Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2556
WHISTLER BUDGETING C$18.5 MILLION ON PROGRAMMING CELEBRATION PLAZA, PLUS C$14.2 MILLION ON BUILDING AND CONVERTING IT

The resort municipality of Whistler (RMOW) is proposing to raise and spend C$18.5 million for the Games-time operations of its Celebration Plaza during the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and to raise and spend another C$14.2 million building it and then converting it after the Games to the "outdoor epicentre of performing arts in Whistler."

That compares to the City of Vancouver's planning, which calls for a total of C$23.2 million, including C$8.8 million in operations and C$14.4 million in hard expenses over two Live Site locations that are to be temporarily renovated for the events, and then generally returned to their original uses, one as a parking lot and the other as a public park.

The Plaza is scheduled to be built in 2008 and 2009, hold crowds of up to 8,000 at a time, and be one of the main centrepieces of the public's view of the 2010 Games in Whistler.

Almost all of VANOC's snow and sliding events are scheduled for areas around Whistler, and almost all of the Paralympics events are also to be held in the Whistler area. The nightly medal ceremonies for the Whistler-area events are scheduled to be held at the Celebration Plaza, in conjunction with TV network ties to ceremonial and cultural events via large-screen television broadcasting to similar locations at three locations in Vancouver and one in Richmond.

Assuming the application for Canadian government funding goes through -- it's assumed it will since Whistler says the Canadian Heritage ministry invited Whistler's application -- Whistler managers say they'll start spending the communications portion of the programming budget. According to the managers, "RMOW, the Whistler Arts Council, VANOC and Canadian Heritage will jointly develop a communication strategy and plan regarding the contribution from the Government of Canada to the Whistler Live Sites program.... RMOW, Whistler Arts Council and VANOC will develop a strategy and plan to continue to engage the community, communicate plans and progress for the Celebration Plaza and the programming of