealt with whether the relatively rare system being contemplated, which deals with a sewer feed with solids in the stream, would be able to work as well as the much more prevalent method which deals with slurries over the long term, since not much was known about longevity and economics, and whether there was sufficient diversity in parts suppliers for the equipment.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 17, 2007

Monday, April 16, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2261
BC ENVIRONMENTAL AGENCY NOT EXPECTED TO RULE ON VANOC NORDIC TRAIL PLAN BEFORE JUNE

The latest schedule indicates the BC government's Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) is not expected to decide until June 20 as to whether the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games (VANOC) is approved to construct 24 kilometres of ski trails near its Callaghan Valley Nordic Centre.

The EAO is expected to approve the application, in part because its own consultants are concluding that the construction of what are being termed the Legacy Trail System in the Madeley Valley, which is within the Callaghan Valley system and is expected to cost C$2 million, will have little environmental impact.

Enkon Environmental of the Greater Vancouver suburb of Surrey noted in its report to the BC Environmental Assessment Office last month that even the worst-case scenario, in which 44 hectares of forest, 86% of it old-growth, would have to be cut in the area to make way for the trails, represents only 2% of the old-growth forest in the area. It notes that the trails, 6.5 metres wide on their own for cross-country skiing, will require a total clearing width, to deal with drainage and slope stabilization, of up to 20 metres. (The 44 hectare figure is a paper exercise based on the maximum width for the trail clearing, not the actual width, which will vary with topography.)

VANOC, three years ago, had originally proposed that about 100 kilometres of trails would need to be built for the Whistler Nordic Centre, for competition and recreation to support the on-going business of the Nordic resort that would remain after the Games, but that was cut back to about 24 kilometres by changes in the way the sport required the trails, through budget constraints and the results of an extensive consultation program by VANOC that involved the public, regulatory authorities and aboriginal communities over the last two years to identify
potential issues associated with the recreation trails component.

The recreation trail component is a key part in ensuring the resort is a tourism destination after the Games, and can support itself. The Whistler Legacy Society was formed to be the owner of the venue after the Games and is to operate it afterwards.

As we understand it, VANOC plans to construct the recreation trails during this year's construction season and demobilize them by fall; this would happen while the rest of the WNC and its competition trails are completed. It doesn't want to do it later than this year because it feels it would become more expensive to build them, due to cost escalation, and it would also cost more to remobilize crews and equipment and to re-train contractors about the extensive environmental management plans in place in the area. During 2008 and 2009, VANOC says it will be focussed on fit out and overlay of the venue and various test events, not construction.

BACKGROUND

Here's the current EAO schedule plan for this year:
April 30 -- Public review period, currently underway, concludes
April 10 -- Working group reviews the draft application
May 4 -- The outside date by which VANOC is expected to respond to the review commentary
May 7 to May 22 -- Working group reviews final application with VANOC's commentary
May 30 -- EAO's evaluation report of the application
May 30 to June 13 -- the working group reviews the details of the EAO evaluation report
June 20 -- EAO renders decision

==

Some things Enkon recommended to the Environment ministry that VANOC undertake with recreation business as part of the proposed trail plan:

Explore business development opportunities with commercial recreation operators

Work with commercial recreation operators to investigate ways to use their services during the Games

Cooperate with BC Parks, a BC government agency, on updating the Callaghan Provincial Park management plan, and

Explore marketing the Whistler Nordic Centre and the Callaghan Valley, with BC Parks and Tourism BC, to promote cross-country skiing, commercial recreation operations and aboriginal cultural ideas

RESOURCES

The EAO's registry of documents for the proposed trail plan application:
www.eao.gov.bc.ca/epic/output/html/deploy/epic_document_234_23705.html

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 16, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2260
WHISTLER COUNCIL EXPECTED TONIGHT TO APPROVE IN PRINCIPLE THE DETAILED DESIGNS OF THE 2010 OLYMPIC VILLAGE

Whistler resort municipal council is expected tonight to give approval in principle to the detailed planning, design and development of the town's 2010 Olympic Athlete Village, which it calls the Cheakamus Area Legacy Neighbourhood.

The approval is expected to include instructions that Whistler staff set up the required public hearing for the bylaw which, if approved after the hearing, would give permission for the Village to be built according to the plans.

Draft 1 of the guidelines was first given to council last December, but a number of revisions were made to that draft to finalize the Neighbourhood Master Plan as it evolved through detailed design development. The changes also incorporate comments from Whistler's Advisory Design Panel, council, various consultants, as well as the Whistler 2020 Development Corporation, which is supervising the Village's construction, and changes requested by the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games (VANOC).

Much earlier in the process, Whistler council also left open the possibility that the Callaghan Valley, where VANOC is constructing its Whistler Nordic Centre and temporary ski jumps for the 2010 Games, would be used for residential development, but that dropped by the wayside as plans evolved. The bylaw to get first and second reading at council tonight formally removes the Callaghan Valley as a development area.

Meanwhile, Whistler municipal council is also expected to finally legalize the existence of a temporary concrete batch plant that has already been built and is in operation south of the town, giving it permission to be located for about two years on land zoned residential as part of the preparations for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Staff are asking council to issue a Temporary Commercial and Industrial Use Permit tonight for the property, part of a BC Hydro electrical right-of-way, to industrial for the two years. The plant was built by the Peter Kiewit & Sons company, which is one of the contractors working with the BC government to upgrade Highway 99 as part of the government's role in helping the Games take place. Once the two years are up, the plant is to be removed, and the land returned to its residential zoning.

The batch plant is located about kilometre east of the highway on the Daisy Lake Forest Service Road, near the Olympic construction road turnoff to the Callaghan Valley, where the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games (VANOC) is building the 2010 Nordic Centre for the Games. It's scheduled to run for up to three days a week. Logistically, the plant reduces the number of concrete trucks making long runs on the highway, and helps to deal with Ministry of Transport specifications that require concrete to be used within 90 minutes of mixing, for most purposes, but only 45 minutes for bridge decks.

BC Hydro's provided the company a right-of-way use permit and the BC government has issued a two-year water-use permit, so the plant can take water from the upper Cheakamus River for its operations.

The company even had to do an environmental review, looking at both air quality and effluent discharge, which was done by Dillon Consulting of the Greater Vancouver suburb of Richmond.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 16, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2259

Here are three moguls we ran into today:
C$346,790 TO BE SPENT ON UPGRADING VANCOUVER PRE-OLYMPIC NETWORKS

Buried deeply in the C$34.9 million, 126-page Vancouver city engineering budget that's expected to be approved by council next Thursday is a C$346,790 project that is designed to help strengthen the city's digital communications network in advance of the 2010 Winter Games. The project, which involves VANOC's telecommunications sponsor Bell Canada, involves replacing leased lines with a fibre-optics system. The payback for the system is expected to be 18 months. It's to provide "a more reliable, secure network, improvements in networks, end limitations on bandwidth use and give the City the ability to use VOIP digital telephone service, "as well as the demands anticipated by the 2010 Olympic Games." According to the program, the plan is to spend C$121,500 on labour costs, C$95,200 on materials, another C$90,000 on equipment, while C$40,000 is assigned to be spent on "overhead." It's part of a longer-range plan, and involves installing the systems in 25 locations.

VANOC TO BEGIN PLANNING SPORTS-EQUIPMENT PROCUREMENT

VANOC is expected to begin in the next few months to work on detailing its plans for procuring sports equipment for the 2010 Games. The process is expected to start with centralized planning of what equipment and services are required, and it will involve getting information from VANOC's Sport Services department and the various Competition Managers, figuring out the necessary timelines and a centralized budget, then working out the necessary processes with the organization's procurement section. In some cases, the work, to be done by a Sport Equipment Specialist, will need to get vetting information from the international sport federations involved for providers as well as the specific type of equipment.

WAREHOUSE OPERATIONS TO SUPPORT VANOC

VANOC warehousing systems are also expected to be developed and planned in detail this year, with expansion or, in some cases, initiation of functions that have to do with warehouse operations, distribution systems, customs & freight forwarding, receiving, shipping, warehouse transportation and warehouse security. There is expected to be quite a bit of work contracted out, as a result of the planning, as well as quite a large part of the VANOC workforce -- permanent, part-time and volunteer. VANOC has already made arrangements to lease warehouse space in Delta, a suburb of Vancouver, starting next year and is working on setting up additional locations for equipment storage. This year, in particular, it will be working on hiring and training warehouse supervisory staff and develop centralized service operations for warehousing furniture, fixtures and various types of equipment that will be needed for, among other things, installation in 2009 when it is time to begin constructing the Olympic overlays for the competition and non-competition venues, such as the two Olympic villages. It will also be setting up the systems for receiving, storing, tracking, distributing and, once the 2010 Games are over, recovering its assets. That includes working out the fleet requirements necessary to do all of that, including what's needed to get a lot of the materials across the US/Canada border, or bring in equipment from overseas. (And all the customs paperwork that goes with that.) VANOC says that one of the prime responsibilities in the planning will be figuring out how to ensure that sustainability practices are built into the process so that, for instance, packaging materials are reused.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 16, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2258
BC APPOINTS DAVID PODMORE TO CHAIR BOARD THAT CONTROLS SEVERAL LARGE 2010 VENUES

The British Columbia government, in a controversial move, has appointed Concert Properties president and CEO David Podmore as chairman of a board that merges the boards of two organizations that control major venues of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The government has ordered the boards of the BC Pavilion Corporation (PAVCO) and the Vancouver Convention Centre Expansion Project (VCCEP) to merge, "to maximize their effectiveness as they enter into the marketing and operating phase of the expanded convention centre," according to a news release. "The two boards will be joined to allow for better coordination between these organizations whose primary role is to oversee the marketing of the facilities that they manage."

PAVCO's control includes BC Place Stadium, where the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2010 Games are to occur, as well as the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre. The convention centre's C$800-million expansion building, now under construction, will be taken over by VANOC in the spring of 2009 for use as the Games's international media and broadcast centre until April 2010.

Podmore wasn't on either Board until appointed as chair of the merged one. The decision is expected to be controversial because Podmore's chief executive officer at Concert Properties is Jack Poole, the chairman of the board of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC). Concert Properties was one of the short-list of contenders for purchasing and developing the Vancouver City-owned land that is now becoming the city's Olympic Athletes Village, but had to withdraw its proposal due to the perceived conflict of interest. Concert competitor Millennium Development later won the blockbuster real-estate deal.

VANOC is a federally chartered not-for-profit society that is independent of the provincial government and so is not under BC's conflict-of-interest legislation. However, in the BC Legislature on October 5, 2005, the minister in charge of the BC government's Olympics interests, Colin Hansen, confirmed that Concert Properties "has not and will not be bidding on Olympic construction" because of the potential for conflict of interest.

Another VANOC director and an executive who is influential in both the British Columbian and Vancouver city governments, Ken Dobell, the former chair of the convention centre expansion project, is also a director of the merged board. Dobell, a BC government nominee on the VANOC Board, chairs the VANOC board's Finance Committee. He also served as deputy minister to the Premier and cabinet secretary, Office of the Premier, Government of British Columbia of British Columbia from June 2001 to June 2005. He is also a special advisor to BC Premier Gordon Campbell as a consultant.

There are other VANOC connections in the new board as well, including Paul Taylor, the president of VANOC sponsor ICBC, and Dan Jarvis, an executive of Intrawest Corporation, which owns some of VANOC's Whistler-area ski venues.

BACKGROUND

Board appointments for the merged VCCEP and PAVCO are:

David Podmore, Chair, Podmore has been in the real estate development industry for 33 years. He is vice chair of the British Columbia Institute of Technology Foundation; the immediate past president of the Urban Development Institute of BC's Pacific Region, a past member of the BC government's influential BC Progress Board and immediate past chair of the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation. He was also a director of the Canadian Tourism Commission for eight years. He is the first recipient of the Award of Excellence established by The Real Estate Institute of BC, and received the 2003 Community Service Award from Volunteer Vancouver.

Directors of the new board, in addition to Ken Dobell:

Dan Jarvis, executive vice-president and chief financial officer and director of Intrawest Corporation, which owns Whistler-Blackcomb, where the ski venues for the 2010 Games will take place. Jarvis earlier was a director of BCE Development Corporation, the real-estate subsidiary of Bell Canada, which is the largest corporate sponsor of the 2010 Games.

Paul Taylor, president and CEO of ICBC, which has become a Tier-2 sponsor of the 2010 Winter Olympics. Before his ICBC appointment on October 1, 2004, he was the deputy minister of Finance and secretary to the Treasury Board of the BC Government. He also served on the boards of several BC government Crown corporations

Derek Brindle, a construction-industry lawyer with Singleton Urquardt. He recently acted for the contractor and concessionaire in successful injunction proceedings involving the BC government's Sea to Sky Highway infrastructure improvement project, which is politically tied to the development of the 2010 Games.

Terry Lyons, chairman of Northgate Minerals Corporation, Director of B.C. Pacific Capital Corporation and director of Canaccord Capital. He was involved in the discussions that led to Canaccord, a Vancouver-based private bank, becoming a sponsor of Alpine Canada, the largest Canadian sports federation involved with the 2010 Games.

John A. Horning, the Vice-President of Finance and Corporate Development for International Forest Products Limited.

Miriam Kresivo, a lawyer who is the general counsel and corporate secretary for Chevron Canada Limited

Doris Daughney, the former chair of PAVCO, she is president and director of Canwest Wholesale, a company based in the Greater Vancouver suburb of Richmond.

Grant Ritchie, a transportation consultant who was senior vice-president and leader of the Transportation Engineering Group of UMA Engineering of Vancouver for 32 years until he retired in 2003.

==

Not all the directors of the two organizations are on the new board. Gone are:

Andrew Wilkinson of VCCEP, a lawyer who was the BC government's former Deputy Minister, Economic Development

Bruce T. Okabe of VCCEP, the BC government's deputy minister of Tourism, Sport and the Arts

Norm Assam of PAVCO, a businessman from the interior BC city of Kelowna who had been on the board since 2001, an owner and director of Orchard Ford Sales, Kelowna Ford Lincoln, H12-Enterprises and Nassam Properties.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 16, 2007

Friday, April 13, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2257

Here are three more moguls we ran into today:
VANCOUVER TO MAKE OLYMPIC VILLAGE HEAT SOURCE DECISION BY WEDNESDAY

The City of Vancouver is expected to make an announcement Wednesday on how it would heat the Olympic Village. The city had hoped the its Greater Vancouver Regional District air-quality application would be completed by the end of March, so it could choose to heat the apartments with a bulk sawdust-pellet furnace, augmented by natural gas. However, the GVRD is still allowing public comment, and the city is still responding to the comment, with no decision in site. The fall back heating system, touted for several years until the sawdust system was proposed in December, involves tapping the heat generated by raw sewage in the city sewer mains that run near the Village.

OLYMPIC VILLAGE LIKLEY TO HAVE FEWER GREEN ROOFS THAN ORIGINALLY PLANNED

City of Vancouver staff are expected to ask City Council on Tuesday for permission to avoid a quagmire that could bog down construction of the 2010 Athletes Village. The issue is over whether some of the apartment buildings in the Village can get BC government Homeowner Protection Office warranties if they have so-called green roofs. Such roofs are designed as part of the buildings to help them meet sustainable-development policies under VANOC's requirements they be built to Gold LEED standards. It turns out, however, that most of the four homeowner warranty insurance companies are worried about creating another "leaky condo" situation and aren't willing to insure the buildings. No insurance, and the city can't issue a building permit. City staff say they think there is enough wriggle room in the wording of the green-roof recommendations in policies earlier established than they can make the decision on a case-by-case basis to allow Millennium False Creek, the developer of the buildings, to delete the green-roof concept from their buildings, or at least hold it in abeyance until research is done on the long-term effects of the having such roofs and being able to keep them maintained by building owners. One of the warranty firms that has about half the marketshare has flatly refused to insure green-roof buildings until the science is done, and Millennium's contractor, which has a 37% market share is still undecided. But staff are asking council just to make sure they do have that wriggle room. They suggest the buildings probably don't need the additional LEED points a green roof would provide, since they probably have enough points through other features, or may be able to gain sufficient points by changing the building's designs without requiring the green roofs.

IOC SESSION TO CHOOSE 2014 WINTER GAMES TO TAKE PLACE IN GUATEMALAN HOTEL

When the annual general meeting of the members of the International Olympic Committee meet in Guatemala City from July 4-7, they'll chose the city that will host the 2014 Winter Olympics, which is the Winter Games that follows the 2010 Games. As such, the representatives of the winning city's organizing committee will have a spot in the closing ceremonies of the 2010 Games to promote their Games to the three billion people expected to be in the world-wide broadcasting audience, and they'll be given a lot of back-door access to the 2010 Games as observers of how they're run. If you're thinking you'd like to be at the IOC's meeting to celebrate with the winners or commiserate with those who aren't, note that the Host City Announcement Ceremony will take place at the Real Intercontinental hotel, while the IOC's Executive Board business meetings will take place two blocks away at the Westin Camino Real hotel from July 1-3. There are three cities still on the shortlist for hosting the 2014 Games: Sochi in Russia; Salzburg,Austria; and PyeongChang, South Korea, which narrowly lost to Vancouver when the 2010 decision was made in 2003. They've handed in their bids, an IOC technical committee has inspected all of them and turned in a report for the members to consider before the vote. All three cities will give their final presentations, hoping to sway a few votes, throughout the day of July 4. The voting is expected to start about 3 pm Guatemalan time (2 pm Vancouver time) and take about 90 minutes to complete. The announcement is planned to be held about 5pm in Guatemala City (4pm Vancouver). Once the announcement is made, the representativesof the winning city will have an hour to hand over a deposit cheque to the IOC for about US$1 million and sign a host-cities contract.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 13, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2256
VANCOUVER EXPECTED TO HIRE CITY CONSULTANT TO DEVELOP PLANS FOR OLYMPIC "LIVE SITE"

Vancouver City staff are expected to recommend that City Council on Tuesday make a decision to spend more than C$92,000 on a Vancouver marketing consulting firm to help with the "complex" planning of the 2010 Olympic "Live Site" in the downtown business district.

Staff from the Cultural Services and the Olympic and Paralympic Operations offices are recommending that Fireworks Marketing Group, be hired for the job for C91,960 plus taxes, after rejecting the proposals of three other firms that had responded to a Request for Proposals earlier this year.

The City is eligible for up to C$10 million to provide a "Live Site," a public gathering space to hold a range of daily and nightly activities during the Olympic and Paralympic Games, centred around a large television screen with live broadcasts of Games' competitions, live entertainment featuring local talent, as well as recreational and cultural activities. It's also expected there will be various pavilions, including possibly a C$20 million aboriginal pavilion in the area.

Fireworks has experience in dealing with public events and their programming, technical production, architectural planning and design, sponsorship, broadcast and security planning. It will also include an aboriginal as part of the contract team to work with aboriginal involvement and protocol.

The City of Vancouver has been working with the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games and its government partners to develop a strategy to create a "Live Site" in the City's downtown core on a vacant, leveled area that was once a former bus depot. It's next to the plaza of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Both sites are owned by the City of Vancouver and the City intends to merge them into one large integrated site by closing portions of adjacent streets to traffic to provide 1.4 hectares (151,634 square feet) of space.

The site is near a Skytrain public transit station and has lots of city bus traffic, and can be easily reached by pedestrians from the business core. The site is also close to BC Place and GM Place, the two main downtown venues for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, however there's no decision yet whether the site will be inside VANOC's official security zone. It's also the first phase of the city's future "Cultural Precinct."

Among the things the City would get for its money from Fireworks for the site are programming options, three site design concepts, an operational and governance plan, an operating and capital budget, and a project timeline, so it could all be in place by the time the Games start. Staff say it also requires a wide-ranging team of people "with unique skills and senior level experience in major-event planning, programming, production management, architecture, design and engineering.

Once the report is done -- which is expected to occur in July -- it will include a process for allowing the public to comment on the concepts, staff will bring it back to City Council for approval of its capital and operating budget, including the portion of the C$10 million that the BC government will agree to fund.

RESOURCES

Tom Stulberg
President
Fireworks Marketing Group
www.fireworksgroup.com/

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 13, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2255
OLYMPIC WEATHER STATIONS NETWORK EXPECTED TO BE COMPLETED BY END OF 2007

The man in charge of constructing and connecting the weather stations that comprise the 2010 Olympic Automated System Network (OAN) for Environment Canada's Meteorological Service says he hopes to get the remaining six stations installed this year.

Bill Scott, the head of the Projects & Depot Unit of the MSC's Atmospheric Monitoring department, noting that earlier reports had indicated there were still 14 locations to be constructed (as we last noted in article 2251, on April 11). Scott says that it turned out that not all of those ones listed will be needed, and some are already part of the MSC's regular weather forecasting system.

As Scott puts it, "Several automatic weather stations that are considered to be part of the OAN are actually existing systems that have been operated by Environment Canada for years or, through cooperative agreement, are owned by BC Government agencies such as the BC Forest Service and BC Highways. The total number of stations for this network, when combining these stations with new VANOC- and Environment Canada-funded sites, will be near 30 and we are hoping to have them completed before the end of this calendar year." Scott says it's "quite important" to have these in as much in advance of 2010 as possible, "for forecaster familiarity, climatological study and data entry into computer weather forecast modeling."

Scott's instructions are to install the weather stations, and tie them into the communications grid, in Port Mellon; at the Sechelt, Powell River and Qualicum airports, as well as in the North Cowichan and Mount Washington areas. The systems would also help forecast conditions for the ski resort at Mount Washington, near Comox, on Vancouver Island.

Scott says the number of stations that are needed to accurately forecast weather conditions leading up to and during the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games during February and March 2010 involves quite a bit of new machinery and sensors because the Whistler area was "data sparse," compared with the locations of previous Winter Games in Torino, Italy, and Salt Lake City, Utah.

"In addition to needing automatic weather stations within the Olympic venues," Scott says, "it is critical to establish additional 24/7 automated systems meteorologically upstream. In the case of Whistler, this is primarily to the west and southwest." Scott says the new installations primarily includes sites on the Sunshine Coast and Howe Sound, north of Vancouver, and on eastern Vancouver Island." These specific sites, he says, are favoured because they on the edge of coverage provided by Environment Canada's Weather Radar system, which is located near Duncan. The new sites will help verify the type and amount of precipitation the radar sees as storms or other weather systems approach the southern BC coastline and head for Cypress Bowl in West Vancouver and Whistler.

The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games (VANOC) has said in other contexts that accurate and timely forecasting is essential for predicting when outdoor competitions can be held, and being able to contact ticket-holders of those events when the event is held or postponed in sufficient time to react.
Scott says the rest of the stations are either within Olympic venues, are existing Environment Canada or cooperative sites that either have been, or will be, upgraded for Games time requirements. Scott says that using the BC government's provincial automated systems and putting them into the network, the result is "a significant cost saving over having to install new systems." Most of the cooperative sites are to the east and northeast of the Whistler area.

The funding aspect is complex, because in some cases the stations are under provincial budgets, VANOC's budgets, or the federal government's payment mechanism. Plans have not yet been made about which systems in the network will be kept for legacy forecasting after the Games have ended, and which ones might be dismantled, their parts to be used elsewhere in Canada. "This will depend on usefulness, future cooperative arrangements with local authorities and ongoing maintenance funding levels."

Scott also says his deparmment is still going through the approval process of the Resort Municipality of Whistler to install a sophisticated weather-radar system within the grounds of the new waste transfer station to be built to the west of Whistler, near the area's Olympic Village. With that radar system, in the Brandywine area, he says "we will be able to obtain weather radar data from the Callaghan Valley, where VANOC's Nordic Center is located, over Whistler-Blackcomb [another VANOC venue] and southward toward Squamish. The southern reach of the radar system will just about connect with the reach of the [existing] weather radar system located near Duncan on Mount Sicker. This will give us good radar coverage for almost the complete distance of the Sea-to-Sky Highway from Vancouver to Whistler."

And that, in turn, will allow road-weather forecasting during the 2010 Games.

And that, in turn, will allow better road-weather forecasting during the 2010 Games.

RESOURCES

Previous stories we've done on the Olympic weather network:

'Canadian weather department to buy C$350,000 wind, temperature equipment to help 2010 forecasting'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:1726; Published on Friday, June 9, 2006]

'Federal government buys more expensive pieces for 2010's new weather radar system'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:1935; Published on Tuesday, October 24, 2006]

'Another part for 2010 weather stations to be sourced directly...'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:1996; Published on Wednesday, November 22, 2006]

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 13, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2254

Here are three moguls we ran into today:
CANADIAN MINT'S OLYMPIC COIN DISTRIBUTION METHODS BEING QUESTIONED

It doesn't sound like we're going to get any immediate answers out of the Royal Canadian Mint about how it is handling the commercial complaints of coin dealers like Vancouver's Brian Duff and his company, All Nations Stamp and Coin Shop. Duff was told April 11 by VANOC to stop marketing Olympic-branded coinage sets on the firm's website, or further actions would be taken against the company, including discussions by VANOC with All Nations's wholesalers and the Mint about its relationship with the firm. Duff maintains the coins were legitimately purchased through normal wholesale channels, he was never made aware by them about any restrictions on the business aspects of handling them, and he's marketing the same as he would any another such coinage from the Mint. The Mint's chief of Communications, Alexandre Reeves, speaking from the Mint's Winnipeg headquarters this afternoon notes the Mint had only been made aware of the issue today. He said, essentially, "I'll find out" to each component of a series of questions in dealing with the distribution of the massive Olympic coin program about the set up and policies, if any, of the Mint's specific relationship with its distributors and, from there, downstream to coin dealers across the country. Reeves suggests Duff's company is still allowed to sell the "several thousands of dollars" of Olympic coin stock he's purchased, and noted that VANOC's concern seemed to be aimed at Internet marketing, but Reeves had no immediate comment when asked if it would be possible, under the Mint's downstream licensing system, for retail coin dealers to purchase newspaper ads marketing Olympic coins sets instead. He wrote down that question, as well, and said he'd see if he could find out that answer, too.

GVRD STILL MULLING DISCHARGE PERMIT FOR VANCOUVER OLYMPIC ATHLETES VILLAGE

The Greater Vancouver Regional District's Air Quality division says it's still assessing the application by the City of Vancouver for permission to discharge gasses into the Vancouver air column that would be produced by a controversial heating system for the 2010 Olympic Athlete Village buildings. The proposed system involves several truckloads of sawdust pellets per week being burned, and about one truck a week of ash being removed. City officials had told council last December that they were worried about the viability of a heating system based on taking the heat from the decomposition of raw sewage in the sewer lines than run next to the Village for its eight blocks of high-rise condominiums and apartment buildings. Only a few like it existed in the world, and there were engineering issues with the system, even though the it had been touted for several years to that point as the method of choice for helping to heat the Village in an environmentally sustainable way. As a result, they had come up with the sawdust furnace concept to replace it, but that required the discharge permit from the GVRD, and a decision, since the system was on the construction project's critical path, by March 31. The south shore neighbourhood of False Creek, however, is well organized on a political level, and the application has run into objections. A GVRD Air Quality spokesman tells us today, "'We are [still] considering the application. The neighbours have asked for more information and I have asked the City to provide sufficient information to allow the neighbours to offer informed comment. There is no deadline, although the City is anxious for a decision. I cannot say when that decision will be made." Either the sewage or pellet system is expected to be supplmented by natural gas on occasion.

BC TOLERANCE LOW FOR OLYMPIC PROTESTOR VIOLENCE, SAYS GOVERNMENT MINISTER

BC's Solicitor-General John Les says that "we're not going to have much tolerance" for those who violently protest 2010 Winter Olympic events. He made the comments in answer to a reporter's question prompted by the fact there were no protesters at the ICBC sponsorship announcement. VANOC, as usual for this type of announcement, only let journalists know of the event in North Vancouver's ICBC headquarters a few hours before it began, although a number of people in the BC government's premier's office, as well as North Shore members of the BC legislature, were aware of the timing. ICBC employees, who were gathered in the atrium of the headquarters building, were also aware of the timing.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 13, 2007

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #2253
"CONDITIONS OF VANCOUVER 2010 MARKS USAGE FOR RETAILERS" DOCUMENT DISCUSSES "DO'S AND DON'TS" FOR VANOC LICENSEES

In light of the kerfuffle over downstream distribution of Olympic coin sets, just what is it that fully approved licensed retailers of the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games (VANOC) can allow, and can't allow their downstream retailers to do?

Here's the full wording of the generic "Conditions of Vancouver 2010 Marks Usage for Retailers" document that VANOC's Merchandising Department provides approved licensees of its branded products so they can provide it to their stores downstream. (The emphasis in the document is VANOC's.) Interestingly, we were unable to locate the document or a reference to it on VANOC's website:

==

To Whom It May Concern:

RE: Conditions of Vancouver 2010 Marks Usage for Retailers

We are pleased to welcome your retail operation into the family of retailers that will work with our Official Licensees to help make Vancouver 2010 Licensed Merchandise available across Canada. The Olympic Brand is a powerful one, and carries with it the excitement and ideals of an unparalleled celebration of sport, culture and environment around the globe.

The power of the Olympic Brand also means there is greater potential for misuse and misappropriation. We are writing to you to outline the do's and don'ts associated with the retail sale of Vancouver 2010 Official Licensed Merchandise. Please pay careful attention to the conditions outlined in this letter, as your cooperation and compliance with these requirements is a condition of your ongoing right to purchase licensed merchandise from our Official Licensees.

We also want you to know that we take any attempts to create and/or sell unlicensed or counterfeit merchandise very seriously and we will work hard to ensure that these practices are prevented and punished.

Our goal is to ensure that the value of Official Licensed Merchandise remains strong, not only for us but also for our Official Licensees and their retail customers like you. By working cooperatively with us and by playing by the rules, you will be contributing much to the overall success of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. We thank you in advance for your support and cooperation.

For the purposes of this letter, some important terminology is defined as follows:

(i) "Designated Marks" means trademarks, symbols, emblems, slogans, designs and other indicia relating to the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games or the Olympic Movement generally, including without limitation, the Olympic symbol of the five interlocking rings, the 2010 Olympic Winter Games emblem, the 2010 Paralympic Winter Games emblem, the Vancouver 2010 word mark, any of the words "Olympic," "Paralympic," "2010," "VANOC," and "2010 Games" and any mascot, pictogram, slogan or other protected mark associated with the 2010 Winter Games or the Olympic Movement generally, all of which are owned by VANOC or the International Olympic Committee (IOC); and

(ii) "Official Licensed Merchandise" means merchandise which incorporates Designated Marks and which have been produced and distributed by authorized VANOC merchandise licensees.

Marks Usage Conditions

1. You may display and sell Official Licensed Merchandise in your retail store(s). Official Licensed Merchandise will be identified with tags that feature VANOC-branded holograms or other approved security devices. Do not purchase merchandise which you know or suspect may be counterfeit or unauthorized. Please contact VANOC at brandprotection@vancouver2010.com to report any instance of counterfeiting or any person you know or suspect may be offering counterfeit merchandise.

2. You may conduct point of sale and store-front promotions using sales kit materials provided to you by VANOC through its Official Licensees. Such materials will allow you to indicate "Official Vancouver 2010 Licensed Merchandise Available Here" or other similar words of designation.

3. You may conduct external advertising and promotion relating to the availability of Official Licensed Merchandise for sale at your retail store(s), provided that:

(a) you do not do so in a way that implies or will mislead consumers into believing that the store(s) or business is in any way affiliated with or endorsed by VANOC, the IOC, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), Team Canada, the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) or the Canadian Paralympic Committee.

Without limiting the generality of the above restriction, you must not use the statement "Official Retailer of the 2010 Games" or any similar statement that would imply an affiliation between you and VANOC, the 2010 Games, the IOC or the COC. You must not send promotional materials, whether printed or electronically communicated, advertising your establishment as a "2010 Olympic Merchandise Store" or otherwise suggesting that the store or the business has an official association with VANOC or the Games;

(b) you do not use or display any of the Designated Marks in any way except in the context of displaying photographic images of the Official Licensed Merchandise itself. For greater certainty, photographic images of Official Licensed Merchandise are the only legitimate and acceptable way to show the Designated Marks.

IN NO CASE may the names and descriptions of merchandise be used separately or apart from photographs of the Official Licensed Merchandise.

You MAY NOT use depictions of the Designated Marks in text or graphic form on packaging, signage, marketing materials, or in print media, advertising campaigns, promotions, emails, icons, domain names or trade names of the Retailer's creation, separate and apart from photographs of Official Licensed Merchandise.

4. You must NOT make any commercial use whatsoever of the words "Olympic," "Paralympic," "2010," "VANOC" or "Vancouver 2010" without the express written consent of VANOC, which may be withheld in VANOC's sole discretion.

5 . You must NOT associate the Official Licensed Merchandise with any other goods (whether branded or unbranded) nor use, offer or provide the Licensed Merchandise to induce the sale of other goods, such as by combination sales.

6. You must NOT promote, advertise or sell the Official Licensed Merchandise on the Internet or any other electronic interactive multimedia or on-line service or database.

7. You must NOT sell Official Licensed Merchandise to any person who you know or suspect intends to re-sell the Official Licensed Merchandise.

8. Official Licensed Merchandise must NOT represent more than 20% of your overall product offering or retail floor space. Furthermore, you will NOT establish any Olympic-themed boutique or "store within a store" on your premises.

For the sake of clarity, Olympic-themed boutiques are defined as the segregation of a portion of your retail floor space for dedication exclusively to the sales of Official Licensed Merchandise and/or decorated so as to distinguish the boutique from adjoining retail spaces within your premises.

9. You must NOT use tickets to the 2010 Winter Games or Official Licensed Merchandise in conjunction with any type of promotion, including contests, raffles or give-aways.

10. Visa is an International Program Partner and the official payment card of the Games. Accordingly, you must NOT conduct any marketing, advertising, or other promotions relating to Official Licensed Merchandise in a manner which would create any express or implied association between the Official Licensed Merchandise and any payment card other than Visa.

Any Official Licensed Merchandise marketing, advertising or promotions that include reference to a manner of payment must refer only to Visa. For greater clarity, you may accept payment for Official Licensed Merchandise by way of a payment card other than Visa, provided that such card has not been identified in any way as being a payment method associated with the Official Licensed Merchandise.

We trust you understand these conditions and will have no problem complying with them. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the VANOC Official Licensee for clarification.

Thank you very much for your cooperation. We wish you much success in your retailing of the Official Licensed Merchandise.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 12, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Business| #2252
VANCOUVER COIN DEALER ORDERED BY VANOC TO STOP INTERNET SALES OF OLYMPIC COINS BOUGHT FROM MINT WHOLESALERS

A well-known Canadian coin authority and president of his own coin sales company is outraged that the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games (VANOC) has ordered him to remove all references to Olympic coin sets for sale that he bought wholesale through a distributor from the Canadian Mint.

Brian Grant Duff, the owner of All Nations Stamp and Coin Shop, which operates in the Hudson's Bay store in downtown Vancouver -- HBC is a major sponsor of the 2010 Winter Olympics -- says the first he realized he was about to have a problem with VANOC was when he received a call from the organization earlier this week.

He says he thought, at first, it was a hoax, but his opinion changed when he received an e-mail from Benjy Berger, VANOC's Manager of Merchandising, on April 11. Attached to it was a document outlining VANOC's rules for retailers who have licenses with VANOC to sell Olympic-related goods, and Duff's store isn't one of them.

Berger's cover note said, "Please specifically note the rules around Internet promotion, advertisements and sales -- none of which are permitted. Please remove the Vancouver 2010 content from your website and ensure that it complies with these conditions." As he understands it, he has to remove all references from his site by Friday.

At the moment, he's responded by posting an item on his website's newsletter section, with the headline that the site has been "censored" by VANOC.

Duff says he purchased "not much -- several thousand dollars" worth of the coin sets, as have his competitors, from one of two distributors who deal with the Canadian Mint, as he has done with all of the Mint's products in the normal course of events for the past 25 years. He points out that this is the largest Olympic coin program ever offered by the Mint. And, as he always does, he offered them for sale on his company's website. He says he hasn't sold many -- "it's too early, yet; the Games are too far away" -- but that's when he recalled that representatives of VANOC, who identified themselves to him at the time, had earlier this month purchased Olympic coin collector sets from his store.

"What's not routine," he asks rhetorically, "about putting the Mint's products up on your website?" Duff, who became interested in coin collecting when he was seven, adds, "I'm an Olympic supporter. I want what's good for the city. I want what's good for kids. I see myself as a coin collector, first and foremost. I'm trying to promote coin collecting. If there are a bunch of coins out there that promote the celebration of excellence, the Olympic ideal -- and get people interested in coin collecting, then I'm all over it. But I'm now being told by VANOC that I'm not part of The Plan."

VANOC has so far acknowledged that only three of its corporate sponsors -- the Royal Bank, Petro-Canada and the Canadian Mint, through its boutique stores -- have rights to sell the collector coins sets produced by the Mint.

After learning of VANOC's objections, Duff -- who is a director of the Vancouver Numismatic Society, a member of the Canadian Stamp Dealer's Association and the Canadian Association of Numismatic Dealers -- contacted both distributors and realized that they were as surprised and puzzled as he was. "I feel like an outlaw today," says Duff. He says he's since contacted the national coin dealer's association to warn other shops such as his, and asked the Mint for clarification.

Duff also wanted to know how VANOC's licensing arrangements with the Mint and HBC would affect his store. But, he said, while Berger told him he can't discuss those arrangements, he told Duff that HBC's rights to use the Olympic brands only extends to subsidiaries that HBC owns and operates, and that's not the case with his store, either. Duff agrees that he has non-exclusive rights to sell coins in the Bay; that, under the terms of its agreement with him, it could sell Olympic coins in its Olympic boutique, but isn't doing so.

Berger also told Duff that he hoped that the issue could be resolved "without [us] having to track the distributor from which you acquired the merchandise and take further steps." Duff asks, "Am I now supposed to turn in my supplier?" Berger also said that if the Olympic content wasn't removed from the All Nations Stamp and Coin Shop web site, "We will be in touch with the Mint to follow up further."

Duff says it's clear from VANOC's reaction it doesn't want his company to sell he coin sets on line, but he wonders if he's allowed to sell his stock at all.

Typically, one of the reasons VANOC has objected to unapproved retailers selling Olympic merchandise is to deal with ambush marketing, and in part because it wants to ensure that royalties generated from the sale of such products accrue to VANOC. But Duff says he's discussing the coins and sets without claiming to be aligned with VANOC, and he assumes VANOC either has, or soon will, received royalties generated from the sale of the coins by the Mint to its wholesalers. But, he adds, "all that's irrelevant" as far as VANOC is concerned.

The Mint has said it will be producing about two dozen VANOC-related coins between now and 2010, issuing new ones on a regular basis. And Duff he has, as a result of his research since being contacted by VANOC, that there is a mechanism that would allow his company to apply to become an authorized distributor through the Mint of its coins, and it may make commercial sense for him to try that route. However, he hasn't yet had a chance to assess it, noting that while it may be possible to do it, he's not sure he wants to do business with VANOC after the way it's treated him.

Duff concludes his newsletter item with the comment, "Are we really to be blacklisted by the Mint? Does VANOC want to drive the sale of legitimate Olympic coins underground, and have dealers slide them across their counters in plain brown wrappers? Will the Vancouver Canucks contact us next and tell us we cannot offer the Mint's Canucks coin sets on our website?"

BACKGROUND

All Nations Stamp and Coin Shop has available from the Mint:

2007 Olympic uncirculated set

2010 Olympics coin collector card

2007 - 2010 Olympic coin set

2007 Olympic curling 25¢ day of mintage coin

2007 Sterling silver $25 Olympic curling hologram

2006 Proof Olympic Lucky Loony in a Bookmark

2006 Proof Colourized Sterling Silver Olympic Dollar

2006 Olympic "Lucky" Loonie

2004 Olympic Lucky Loonie official Mint pack

2004 Unc. Canada Olympic Lucky Loonie

RESOURCES
All Nations Stamp & Coins website:
www.allnationsstampandcoin.com

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 12, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2251

Here are three moguls we ran into today:
VANOC ANTI-DOPING DIRECTOR SAYS MISSION IS TWO-FOLD

Jeremy Luke, the former general manager of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES), hired by VANOC as director of its Anti-Doping function, says VANOC's anti-doping mission has two main components to it. VANOC earlier reached agreement with Montreal-based CCES to help it run the anti-doping laboratory services of the Games. Says Luke, "One is to make sure we've got a cutting-edge, doping-control program [that's] consistent with the IOC and IPC anti-doping rules, which incorporate all the latest analytical techniques to maximize the deterrent [with the companion lab facility], so we can send a very strong message to athletes: if you choose to deliberately dope and you come to Vancouver, we've got a system in place to catch you. But of equal importance is that [VANOC] wants to do everything it can to inform athletes of the IOC and IPC anti-doping rules, and provide them with the resources in order for them to be able to make the right decision when it comes to doping." VANOC, he says, has a five-point, information-and-awareness program which will use existing anti-doping programs. VANOC's initial plan involves implementing part of the program during the run-up to the 2010 Winter Games with the federations of various sports that will be held at the Games. VANOC, he says, "will be bringing other staff from [the CCES], adapting their protocols, their procedures and other aspects of their program and relying on their expertise." Luke says VANOC intends to leave an anti-doping legacy after it's gone. "We think in Canada we've got a pretty effective way to educate our athletes. Both in and out of competition, athletes receive notification from a CCES chaperone that they have been selected for doping control and are informed of their rights and responsibilities associated with the process before major Games. What we want to do is take that program and provide it to national Olympic committees (NOCs) and national Paralympic committees (NPCs). We will provide them with various anti-doping resources and do everything we can to get them to use these resources and engage their athletes in the process." He says that process will begin early next year. The doping control labs are expected to be set up in the 2010 Olympic Athlete Villages.

CANADA ONLY HALFWAY IN CONSTRUCTING 2010 WEATHER NETWORK

Environment Canada, which has decided to set up a complex network of new or upgraded weather stations in southern British Columbia to support the 2010 Winter Olympics through the federal department's Canadian Meteorological Service, says it is about half way through establishing the 25 sites it says it needs for the job. Weather stations, now part of the MSC's Olympic Autostation Network, are located near various 2010 venues, as well as near towns and airports on Vancouver Island which are upstream in the typical weather flow that comes in from the Pacific ocean and onto the southern BC coast. The 14 sites now automatically collecting data and tied into the Meteorological Service's computers include: Whistler Mountain (a High Level station for snow and temperature measurements, a separate High Level station to measure wind, and a low level station to handle both), Blackcomb Mountain at the base; Callaghan Valley (base, ski jump top, biathlon area); Cypress Bowl (North station for temperature and snow, South for wind, and one for both at the freestyle area); West Vancouver; Squamish airport; Port Mellon and Qualicum airport. In addition, the MSC is still working on construction of a complex weather radar station, to be located just south of the Whistler Olympic Village. The MSC is attempting to put in as many stations as possible as soon as possible, to collect as much weather data during the times the 2010 Winter Games will be running, in order to improve forecasting for the Games. It appears, but it's not yet confirmed, that additional sites are expected to be located at Port Hardy, Port McNeill, Campbell River, Courtney, Nanaimo, Tofino -- all on Vancouver Island -- along with Abbotsford, Hope and possibly Merrit. Vancouver and Victoria are also included in the Network.

BC STILL MULLING ABORIGINAL PAVILION FOR 2010 GAMES

BC's Tourism minister Stan Hagen says the provincial government "isn't yet ready" to announce the fact that an aboriginal pavilion is going to be built in what's called the Entertainment Precinct of downtown Vancouver to mark the involvement of four aboriginal tribes in the 2010 Games. Hagen made the comments before going into a meeting in Vancouver this afternoon to discuss the pavilion and other aspects of the culture. "We want to do it," he says of helping to establish the pavilion. "We're holding talks with the federal government -- we're having a little trouble getting their attention -- but it is something that I think would be a good [tourism] product. In travelling to China, in travelling to Germany, I've found there's huge interest in the [aboriginal] aspect of culture, history and tourism... it's a very powerful brand."

RESOURCES

Our previous main story on CCES
'VANOC, Canadian Centre for Ethiics in Sport arrange to deliver "comprehensive" anti-doping services'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:1954; Published on Friday, November 3, 2006]

Our previous main story on the aboriginal pavilion:
'C$20 million aboriginal pavilion planned for downtown Vancouver cultural district area'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:2125; Published on Thursday, February 1, 2007]

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 12, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2250
BC CABINET MINISTER CALLS FOR NEW FEDERAL POLICY IN TIME TO ALLOW INTERNATIONAL ATHLETES TO FLY DIRECTLY TO VANCOUVER FOR 2010 GAMES

A senior BC cabinet minister has called for the Canadian government to bring in a new air transportation policy, noting that many of the world's elite athletes can't fly directly to Vancouver for the 2010 Games from their countries because of the existing regulatory restraints.

Stan Hagen, a veteran cabinet minister who is current BC's minister of Tourism, Sport and the Arts, says, "We need a new Open Skies policy, and we need it now, so today I'm calling on the federal government to get those negotiations done... before 2009."

Hagen blames the current situation on the federal government department responsible for air-transportation regulation. "Did you know that most of the world's athletes, coming here for 2010, can't fly here directly?" he says, adding, "If you're a French skier, you have to stop in Montreal or Toronto before you can carry on to Vancouver. If you're an Italian skater, you have to stop in Toronto, before you carry on to Vancouver. That just doesn't make any sense. Vancouver International Airport, for eight years, keeps on being voted the best airport. The only thing that's stopping these people from landing here directly is Transport Canada."

Hagen said he met with the federal government's tourism minister Gerry Ritz just last week, and "pressed British Columbia's case for 'Open Skies'."

The last time the Canadian government dealt with the concept was under the former Liberal government in November, 2005, 10 years after the first major formulation. At that time, the government was focused on expanding the relationship with the United States and protecting the country's national airline, Air Canada, which was still emerging from a 19-month bankruptcy that had ended two years earlier.

The 1995 air services agreement between Canada and the United States created an open regime for air services between both countries. There were, however, constraints regarding air services between each other’s territory and third countries, so the most significant amendments involved improving Canadian air-carrier access to the third country markets of the United States and Canada.

Hagen says, "The reason the policy is in place the way it is now is to protect Air Canada, but if you've checked Air Canada's balance sheet lately, they don't need any protection. I get why [the federal government] did this. In a small country like Canada, sometimes you have to make those rules. I think it's time to relax those rules."

The federal ministry was collecting comments about the current policy to the end of December, and is now working on reformulating portions of it.

RESOURCES

Information about Stan Hagen
www.leg.bc.ca/mla/38thparl/hagen.htm

--

Information about federal tourism minister Gerry Ritz
www.pm.gc.ca/eng/bio.asp?id=78

--

The current federal air transportation policy in a 343k PDF file:
www.tc.gc.ca/pol/en/ace/consultations/blueSky.pdf

--

A brief overview of two related air regulatory policies of the federal government:
-- Air Cargo Transshipment www.tc.gc.ca/pol/en/ace/consultations/airCargoTrans.htm
-- Foreign Carrier Access www.tc.gc.ca/pol/en/ace/consultations/foreignCarrier.htm

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 12, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |General| #2249
UBC STUDENT SOCIETY REJECTS VANOC OFFER OF UP TO C$224,500 FOR TWO MONTH'S RENTAL OF WHISTLER LODGE

The Alma Mater Society of the University of British Columbia has rejected a proposal from the 2010 Olympics organizing committee to pay it up to C$224,500 for use of the Society's lodge in Whistler for two months during the Games, in favour of keeping it available for UBC students.

The decision, taken as a straw poll during a meeting of the AMS Student Council, came on a proposal brought to the meeting by the AMS's Finance Commissioner, Sophia Haque. According to the proposal, the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games (VANOC) wanted the lodge for two months to house volunteers and tradespeople. VANOC has been struggling for at least two years to acquire the 3,000 rooms it needs in Whistler to house the support staff and volunteers needed to run the Games in February and March, 2010. Haque reported that, under the proposal, the AMS would get anywhere from C$128,000 to C$224,500 instead of the C$49,000 the lodge would bring in normally in that period through rentals to students and the public during the same period.

The 42-bed lodge is located three kilometres south of Whistler Village -- just over half a kilometre from Whistler Mountain -- and contains a sauna and Jacuzzi hot tub, a games room, a wood-burning fireplace and two lounges. The layout is dormitory style, hostel type of accommodation. Each room has two, three or four beds in it with curtains separating the rooms. Beds that are not booked by students are normally rented to the public for between C$30 and C$38 per night during the January-March period that interests VANOC. UBC students would typically pay between C$22 and C$24 per night during the same period.

The debate over the matter, which was extensive during the meeting, centred on whether it would be more beneficial for the Society and the 44,000 students it represents to rent the lodge exclusively to VANOC, or leave it open for student use during the Games.

The discussion included fretting about students booking beds and auctioning them on the Internet, prolonging the talks with VANOC to get the payment increased, and "Olympics displaces thousands of people. Activists are raising
awareness about that. When we rent out to Vanoc, we'd be helping that." Haque pointed out the maximum number of students who would benefit would be 42 times 14 days, or 294 for two nights each during the Olympics. For the other eight weeks, 672 students if they stayed for three days each, for a total of 966 students who could potentially benefit, out of all the students the AMS represents.

Ultimately, however, the council solidly backed the concept that it should be left available for UBC students, who would otherwise have trouble attending the 2010 Games in Whistler without it.

RESOURCES

UBC Whistler Lodge info:
www.ubcwhistlerlodge.com/winter.htm

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 12, 2007

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2248

Here are three moguls we ran into today:
VANOC REPORT TO OLYMPIC, PARALYMPIC COMMITTEES DETAILS 2010 GAMES

A 52-page report, prepared for the national Olympic and Paralympic committees around the world by VANOC in PDF format and published last December, has now been made available on the International Paralympic Committee's website. The document provides an excellent overview of the 2010 Games to last November, and includes: a senior-level VANOC org chart; operational schematic layouts of the two Olympic villages, located in Vancouver and Whistler; fact sheets for each of the 2010 sports; and a brief discussion of each of VANOC's competition venues and their status. It would be particularly useful for our subscribers who have joined us in the last half year or so, as it would provide an easy-to-understand management summary of where VANOC is and how it got there, and help you to better understand its government and quango relationships (discussion of sponsors is in the document, but is essentially limited to their names and logos). Among other things, the Vancouver Village schematics show there are expected to be vehicle-control points at the corners of Quebec and Terminal as well as one on the west side of Quebec street just north of Science World near its parking lot entrance, another on the northeast corner of Second and Quebec streets, as well as a major one at Quebec and First streets, where the Village's main entrance is expected to be located. The schematics also show Village access-control points on the east centre of the Cambie bridge, First and Ontario, First and Columbia and at the entrance to the support operations area at First and Wylie streets. For the Whistler Village, because of its layout, the major vehicle and access control location is at the Village's entrance on the Sea-to-Sky highway. [For a link to the document, see RESOURCES, below.]

COC EXECUTIVES TO HEAR REPORTS ON 2010 PREPARATIONS

The Canadian Olympic Committee's Board of Directors will hear reports on the state of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games and the VANOC-related program "Own the Podium" when the organization holds its annual meeting and congress in Halifax April 19–22. There will also be status reports from the International Olympic Committee and the Montreal-based World Anti-Doping Agency, run by VANOC Board director Richard Pound. And, the meeting will also hear about a community relations program, presented by VANOIC sponsor Petro-Canada. The program involves pairing 10 prominent Canadian Olympic athletes with 20 schools in the Halifax region "for a series of inspirational sessions." During the congress, several Canadian Olympic athletes will be inducted into the 2007 Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame during a ceremony, presented by VANOC sponsor General Motors of Canada.

SKI FEDERATION DIRECTOR EXPECTS SKI JUMP GAMES SUPPORT TO EXPAND

Walter Hofer, the International Ski Federation director for ski jumping events, has some comments following the end of the first winter season of competition following the introduction of new equipment regulations and the Torino Olympics that could have some ripple implcatioions for the 2010 Games. Hofer told the Federation's newsletter "NewsFlash" that, "it became clear this season that the athletes have now become used to the new regulations. We saw significant technical development in the inrun and take off-phases of the jump where the athletes have become much more aggressive." He also says the Federation can be expected to work a lot closer with Games organizers in the future. "This challenging season, where we constantly fought with the elements, showed us that all organizers must be prepared for all situations. There is no venue with guaranteed good weather any longer. Specific preparations are especially required for wind protection and the inrun track. For us [in the Federation], this means that we need to provide more support for the organizers with their technical preparations. This begins with site inspections in the summer and continues with the technical delegates who probably should arrive at the venue 2-3 days earlier than they have done in the past," he adds.

RESOURCES

Vancouver 2010 Progress Report to NOCs and NPCs, in PDF format, 1.5 megs:
tinyurl.com/3ad5ky
If the document is no longer available, it can be obtained by Replying to this e-mail and making your request.

Here is a map of the vehicle and access locations you can view without downloading the document:
tinyurl.com/2zmebh

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 11, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #2247
ICBC CONFIRMED AS SPONSOR OF 2010 GAMES, AS OLYMPIC LICENSE PLATE LAUNCHED

BC Premier Gordon Campbell, his minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General, John Les, and 2010 CEO John Furlong were all on hand this morning to welcome the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia and Paul Taylor, its president and CEO, as the newest Olympic tier-2 sponsor.

They weren't the only ones; dozens of ICBC employees were also at the marketing ceremony to mark the occasion as Campbell announced the government would launch a 2010 Olympic license plate that BC motorists will be able to purchase the plate for their own vehicles starting next week.

The plate features the logo of the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games (VANOC) in its centre, and will be on all of the 4,500 vehicles expected to be a part of the 2010 fleet. They will be for sale for an initial fee of C$35 starting Monday through ICBC's Autoplan insurance brokers across the province, and renewable until 2012 for C$25 per year. The net from the sale will turned over to VANOC to help pay for the Games operations. (An image of the plate is on ICBC's home web page; see RESOURCES, below, for the link]

Furlong told Taylor, who was the manager of Volunteers at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, "We'll now look to develop additional licence plate programs in provinces and territories across Canada."

ICBC is primarily involved with VANOC because of the 2010 organization's fleet requirements as the cars and vans, contributed by General Motors Canada as part of its Tier 1 sponsorship, begin to be acquired by VANOC for transporting staff, hundreds of members of the so-called Olympic family of governments, sponsors and media technicians and, eventually, athletes and their support crews. The sponsorship allows VANOC to cross off another large cash item from its operational business plan. VANOC now has more than C$600 million of its budgeted C$750 million in sponsorships.

ICBC is the province's monopoly that provides universal basic vehicle insurance, as well as dealing with driver licensing, vehicle registration and licensing throughout the province. Furlong and Campbell attached a demonstration plate on a GM hybrid car. However, the monopoly portion of ICBC's business will not be covering the cost of the sponsorship, according to Taylor. Costs for the insurance services will be funded by ICBC's optional insurance business, which competes with other auto insurers in the BC marketplace. However, ICBC is the largest provider of such insurance in BC with C$1.4 billion in net premiums written and 2.2 million customers.

A tier-2 sponsor, known as an Official Supporter of VANOC, involves a contribution worth between C$15 million and C$50 million to VANOC at retail cost, but the exact level of support was not released. Les is the minister responsible for ICBC.

The six-year partnership that expires on December 31, 2012, like other Tier 1 and Tier 2 sponsors, includes sponsorship rights for the Canadian Olympic teams participating at the Beijing 2008, Vancouver 2010 and London 2012 Olympic Games.

BACKGROUND

The 2010 Winter Games is the fifth Winter Games that have introduced licence plate programs, including Calgary 1988 and the Summer Montreal Olympic Games in 1976. The BC licence plates features the 2010 Winter Games logo, the province's slogan, "The Best Place on Earth" and will be valid through 2012.

There is also an image of a mountain on the 2010 Winter Games plate. It's Mount Garibaldi in Garibaldi Park, 13 km north of Squamish, on the road between Vancouver and Whistler. The picture was also used in the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Bid proposal.

==

2010 Winter Games plates will be available in B.C. for most vehicles (owned or leased) including:
-- private passenger vehicles
-- motor homes
-- commercial trucks
-- motorcycles
-- utility trailers
-- commercial trailers
-- farm trucks

Some of these may have to be specially ordered, a process that could take up to a week.

RESOURCES

ICBC's website; an image of the license plate is part of a rolling series of pictures on its home page:
www.icbc.com

Previous stories we've written about ICBC scheduled to become a sponsor:

'One-liners on ICBC, BC Hydro, venue art...'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:2139; Published on Friday, February 9, 2007]

'Air Canada, railway, BC Hydro, ICBC all said to be talking to VANOC'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:2102; Published on Friday, January 19, 2007]

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 11, 2007

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #2246
FIRST ISSUE OF "2010 NPC NEWS" OFFERS VANOC'S OVERVIEW FOR ITS PARALYMICS AUDIENCE

Here are some items gleaned while leafing through the first issue of "2010 NPC News", a VANOC publication expected to be transmitted quarterly around the world to the national Paralympic committees (NPCs) that will be taking part in the 2010 Winter Games (VANOC also deals with NOCs -- national Olympic committee). The first issue is 13 pages:

VANOC staff will be involved with International Olympic Committee project reviews this year on May 23 and 24 as well as December 4 to 6, and with International Paralympic Committee project reviews on June 19 and 20.

The next IOC Coordination Commission meeting with VANOC is scheduled for September 11 to 13 in Vancouver.

Official venue names for VANOC competition facilities are expected to be made public later this year.

VANOC will not be organizing an Olympic Youth Camp, a cross-cultural exchange program that brings together youth from around the world in conjunction with Olympic Games. Typically, they attend workshops and seminars related to the Olympic Movement and visit Games facilities.

The 2010 Paralympic Winter Games sport program is expected to be finalized this month, but we haven't yet heard that's done. Pending that decision, there are five Paralympic sports listed, with 58 events derived from them. The ice sledge hockey is expected to have eight teams, the mixed wheelchair curling is expected to involved 10 teams; both of them will take place in Vancouver. The rest of the events take place in the Whistler area: 24 Alpine skiing events, 20 cross-country skiing events and 12 biathlon events.

One official VANOC-run test event per Paralympic sport discipline is expected to take place in March, 2009.

BACKGROUND

VANOC has a function called the NOC and NPC Services Department. It's part of the Sport, Paralympic Games and Venue Management division. The Paralympic Planning division at VANOC is headed by Dena Coward, director of Paralympic Games.

NOC and NPC Services will soon have three full-time staff members. It now has a director -- Alpine skiing Olympian Andreja McQuarrie, who worked in the NOC/NPC services department of the 2002 Winter Games and was hired by VANOC last September -- and two NOC/NPC Relations managers. (So far only Todd Allison, the NOC manager, has been hired of the two; the NPC managerial position is expected to be filled this month. Allison's handling managerial duties for both positions until the NPC one is filled. He is a former Canadian team freestyle skiing athlete and coach who ran a sport centre in Whistler until he was hired by VANOC in March, 2005. Allison also deals specifically with the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa [ANOCA], based in Cameroon; the Olympic Council of Asia [OCOA], which is based in Kuwait; the Oceania National Olympic Committees [ONOC], headquartered in Fiji; and the Pan American Sports Organization [PASO], headquartered in Bermuda.)

The Paralympic Villages in Vancouver and Whistler are scheduled to open March 5, 2010, after being reconfigured from being used by the Olympics. The Opening Paralympic Ceremony will take place March 12 of that year, and the Closing Ceremony is to occur on March 21. The Paralympic Villages will close three days later, on March 24.

RESOURCES

ANOCA:
institutions.africadatabase.org/data/i117446.html
OCA:
www.ocasia.org/
ONCA
www.oceaniasport.com/onoc/
PASO
www.olympics.bm/pasocourses.htm

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 10, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2245

Here are three moguls we ran into today:
MPS FOR 2012 PLANNING TRIP TO VANOC

Arrangements are being made with VANOC to host members of Britain's Parliament this summer, as some of those responsible for supervising the Summer Olympic Games scheduled for London in 2012 visit to see how VANOC has organized itself and how it is handling operational and construction issues. It's part of a tour of cities by the MPs that have, or soon will be, hosting the Olympics. They've already visited Beijing, Seoul and Athens, which hosted or will host Summer Olympics. John Whittingdale is chairman of the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

FIJI LOBBIES CANADA TO HELP SUPPLY 2010 GAMES

Ashwant Dwivedi, the business development manager of the Fiji Business Centre, based at the Fiji High Commission in Vancouver, said Canadian federal cabinet minister David Emerson has been told the centre is asking ways for Fiji companies to supply the 2010 Olympics Games. "Fiji can supply such things as Fiji water, fresh fruits and vegetables for the Olympic Games," Dwivedi says. Emerson is the minister responsible for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games which will be held in Vancouver. The Fiji Business Centre promotes exports to Canada. The country reported a 20 per cent in exports to Canada in 2006 to C$1.8 million in January, 2007, primarily water and canned tuna.

FOUNDATION OFFERS VANOC STAFF CAR-POOLING SUPPORT

The Jack Bell Foundation, which supports a commuter program called Ride Share in the Greater Vancouver area, has set up a special log-in page for VANOC staff. Jack Bell spokesman Darryl Novak says the method works like that of any other large employer with Ride Share, a number of which are listed on its website. Employees sign up through their corporate page, provide their home and work addresses, and get maps and listings showing other commuters travelling a similar path to and from work on a regular basis. That, in turn, helps them to form on-going commuter car pools in vans operated by the Foundation. In VANOC's case, only people with access to a Vancouver2010.com or BC government e-mail address can use it. Having a separate log-in, however, allows a VANOC employee to decide whether to be a part of a commuter pool that's comprised only of VANOC colleagues, the general public, or both. The separate registration also allows VANOC management to see how many of its employees are using the system, so that it can take measures to encourage others to participate. The Foundation is named after cranberry and peat-moss farmer Jack Bell, who died early last year. It's been operating the Ride Share program since 1992, and has about 100 vehicles in its fleet. The use of the Ride-Share organizational system is a free service provided by the Foundation, but riders pay a monthly fee to cover operational costs of the vehicle. The Foundation is largely supported by grants from Translink, the organization that plans public transportation in the Lower Mainland, and BC Transit, which does the same thing outside of the Greater Vancouver area.

RESOURCES
VANOC's Ride Share page:
vancouver2010.ride-share.com/en/my/

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 10, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2244

Here are three moguls we ran into today:
STOCK PRICES RISE AS BCE SHAREHOLDER SOUNDS WARNING TO MANAGEMENT

The largest shareholder in BCE Inc. -- which is the parent company of Bell Canada, VANOC's largest corporate sponsor -- has told he U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it will no longer take a passive role in the operation of BCE. Shares of BCE rose sharply in response to the news. They're still high, but slowly softening. In a filing signed by the president and CEO of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board, Claude Lamoureux, the pension fund says it is "closely monitoring developments and is exploring its options." Teachers' owns 5.3% of BCE's 807 million shares, and it's spent more than C$1.2 billion to acquire that much. It says that while it's still open to buying or selling BCE stock, it wants to "encourage" the company to "consider or explore sales or acquisitions of assets or businesses, or extraordinary corporate transactions -- such as a merger or other reorganization, changes to [BCE's] capitalization or dividend policy or other changes to [its]business or structure." The general concept, according to analysts, is that Teachers' wants to shake up the company, run since 2002 by CEO Michael Sabia, who was personally involved in arranging Bell's telecommunications Olympic sponsorship, valued by VANOC at C$200 million. BCE's share price has only risen about 10% since Sabia took over. The company has built a high-speed fibre-optics network between Vancouver and Whistler to service the 2010 venues. However, the company has also cut costs by C$1.25 billion over the last two years, with more that C$400 million more expected to come this year. Analysts also suggest there could be some background discussions going on about privatizing BCE, but Teachers' has had nothing to say about the speculation. Teachers' and BCE both also own a part of CTVglobemedia Inc., which owns the CTV television network, the host broadcaster of the 2010 Winter Games. BCE's other large institutional shareholders include Scotia Cassels and TD Asset Management, both with 4.9%; Mackenzie Financial with 4.6%; and Barclays, which owns 3% of BCE's stock. [For share-price info, see RESOURCES, below.]

COSPORT BEGINS ASKING CUSTOMERS ABOUT VANOC HOSPITALITY OPTIONS

CoSport, the official packaged-holiday sponsor of the 2010 Winter Games, hasn't said anything publicly about its plans yet for 2010. However, it has quietly launched a low-key, Internet inquiry form asking questions from potential customers about their intentions of taking in the 2010 Winter Olympics, and it's now available on CoSport's website. It's only asking about the 2010 Olympics; there are no questions about the 2010 Paralympics. There are obvious questions about contact information, party size, type of accommodations and which Games or Ceremonies a person might be interested in attending. However, there are also some other, not so obvious questions that give some hints about its marketing strategy options for 2010. For instance, it asks potential customers to let it know, "If you are interested in a hospitality package, would you prefer a fixed package (pre-set ticket itinerary & transportation) or a flex package (customized ticket itinerary & no transportation)?" The shortest of the possible answers to the question about length of expected stay is three to four nights, with four to five nights the second shortest. The longest answer is 18 days, which would be the entire Olympics. The company also wants to know about pre- and post-Games trips and whether people are interested in Vancouver City tours (there's nothing about Whistler being asked), and whether a visitor is interested in "discounted air travel with CoSport's preferred airline partner," which is expected to be another VANOC sponsor, Air Canada. It appears that CoSport, judging from the questions asked, is also expected to offer full-pull as well as basic-level packages, similar to those being offered for Beijing. [For a link to the questionnaire, see RESOURCES, below.]

COSPORT OUTLINES PLANS FOR OFFERING 2008 OLYMPIC TICKETS, ACCOMODATION

CoSport expects to begin this month offering ticket-and-accommodation packages for next year's Summer Olympics in Beijing. Today is 486 days before the Opening Ceremonies on August 8, 2008. CoSport has been setting up the package offers in several phases; the first phase, in which it was determining interest in various aspects of the Games, began last December and has just completed. Apparently about 2,000 Americans -- only US figures are available at the moment -- wanted to acquire 54,751 tickets out of the seven million available for the Summer Games (a Winter Games is about 1/3 the size of a Summer Games; VANOC has said 1.8 million tickets will be available in total; separate analysis indicates that roughly 70% are expected to be made available by VANOC to those outside of the Olympic family). CoSport's ticket-request phase for Beijing is expected to run from April to July of this year. The company will then allocate and confirm the tickets from the middle of July to the middle of September (when the opening ceremonies will be only 11 months away). Live ticket sales will then start for the remainder of the packages from mid-September until they're sold out, or the Games are about to begin. The tickets themselves are not actually shipped to customers until July, 2008, the month before the Games. CoSport says Opening Ceremony tickets are the most expensive offered by the Beijing Olympic organizers, selling for up to US$638 (C$731, currently) each. Closing Ceremony tickets top out at US$382 (C$438). The least-expensive tickets are US$25 (C$29) for the Opening Ceremony and US$19 (C$22) for the Closing. The CoSport packages for Beijing, however, are expected to offer choices of four hotels in downtown Beijing to go with those tickets. CoSport expects to have 90 different ticket and accommodation packages, with most accommodation options lasting three to five days. The packages, in addition to tickets and hotel rooms, also include airport transfers, meals, bilingual hosts, accredited ground transportation, "sponsor-level" access, VIP parties and the like, but there are also base-level packages that include only tickets, accommodations and breakfast.

RESOURCES
BCE's stock performance:
finance.google.com/finance?q=BCE

==

CoSport's Vancouver 2010 ticket inquiry questionnaire, without fanfare, is now collecting statistics:
www.cosport.com/vancouverrequestformcosport.asp

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 10, 2007

Monday, April 09, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2243

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

WHISTLER TO FOCUS ON 2010-RELATED INFRASTURCTURE PROJECTS

A number of capital projects have been identified by Whistler as necessary to bolster the infrastructure of the resort as it readies itself to host the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, although they will have long-term uses by the municipality and aren't being done by VANOC. Whistler's current five-year capital plan, approved last week, includes money for several such projects, including: C$17.7 million for the C$33-million upgrade of the RMOW's wastewater-treatment plant by 2008, to both improve capacity and be much more environmentally friendly. It's not far from the 2010 Olympic Village; C$5.3 million for the closure of the Whistler landfill, which partly underlies the Olympic Village grounds; C$4 million to build a new waste-transfer station in the lower Callaghan Valley, where the 2010 Nordic Centre is under construction. In addition, C$5.5 million is expected to be spent to complete the C$9.7 million Whistler Public Library project. Whistler mayor Ken Melamed says the Library work isn't directly related to the 2010 Games, but expects it will be used for related events. Whistler is in the process of finalizing an agreement with VANOC that includes the ability of the resort to use VANOC trademarks in ways connected with the library.

EDELMAN'S PURCHASE OF KARYO SEEN AS 2010-RELATED CORPORATE STRATEGY

The decision by the international public-relations firm Edelman to purchase Vancouver's Karyo Communications is, in part, a strategic move designed to give Edelman a beachhead for 2010 Olympic-related work, according to Karyo. The value of the arrangement was not released. Edelman is one of the world’s largest public relations firms, with 2,600 employees in 47 offices around the world, including two others in Canada -- in Toronto and Montreal. The 25-year-old Vancouver firm, renamed Karyo Edleman, is expected to continue to be managed by principals Patti Schom-Moffatt and Paul Welsh, who say "The creation of Karyo Edelman offers several key strategic advantages for Edelman, including a Vancouver presence for Edelmans global sports and Olympic practice in advance of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games."

A DAY LATE, AND A DOLLAR SHORT

VANOC only recently reported that a western-Canadian firm, Heatherbrae Heatherbrae Construction Company, which earlier won the bid to build the luge track just outside of Whistler for VANOC, was given a contract to build some of the Whistler Sliding Centre's buildings -- back in March, 2006. Heatherbrae, a 17-year-old family-owned company based in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond, is a general contractor that specializes in commercial, industrial, institutional and residential structures. It had quite a bit of experience constructing buildings in the Whistler and Pemberton area before winning the contract, the value of which was not disclosed. Meanwhile, VANOC has also finally reported that Surespan Construction won a VANOC contract to build bridge girders for the Whistler Nordic Centre. That contract, too, was awarded a year ago, and the value undisclosed. Because of various gag clauses built into its contracts, it is sometimes difficult to learn about the awards of contracts VANOC makes available through the BC government's public bidding site, BC Bid, unless VANOC happens to mention them.

RESOURCES

Michael Knight

President

Heatherbrae Construction Company Limited

Suite 140, 12371 Horseshoe Way

Richmond BC, V7A 4S5

Phone: 604-277-2315

Fax: 604-277-2311

Web: www.heatherbrae.com

E-mail: <mikek@heatherbrae.com>

Surespan Group of Companies

Suite #216 - 545 Clyde Avenue

West Vancouver, BC V7T 1C5

Tel: 604-925-3377

Fax: 604-925-3394

Web: www.surespan.com

E-mail: <bridges@surespan.com>

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 9, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2242

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

VANOC BEGINS SECOND PHASE OF VOLUNTEER SYSTEM

VANOC has set up several web pages on its website to start organizing volunteers, primarily at this point for pre-Games events. "Pre-Games volunteers are an integral part of the success of the 2010 Winter Games. Pre-Games volunteers will be involved in the years leading up to 2010, supporting many visits from delegations and events as well as providing general assistance that will be required before the Games. Community members from the Vancouver and Whistler area are the core of our pre-Games volunteers," says the web page, drafted by VANOC's communications department. Pre-Games volunteers are instructed to use VANOC's existing online resume management system, which allows people to set up an account and register for volunteer positions as they become available, and to search for events that need volunteers. There are several cautions from VANOC: first is that this isn't a system to apply to volunteer for the 2010 Winter Games themselves, when about 24,000 positions will be needed. There won't be invitations for that until next year. Second, VANOC says a detailed resume isn't required, but a cover letter and brief description of previous volunteer experience is necessary. This is the second phase of volunteering for the 2010 organization. VANOC has had a low-key volunteering system underway for its own operations, such as driving shuttle vans, for about a year. [See RESOURCES, below, for web links].

ABORIGINAL EXECUTIVE URGES FIRMS TO THINK NATIVE IN BIDDING FOR 2010 WORK

Peter Lantin of Tribal Resources Investment Corporation, an aboriginal financial-services firm, told a recent meeting organized to discuss how businesses could work with VANOC, says that paying attention to aboriginal involvement is one way to help your case, along with innovation. “Creativity is going to go a long way,” Lantin told the group. The company, nicknamed Tricorp is based in Prince Rupert, on BC's coast about an hour's flight by jet from Vancouver. The non-profit organization, formed in 1990 and owned by the major aboriginal groups in northwestern BC, has so far loaned about C$23.8 million to individuals, groups, partnerships, organizations, co-operatives and corporations. He told the group that VANOC and BC government policies combine to ensure that companies throughout the province have a chance at supplying the myriad of things that VANOC will need to support the 2010 Winter Games, adding, “There’s going to be a massive awarding of contracts for ‘you name it’ in the next year.” He said that VANOC has ensured there is strong aboriginal participation working with the Games, along with environmental sustainability, and making sure those are part of your proposals to work with either VANOC or larger firms that are after VANOC business can help considerably. Business suggestions at the meeting, which took place about 80 kilometres inland in the town of Terrace, included bottling water for sale to those attending the Games and selling native art.

2010 OPPORTUNITIES GUIDE TRANSLATED TO PUNJABI, CHINESE

Translations of the "Guide for Business Opportunities in the 2010 Winter Games", a booklet prepared by VANOC major sponsor, the Royal Bank, have finally been released in Punjabi and Chinese. The idea is to help Asian-Canadian businesspeople understand how they might find opportunities related to the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. French and English version have been available for more than a year. The guide is available for download in PDF format [See RESOURCES, below].

RESOURCES

VANOC volunteer info:

... general:

www.vancouver2010.com/en/Participation/VolunteerOpportunities

... pre-Game volunteering instructions:

www.vancouver2010.com/en/Participation/VolunteerOpportunities/PreGamesVolunteers

... a list of volunteer opportunities, if any, by VANOC sport event:

www.vancouver2010.com/en/Participation/VolunteerOpportunities/SportEventVolunteers

Tribal Resources Investment Corporation

www.tricorp.ca/

"Guide for Business Opportunities in the 2010 Winter Games"

...in Punjabi:

2010commercecentre.com/documents/businessguides/2010BusinessGuide_PJ.pdf

...in Chinese:

2010commercecentre.com/documents/businessguides/2010BusinessGuide_CN.pdf

...in English:

2010commercecentre.com/documents/BusinessGuide/Olympbro_EN_web.pdf

...in French:

2010commercecentre.com/documents/businessguides/2010BusinessGuide_FR.pdf

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 9, 2007

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2241

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

VANOC PUBLIC RELATIONS DEPARTMENT TO EXPAND AGAIN

VANOC is expected to bolster its PR team in about a month or so. The Communications department has been authorized to add two new managers to its roster, one to help deal with the mounting flood of work its encountering from international media, the other to help deal with Canadian media. In both cases, the people they'll be hiring are expected to be fluently bilingual in English and French since that's a requirement in the department, and be sufficiently experienced -- with at least seven and more likely 10 years experience in dealing with high pressure and numerous deadlines in a corporate environment. The work also involves briefing executives who are expecting to be doing media interviews, as well as having the confidence and capability of being spokesmen for VANOC. There are a couple of interesting aspects to the job, we've learned from Communications department documents dealing with how the functions work. One is that they will need to "Ensure thorough and detailed research is conducted prior to conducting media interviews, including but not limited to, validating all responses and messaging with the CEO, senior communications team...", and that they will be required to "ensure accurate, appropriate and strategic messaging is provided at every point of contact with the media irregardless of formal or informal setting." The full-time jobs are good until the end of March 2010, when just about everybody at VANOC gets their walking papers.

AIR CANADA AIMS TO MAKE MOST OF OLYMPIC MARKETING OPPORTUNITY

Air Canada's president and CEO, Monte Brewer, says of its appointment as VANOC's official airline sponsor, "We're expanding globally and this obviously helps get the word out." He made the comment to Canadian Press reporter Ross Marowits in Montreal today, after confirming that the company's sponsorship rights include the transportation of Canadian Olympic teams to next year's Summer Games in Beijing and the 2012 London Olympics, as well as to the 2010 Games in Vancouver, where it wants to continue to develop its west coast hub. Painting aircraft is expected to be part of the marketing. "I think we'll tie in everything," Brewer said. "It's more than a one-off advertising campaign. It has to permeate everything that we do."

VANOC OFFERS MARKETING SUPPORT FOR OLYMPIC COIN CARDS

VANOC's website has begun extolling the virtues of a Games fund-raising program that also helps Canadian athletes and markets two of its large sponsors, all at the same time. A feature story posted today discusses the combination of the Canadian Mint's Olympic circulation coins being sold in packages at PetroCanada stations across the country. A portion of the sale of the coin packages generates revenue for VANOC and for PetroCanada's grants program for coaches of high-performance athletes. A dozen illustrated cards that include collectable versions of Olympic- or Paralympic-themed 25-cent circulation coins, with distinctive red painting to enhance the Maple Leaf in the background are being released over the next couple of years. So far, curling and hockey are in circulation, with wheelchair curling scheduled for release in July, biathlon in September and alpine skiing in October. The VANOC marketing support is adding to the heavy rotation of television advertising for the coins conducted by the Mint's ad agencies.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 5, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2240

RICHMOND SETS UP SEVERAL FUNDS WITH C$100 MILLION WINDFALL FROM SALE OF OLYMPIC OVAL LANDS

The City of Richmond has decided how it intends to use the nearly C$100 million in surplus funds it received from the sale of the lands adjacent to the sports complex that will house the 2010 speedskating oval. The lands were originally to be sold to help pay C$43 million of the C$178 million capital cost of the complex, but the bidding during the sale came in much higher than that.

Richmond council's General Purposes Committee, chaired by mayor Malcolm Brodie, has voted that council set up an umbrella Community Legacy Fund with the extra that would spawn a Land Replacement Fund worth C$25 million, a Reserves Assistance Fund of C$25 million that's essentially a savings account, and several other speciality funds for social development purposes in early 2008.

As of January 1, the principal of the money, along with the interest, would be available to buy appreciating assets at any time, which would include a minimum of 7.7 hectares (19 acres) of new land to replace the Oval lands, which were originally owned by the City.

A Special Capital Projects and Major Initiatives Fund would also be created with a portion of the money, so up to C$21 million could be spent on specific projects "that are worthy of support but don't have an available approved funding source." Other things could include conversion projects for the Olympic Oval building after the 2010 Games that would speed up the building's community programming.

Interest from the master fund could also be used on projects including the cost of planning, physical assessments, seismic assessments, project feasibility research, project planning, functional space programming, design concepts, geo-technical testing, cost estimating and preliminary design work.

The City would also be able to borrow against the fund, if need be, "on the basis that the monies would be repaid with interest at a minimum one-quarter of 1% above the average rate of return realized on the Fund during the previous year."

Other specialty funds:

A special-needs capital fund of C$4 million, which would primarily be used to help make specific projects more accessible for the disabled;

A facilites fund of C$5 million for parks and roads projects;

A sustainability capital fund of C$5 million "to fund research on new sustainability capital projects, resources, programs and initiatives."

An arts & culture capital initiatives fund of about C$4 million to beef up existing programs that are short of money.

The balance of roughly C$5 million would be set aside as a contingency for the time being.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 5, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2239

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

AIR CANADA LOADS, NOT GAMES, CHANGING TRADERS MINDS

Analysts are saying today that the bump upward in the price of Air Canada's shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange was largely due to the fact the company earlier reported a record-setting cumulative load factor -- how full its aircraft were on average -- of 83.1%, rather than anything to do with the Olympic sponsorship deal. Versant Partners, for instance, changed its recommendation from "hold" to "buy" for Air Canada for precisely that reason. The airline said yesterday its March load factor for both its mainline and regional carrier Jazz was up 5.9%, even with a capacity increase of 2.9%. The March load factor was 80.7% a year ago. Versant said the first-quarter load factors came in slightly higher at 80.2% than its original estimate of 79%.

POWELL RIVER LOOKS TO HOST LATVIA, BELARUS FOR 2010

The small BC coastal community of Powell River, north of Vancouver, has been making contact with Norway in an effort to persuade it to think of the town as a place to lodge during the 2010 Games, now it's trying to entice two other small European countries to think likewise. Todd English, the director of hockey operations for the Powell River Regals, the junior hockey team, says the team's trip to the European country of Belarus allowed him to campaign for the town to host the country's 2010 Olympics hockey team. "When I was in Belarus," he told a reporter for the Powell River Peak newspaper, "I met with the national junior coach of Russia, the Latvian ice hockey president, and also the Belarus ice hockey president and the manager for the Belarus men's national team. I gave them all the info from Powell River, and explained our intent to host a hockey nation participating in the 2010 Olympics." Latvia and Belarus are ranked ninth and tenth in the world, according by the International Ice Hockey Federation, which technically means they could be at the Games. English added, however, "They won't know until the 2009 championships if they're coming to the Games. But we did make those contacts and we do have relationships with those people." in 1999, the Regals hosted Team Canada and Team Norway at an exhibition game. There's a connection between Powell River, English and VANOC that stems from that episode. Denis Hainault, was the Team Canada manager for hockey back then; he's the director of hockey for the 2010 Winter Olympics now.

2010 SPONSOR VINCOR FATTENS PARENT'S BOTTOM LINE

Constellation Brands, the parent company of VANOC Canadian wine supplier Vincor International, reports record net sales of US$5.2 billion for the fiscal year ended Feb. 28. Net sales were up 13 percent over the previous year, seven of those percentage points, the company says, was due to the acquisition last June of Vincor. Constellation (NYSE: STZ; ASX: CBR) had operating income of US$699 million, and net income of US$322 million.

RESOURCES

Our earlier story from November 1, 2005 about Powell River's Norweigan ambitions:

www.morgan-news.com/2010/archives/2005_11_01_Bronze.htm

(Use your browser's Find function to search for "Powell River" on the page)

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 5, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #2238

AIR CANADA TO START MARKETING ITS SIX-YEAR VANOC SPONSORSHIP WITH PARALYMPIC FUNDRAISING THIS MONTH

The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) and Air Canada (TSX:AC.B) have negotiated a tier-2 sponsorship deal to make the national carrier the official airline of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games until December 31, 2012.

The six-year partnership, worth to VANOC an undisclosed amount between C$15 million and C$50 million, includes sponsorship rights and transportation for the Canadian Olympic teams travelling to the Beijing Summer 2008, Vancouver Winter 2010 and London Summer 2012 Olympic Games. VANOC does not have Olympic rights beyond 2012.

Montie Brewer, Air Canada's president and chief executive officer said in a ceremonial speech this morning in Montreal, where the airline is headquartered, "Our sponsorship underlines Air Canada's continuing support of the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Committees. We are looking forward to Vancouver's success as the host city of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, and are committed to playing a key role in bringing athletes, families, friends and supporters from around the world to the Games."

VANOC's CEO, John Furlong, who is also in Montreal, added, "Through this exciting partnership, they will connect Canadians and the world to the Games and carry the Vancouver 2010 message broadly around the globe."

The company's not wasting any time activating its sponsorship, which also gives it rights to use Olympic and Paralympic logos and other trademarks. Air Canada, in a marketing move designed to push business toward its website, says it will raise funds for Canadian Paralympic athletes through AirCanada.com. The company says it expects to raise about C$600,000 over the next six years for the Canadian Paralympic Committee by donating C$1 from every on-line booking made through its website during specific annual campaign times. The first such campaign will be held during the week of April 30. The average C$100,000 annual cash flow is fairly strong for the CPC organization, which is a small organization and can use the money for athlete development and operations in Canada, but it is not a significant amount of funds for Air Canada, which counts its cash flow in the billions.

Air Canada had originally approached VANOC several years ago about a sponsorship deal, citing its previous history with Olympic games in Canada, but VANOC indicated at the time that it simply wasn't ready yet to support the arrangement.

RESOURCES

Here's a link so you can have a look at Air Canada's trading activity today, from the Toronto Stock Exchange. If you scroll down the page a little, you'll see links for charts that show the airline has been in a long decline, but there has been a bump upward today, even though it has been known for several months that the VANOC deal was about to land.

tinyurl.com/2n8xb8

ACE Aviation:

www.aceaviation.com

www.aceaviation.com/en/investors/index.html

BACKGROUND

Air Canada, the 14th largest airline in the world, is a subsidiary of ACE Aviation Holdings Inc, the investment holding arm for Air Canada's operations and corporate cousins. It owns 75% of Air Canada, 58.8% of Jazz Air - Air Canada's regional passenger service -- and 40.1% of Aeroplan which is Air Canada's loyalty program, and 100% of Air Canada Technical Services, which maintains the Air Canada fleet.

Air Canada also owns Air Canada Cargo Limited Partnership, and Air Canada Vacations, along with a handful of other minor subsidiaries. ACE was formed after Air Canada emerged from bankruptcy in 2004.

ACE Aviastion also holds a 6.1% stake in US Airways Group, which is an American-based holding company that operates US Airways, US Airways Express and America West Airlines -- the largest hub-and-spoke airline network in the U.S.

Air Canada is the dominant national airline in the country; it's primary competition is from WestJet.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 5, 2007

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #2237

AIR CANADA EXPECTED TO BE NEXT CORPORATE SPONSOR OF 2010 GAMES

The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games (VANOC) is expected to announce tomorrow in Montreal, Quebec, that Air Canada has become the latest corporate sponsor of the Games, on a Tier-2 level, for between C$15 million and C$30 million.

The formal announcement is expected to be made at 7:30 am Pacific time by VANOC CEO John Furlong and Air Canada's president and CEO, Montie Brewer at Air Canada's base in Ville St. Laurent, Quebec, however, we've mentioned the likelihood the deal was in the works several times over the years.

Air Canada is Canada's largest domestic and international full-service airline, and the largest provider of scheduled passenger services in Canada. During 2005, Air Canada its main subsidiaries operated, on average, about 1,200 scheduled flights each day and carried more than 30 million passengers, using a combined fleet of 322 aircraft.

Air Canada is the second major transportation sponsor of the Games; a deal with Canadian Pacific Railway was announced earlier this year.

RESOURCES

Air Canada's call sign is TSX:AC; it's latest quarterly report, for the last quarter of 2006:

www.aircanada.com/en/about/investor/documents/2006_q4_highlights.pdf

Here's the link to Air Canada's SEDAR listings:

www.sedar.com/DisplayCompanyDocuments.do?lang=EN&issuerNo=00024384

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 4, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2236

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

ARREST MADE FOR DEFACING OLYMPIC CLOCK

Vancouver police have arrested and charged a 43-year-old man with defacing the 2010 Olympic countdown clock, a tourist draw in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery downtown. Gavid Gerry Snider was charged with mischief in connection with spray painting a slogan eight times on the wooden and stone structure on March 12. After appearing in provincial court, he was released on bail under several conditions, which include staying away from the clock, staying away from spray paint, and staying away from Olympic events. His next court appearance is on Friday, April 13. Meanwhile, police say the investigation continues into the theft of a copy of the Olympic flag from Vancouver City Hall's grounds in March. Last week, police executed a search warrant at the offices of a downtown east side organization, but did not find the missing flag.

ACTIVISTS TO CONTINUE OLYMPIC PROTESTS DESPITE HOUSING FUNDS

The so-called Anti-Poverty Committee, an ad-hoc group of activists, brushed aside the BC government's decision to spend C$80 million on adding about 1,000 units of housing stock for the homeless, most of it in Vancouver, saying they will continue to use 2010 Olympic events as leverage for their cause. One of the group, Anna Hunter, claims the government expenditure is "simply old money for old buildings." She believes the protests at Olympic events are working as a strategy for getting attention, and that there will be more of them. "Definitely," she says, "the APC will not let off. You know, we have seen the impacts and the positive effects of the work that we are doing and we will continue to intensify it." BC Premier Gordon Campbell says the government's decision had nothing to do with the APC protests, that it was a project planned well before they began. And, he adds, he thinks the protestors are hurting, not helping, their cause. Meanwhile, Judy Graves, the coordinator of Vancouver’s tenant assistance program, told CBC Radio in Vancouver this morning, "The problems we're having with homelessness are not really caused by the Olympics. They are caused by [rising] property values."

CYPRESS TRIES OUT NEW SLOGAN FOR SKIERS

Vancouver's Cypress Mountain -- in the range just north of Vancouver and which will host snowboarding, freestyle skiing and the new skicross events during the 2010 Olympic Winter Games -- is now advertising that it has "2,010 feet of vertical" for skiers. This summer, the owners of the mountain-top operation intend to start construction on a new day lodge, scheduled to open about 18 months later, in time for the winter 2008/09 season.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 4, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2235

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

IDAHO'S CANADA WEEK A PLATFORM FOR 2010 PROMOTION

Tourism, BC government and Vancouver City representatives are in Boise, Idaho, at the moment, taking part in Boise University's Canada Week and touting the 2010 Olympics. Tourism BC's Corporate Communication director, Ray LeBlond, who is a member of the 2010 Speakers Bureau, offered a talk entitled "10 Years of 2010: Maximizing the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Opportunities" at the Student Union building. Meanwhile, Brian Krieger, executive director of the Vancouver 2010 Commerce Centre website of the BC government spoke about "Vancouver 2010: Opportunities for Partnership and Profit." He was sponsored by the Idaho government's Department of Commerce and Labor. His talk was followed by a speech by Michael Wilson, Canada's ambassador to the United States. Meanwhile, Vancouver City urban planner John Madden spoke on a number of city issues including Olympic planning. The sixth annual weeklong event is hosted by the University's Canadian Studies Program, and is aimed at a better understanding of Canadian commerce, politics, public policy and culture, as well as the U.S.-Canada relationship.

2010 BUSINESS DATABASE EXPECTED TO BE LAUNCHED THIS MONTH

The BC government's 2010 Commerce Centre, a part of the BC Ministry of Economic Development, still intends to launch its long-delayed 2010 business network this month. It's a suppliers database where businesses can put a profile up on line. The database is expected to be marketed to businesses outside the province as a first point of call, designed to give B.C. business do better than their international competition. So far, 2010 Commerce Centre has offered 100 workshops for businesses interested in being involved in the supply chain for the 2010 Games. The latest was in Quesnel March 31.

2010 COIN USED TO MARKET MINT TO OTTAWA RESIDENTS

Few people know that the Royal Canadian Mint, one of the sponsors of the 2010 Winter Games, has a boutique on Sussex Drive in Canada's capital, Ottawa, or the one in downtown Winnipeg. Which is why the Mint today is promoting the concept that the city's citizens should pop on over to their respective boutiques and exchange their pocket change for the Mint's new 25-cent ice hockey circulation coin. It is the second coin of 17 to be issued between now and 2010 by the Mint to mark the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 4, 2007

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2234

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

VANOC TO CONTRACTORS: SHUT UP OR PAY UP

VANOC has begun adding a get-tougher clause in its contracts to gain even more control and get the attention of its contractors who may have breezed over -- or are thinking they might ignore -- the no-marketing clause in their agreements. VANOC has always had a pretty stiff clause in its RFPs and final contracts that basically says that any firm in a process to get a VANOC contract, or with one already in hand, can't use the fact in any of its marketing. It's been pretty clear; the key sentence in a long paragraph of legalese says, "... No proponent shall publicly disclose or promote its relationship with VANOC, including, by means of any verbal declarations or announcements and by means of any sales, marketing or other literature, letters, client lists, news releases to the media, brochures, website content or other written materials, without the express prior written consent of VANOC." And you know you're not going to get that consent, just from the wording. The existing paragraph also goes on to talk about not using Olympic logos and such, either. Now, it wants every proponent to acknowledge up front in the RFP process, before it even applies for consideration to be hired, that VANOC will have wording in the eventual contract it issues that is "a provision entitling VANOC to withhold fees otherwise payable under the contract, or to claim a refund of fees already paid under the contract, as liquidated damages in compensation for any breach... of the contract provisions relating to marketing rights."

BC GOVERNMENT BUYS RUN-DOWN HOTELS TO AID VANCOUVER OLYMPIC PLEDGE

The BC government has give the City of Vancouver, which is aiming to cut homelessness by 50% by the time the 2010 Olympics arrive, a good boost to gaining that goal. Much of an C$80 million project announced today by BC premier Gordon Campbell has bought 10 so-called SRO buildings in Vancouver so they can be fixed up, plus another four buildings. The acronym stands for single-resident occupant, and is the term used to identify, for the most part, slum hotels in the downtown east-end core of the city. In addition, it said it would help Vancouver build social housing on three of the city's 14 city-owned lots the city has offered to make available. The province said it will also fund "supportive housing" projects that are designed to help homeless people get off the streets permanently by giving them access to services such as employment training. Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan, who has been lobbying Victoria for some time in connection with this kind of project, said it was a watershed day for the city. The government said it used a numbered company to purchased the buildings, to avoid property-value escalation. "I think today is the day that we begin to turn the tide on homelessness," Sullivan said. "This is a wonderful day."

SALT EXTENDED IN VANCOUVER OLYMPIC VILLAGE

Yes, Vancouver City Council today, without debate, approved that recommendation to fix the naming issue with that portion of Salt Avenue in the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Village that it neglected to name during a controversial process a few months ago.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 3, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC

Government| #2233

VANCOUVER ARCHITECT TEAM TO DESIGN WHISTLER OLYMPIC CEREMONIES PLAZA

Whistler has hired the Vancouver architectural firm of Bing Thom & Associates to design and oversee construction of the town's Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies plaza, a C$14.2 million project that is to be built in 2008 and 2009, hold crowds of up to 8,000 and be one of the main centrepieces of the public's view of the 2010 Games.

The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games (VANOC) was deeply involved in the selection process, as well as Whistler staff. The plaza is to be built on municipally-owned land well-known in Whistler as Lots 1/9.

Under the arrangement, BTA is to be paid a flat fee of C$363,600 to do the first two phases of the project -- to first come up, along with representatives from VANOC, Whistler municipal staff and an advisory task force -- several possible designs for public discussion with council to choose.

The second phase involves detailing the preferred design, preparing the construction tendering documents, and developing a construction budget that has to be within 10% of the amount that will be later set by council, on staff recommendations, for the work. The firm will then be paid 12% of the construction budget for the final portion, which is to oversee the construction.

Out of the 10 architectural firms that originally applied to be considered by the municipality's formal request-for-proposal process that began in January, BTA was up against the Seattle/Vancouver firm of Miller/Hull Partnership and the Vancouver/Toronto firm of CEI–Diamond & Schmitt Architects in the short list.

The funding has been cobbled together from money provided by grants from the Canadian government, which wants recognition of its C$5 million contribution, with another C$5 million coming from Whistler out of its five-year plan, in part funded by hotel taxes. VANOC is contributing C$4.2 million from its capital fund, which is, in turn, funded 50/50 by the BC and Canadian governments. Of VANOC's funding, C$3 million is directly for the project, and another C$1.2 million is thee residual funding provided by VANOC that came from Whistler's decision last year to not host the Paralympic sledge-hockey and wheelchair curling games. Those events were transferred by VANOC to Vancouver.

The first phase of the work starts next month with design meetings to prepare the concepts for the optional designs. The preferred concept is to be completed over the next seven months, with a presentation to Council for adoption in October 2007. This will be followed by detailed design development, preparation of construction documents, project procurement, construction of the first phase of development, and the conversion of the site for community use.

Some site-preparation activities is expected to start this September or October, depending on a decision by Whistler council this fall. The preparation of construction documents is to occur over the four months from this November to February 2008. Procurement -- including tendering, negotiation and contracting -- is expected to occur over the three months between February and April of 2008; with full construction expected to begin in May 2008, and completion by September or October of 2009.

VANOC's analysis of the site suggests that while the plaza lands work just fine, there will also be "a number of event-related functions and their associated space requirements would be located off-site." So far, VANOC hasn't specified what those might be.

BACKGROUND

BTA's major design work on the project includes: the schematic design, actual design development, costing and a project brief, as well as construction documentation, project delivery, and "implementation of select community legacy components of the master plan that are mutually beneficial to VANOC's Games," as well as what Whistler intends for the use of the plaza after the Games.

The site of the Olympic plaza involves two municipally-owned parcels of land in the Village North expansion area. The site of the two parcels, one provided to Whistler some years ago by the BC government and the other purchased about 10 years ago by the municipality have a combined area 1.56 hectares (3.85 acres). They're at the northeast corner of Whistler Village. Blackcomb Way is to the east and the Village Stroll and Market Square are to the west.

The sketch concept for the site is to develop an informal, relatively small, covered but otherwise open-air winter ice surface, surrounded by low boards, at the edge of a forest that becomes an open plaza/park area and events venue during the summer. The ‘Skating in the Park’ concept would have a plaza and landscaped hillside amphitheater. A low-profile tensile membrane roof would cover the ice surface and slide any snow on it to the forest area near Blackcomb Way. Development of Buildings 3 and 4 on Lot 9 would support investment in the site, and Buildings 1, 2 and 5 on Lot 1 would be yaws for community/institutional uses. The covered skating surface area connects with the Olympic plaza to form a larger public space. A tented, elevated stage set would be set against the trees and mountains behind it. The plaza is flanked by a large bowl of amphitheatre-style seating. Community events, concerts and festivals would take placce in the public space, starting with the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic medals ceremonies, and finishing with the 2010 Paralympic Closing Ceremonies in March, 2010.

RESOURCES

Bing Thom & Associates website:

www.bingthomarchitects.com/select/

Staff from Whistler and VANOC conducted the architect interviews and Bing Thom Architects was their unanimous choice for the project. BTA also has several consultants who are contracted directly to it for the project. They include:

Landscape architect Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg of Vancouver

-- Contact info: www.pfs.bc.ca/site/default.asp?tabID=4

Structural engineer Fast + Epp of Vancouver

-- Contact: www.fastepp.com/

Civil Engineer Kerr Wood Leidal Associates of Vancouver

-- Contact: www.kwl.bc.ca/contactus.htm

Artist Calum Srigley with Mariken Van Nimwegen doing the renderings

Two Whistler consultants who are expected to be secondary consultants:

Architect Sub-consultant Brigitte Loranger Architecture & Planning Ltd,

-- Contact: www.whistlerarchitect.com/contact.htm, and

Landscape sub-consultant architect Tom Barratt Ltd.

-- www.tblla.com

An accessibility sub-consultant is expected to be added later.

Bing Thom & Associates website:

www.bingthomarchitects.com/select/

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 3, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2232

WHISTLER ABOUT TO COMPLETE NON-COMMERCIAL DEAL TO USE 2010 OLYMPIC LOGOS AND MARKS

Whistler is about to finalize negotiations between it and the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games (VANOC) for a non-commercial license to use Olympic logos and trademarks.

The deal, which will expired December 31, 2010, is expected to be similar to that of Vancouver and, to an extent, Richmond municipality, which are areas that are also hosting 2010 Venues. It will be able to use a plain logo that's a solid blue square centred with the words "Whistler -- Host Mountain Resort" in connection with VANOC's own logo or that of the 2010 Paralympics on various civic locations.

And VANOC has also allowed it the ability to sub-license the use of the logos and marks to Tourism Whistler and the Whistler Public Library under specific conditions.

Jim Godfrey, the executive director of Whistler's 2010 Winter Games Office, and Sharon Fugman, the Office's general manager, are willing to talk about the main principles of the deal that has reportedly been two years in the works as items and approvals have going through an approval and negotiation process with VANOC and the International Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee headquarters. However, they are still keeping some of the specific details, such as a proposed timeline for the increasing use of the logos and marks, to themselves.

Fugman says, the 2010 Winter Games Office and other staff intend to develop a strategic plan for use of the marks by Whistler. "In addition to recommending actual uses or applications, the plan will also recommend a timeline that will see a measured use of the Marks as we get closer to 2010," she reports.

Whistler expects to use the 2010 Marks on business cards, letterhead, banners, signage, posters, publications, merchandise and gifts -- such as lapel pins, key chains, mugs, stickers and the like -- as well as on staff clothing, hats and uniforms. They will also be used on various types of communication developed for community discussions, in templates for speech presentations and in "community-directed publications."

And, what about costs? Fugman indicates there are no direct financial impacts to Whistler as a result of finalizing the deal, but, she adds, "There will be financial impacts as the various applications are implemented and these costs will be funded out of existing budgets or, if appropriate, reported to Council."

Once the document is finalized, it will also go to the BC Government for approval.

BACKGROUND

Here are the main principles of the Whistler/VANOC non-commercial marks deal, according to the Whistler 2010 Games Office, which will complete the negotiations, then supervise the agreement and how it's implemented in Whistler over the next few years, under various implementation approvals by VANOC. The deal is expected to include:

A process in which Whistler will work with VANOC to create design elements for the "Village Look and Feel" within Whistler's municipal urban areas using the word "Whistler" that's "consistent and supportive" of the "Look of the Games" around the Olympic and Paralympic venues.

A licence issued by VANOC to Whistler to use the marks, which will be listed in the agreement, only for non-commercial, civic purposes, until December 31, 2010.

A series of conditions which limit the use of the marks for municipal purposes, so they can't be used by third parties, commercial firms sponsoring the 2010 Games or by other sponsors. It's possible for Whistler to use the marks for fundraising purposes or for these other organization, but only if that's approved first by VANOC.

A number of conditions which keep the use of the marks to things that support Olympic and Paralympic principles.

A number of conditions that require Whistler to follow the timeline, to avoid over-saturation of the market by the marks.

A listing various graphic standards for their application.

An approval process for each specific application of the marks, and rules about their administration.

A recognition plan by VANOC in which BC and the federal government, other governments including Whistler, are all recognized for their contributions in helping to deliver the 2010 Winter Games. This kind of thing includes signage, news releases, advertisements and invitations.

A process for acquiring merchandise or services from VANOC's logo licensees.

Indemnities by both Whistler and VANOC to protect each other from any lawsuits that turn up in the use of the logos and trademarks.

A dispute resolution procedure to "quickly resolve certain disputes" that could happen as the agreement is implemented.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 3, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2231

WHISTLER TO DIRECT C$3.5 MILLION PER YEAR IN HOTEL TAX TO SUPPORT 2010 OLYMPIC PROJECTS

The resort municipality of Whistler has begun funneling the recently freed-up revenue from the BC government's hotel tax treatment of resorts to Whistler projects that support the 2010 Winter Games.

The BC government collects a 10% hotel tax for short-term commercially operated accommodation, and for some years had been giving Whistler the revenue generated by two of those percentage points. But when BC policy changes began to take effect last July, the government began to return the revenue generated by an additional four of those percentage points to Whistler and 13 other resorts in the province. Whistler estimates the six percentage points of revenue it now receives from BC totals about C$9 million per year.

Whistler had been directing the money from two of those tax points to its Events Support Reserve fund. In its latest rolling five-year financial plan -- from January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2011 -- it's renamed that fund the 2010 Games Reserve, and increased the cash flow to it so that it's now expected to accumulate C$1.5 million per year, at least for 2007.

The new tax regime has also prompted Whistler to set up what it calls an Affordability Reserve, ostensibly to be used to build socially affordable housing "and other initiatives." The first project earmarked for funding from the Affordability Reserve, according to the plan, is help pay for the residential housing component of the Whistler 2010 Athletes' Village. Under the plan, it's to receive C$2 million per year for the next four years.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 3, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2230

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

VANOC LOOKING TO COVER ITS TRACKS - SKI-JUMP TRACKS, THAT IS

It's a slippery slope, but somebody's got to provide it to VANOC. The 2010 organization is in the market for two covers for the ski jumps it's building at the Whistler Nordic Centre. One is for the short-jump track -- 103 meters long by 2.6 meters wide. The other is for the long-jump: five metres longer but the same width. If you think you can provide them, you need to contact it by April 11 and fill out the application documentation. The specialty covers, which have to be slippery so that snow won't stick to them, need to come with their own gas-powered retraction system, so they can be rolled up on command. VANOC expects them to be custom made, and it will eventually have its graphics put on them. The covers are to be stored on the roller that's attached to a concrete bunker at the bottom on the track. They are unrolled as they're pulled up the track by a separate winch system. (VANOC is also in the market for the two winches, the quotes window for them also close April 11. As part of that deal, a winch technician has to be on-call 24/7 during Games time.) VANOC also needs a spare, so it's suggesting, as part of its sustainability effort, that an existing tarp -- made of eight large panels of PVC plastic -- could be reused and retro-fitted by the cover supplier for that purpose. The covers are used to protect the snow surface of the tracks from rain and snow, and to protect the in-run refrigeration piping when it's not snowing. That, in turn, means the covers need excellent at shedding snow and rain. VANOC wants to start using them with the coming winter season, from this November, when they'll be installed and commissioned, to the following April, when they'll be briefly shipped out to have VANOC markings applied to them and be refurbished, then returned in December 2009. But VANOC isn't thinking they need to have a long life; the minimum life-expectancy it needs is only three years.

VANOC TO GET A MOVE ON

VANOC has also issued a snap Request for Proposals -- note quotes -- on moving the contents of offices within its headquarters buildings in east Vancouver, even those, as the RFP notes, "these services will be required immediately. As an additional incentive, it suggests that the winning firm might also be awarded a standing

contract for additional moves on what it calls "the VANOC Campus" on an "if, when and as required basis." There's to be a site visit tomorrow. Snap, snap. The RFP closes April 10.

VANCOUVER FIRM TO OFFER "HUNDREDS" OF RENTAL ROOMS

IN WHISTLER DURING 2010 GAMES

A small web-based company headquartered in east Vancouver, Alluradirect.com Vacations Ltd, says it intends to offer "hundreds" of owner-controlled rental housing during the 2010 Winter Olympics to individuals, even though the Olympics will be descending on the community with several thousand people. VANOC needs to provide more than 1,800 hotel room/nights and more than 800 condo room/nights for Olympic officials, crews and others, but has been having trouble finding sufficient accommodation for its needs. But the owner, president and CEO of the 10-year-old firm, Sue Chappel, says her firm's "secret stash" of rooms involves Whistler condos that are zoned for tourist accommodation that are rented directly by homeowners or very small, locally based rental companies. The company says that "nearly all" of the 520 condos in its portfolio, "will be available for Whistler visitors to rent directly for the 2010 Games."

RESOURCES

Sue Chappel

President & CEO

Alluradirect.com Vacations Ltd

138 West 19th Avenue, Vancouver, BC V5Y 2B4

Phone: 604.707.6700

Web: www.Alluradirect.com

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 3, 2007

Monday, April 02, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2229

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

VANOC TRACKS 2007 WEATHER WHILE PLANNING FOR 2010

Tim Gayda, VANOC's vice-president of sport, says that using a mock calendar, his department felt that it would have been able to stage all of the 2010 Winter Olympic outdoor events if they had been held during the same time period this February and March. But, he adds, it didn't happen, in many cases, on the day it was planned, because of the weather. The planning exercise is useful for figuring out what VANOC would do, and not do, if faced with some of the same challenges three years from now. 'We had huge challenges with weather," Gayda told a Canadian Press reporter. "The first week, during where traditionally we have the speed events, we had some pretty extreme weather. Wind, rain and snow. We had pretty much everything we could possibly have up there [in Whistler]." VANOC has detailed weather records that go back years for each day of the Games, and the federal government has set up sophisticated weather stations near Whistler to augment that record keeping. The speed events -- downhill, super-giant slalom and the super combined, are the most difficult to run because of the speed the athletes travel, so, for the most flexibility, Gayda noted they are scheduled during the first of the two weeks the Olympics are underway. "It gives you the second week if you get into trouble with the weather,'' he said. ''The technical events can really run in all kinds of weather," he said. "The biggest thing that affects postponement with ski jumping is wind," noting the Callaghan Valley's low wind velocities, where the Nordic events are to be run in 2010. "Cross-country and biathlon can run in any kind of weather. The only thing that would postpone biathlon is heavy fog because they have to see the targets. Every [VANOC] function has learned a lot from this past season. You develop the schedule in such a way you plan for the sports that are going to give you the biggest trouble."

MINT TO LET PUBLIC DECIDE ON DESIGNS OF THREE OLYMPIC COINS

The Royal Canadian Mint, which is a tier-two national sponsor of the 2010 Winter Games, says the final three designs of its series of 25-cent pieces featuring the logo of the Games, will be up to the Canadian public. Pam Aung Thin, the RCM's vice president of Communications, said the design of the final three coins will be determined through a public voting process that will be conducted in 2008. The Mint this morning officially released the second in its series of 17 circulation coins in the set. The first one featured curling; this one features hockey. It's distributing the coins only through the offices of two tier-one sponsors of the Games, the Royal Bank and most Petro-Canada outlets.

CANADIAN OLYMPIAN WINS IOC SPORT & COMMUNITY AWARD

Five-time Canadian Olympic medallist Clara Hughes has been awarded the 2006 International Olympic Committee's Sport and the Community trophy. The award recognizes an individual’s contribution and commitment to promoting and assisting the development of sport nationally and internationally. Hughes will be presented with award during a Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame ceremony April 21 in Halifax. Hughes won a pair of bronze medals in cycling’s individual road race and time trial disciplines in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Games. She Hughes retired in 2000 from cycling to take on long-track speedskating. She captured her third Olympic medal by placing third in the five kilometre race at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City. During the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Torino, Hughes captured the fourth and fifth Olympic medals of her career by helping Canada win a silver medal in the women’s pursuit and winning gold in the five-kilometre race on the last day of the Games. Hughes then pledged US$10,000 to the athlete-directed humanitarian organization, Right To Play. Since then, her fundraising has helped raise more than US$430,000 to help children and young people through sport in the disadvantaged areas of the world.

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 2, 2007

Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2228

Here are three moguls we ran into today:

VANCOUVER POLICE FRET ABOUT 'URBAN DOMAIN ISSUES' AND OLYMPIC VILLAGE

The Vancouver Police Department is asking City Hall for C$25,000 to set up by November a community police station in the district that includes the 2010 Vancouver Athlete's Village. Once a location is established, a group of volunteers to help the officers attached to the centre would be gathered during 2008. In fact the Village is being used as one of the rationales for the centre. "With the approach of the Olympics and the location of the Olympic Village, urban domain issues may be problematic if not addressed prior to the Games," notes a police document. The Village, however, is only a minor part of District 4, a huge area that takes in the western half of the city to, roughly, Main Street.

UM, OLYMPIC VILLAGE STREET ACTUALLY GOES... THERE

Let's just say there was an oversight, and leave it at that. The City of Vancouver's street-naming committee will re-open a small can of worms at next Tuesday's City Council meeting when it makes the suggestion that an oversight in naming Salt Street in the centre of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Athletes Village be corrected. When council debated the street names for the Village last October, each councillor wanted to have their pet name added to the list the Committee had proposed, and it took several weeks to get everybody settled down. One of the north-south streets was finally named Salt Street, since it was just east of the historic Salt Building heritage structure that's the nucleus of the Village. But the drawings everybody was looking only showed Salt Street as one block long. It should have been two. So, now the committee is back before council suggesting the second block simply be named Salt Street as well, since it's an extension of the original. Sounds logical and simple. Ah, but this is local politics at its finest -- there's no cost and a lot of pressure. As one alderman pointed out a few months ago, it's not often a new street is created in Vancouver, and these are likely to last decades.

NDP MLA ASKS FOR UN INTERVENTION FOR OLYMPICS AND HOMELESS

A veteran member of BC's legislature, Jenny Kwan of the opposition New Democratic Party, says she has written to Louise Arbour, the United Nation's high commissioner for Human Rights, asking her office to look into what Kwan alleges are problems with international human rights in Vancouver in connection with the 2010 Olympics. "I am very concerned that the prospect of revitalization triggered by hosting the Olympics is causing property values to skyrocket which, in turn, is displacing some of the most vulnerable people in our society."

Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on April 2, 2007

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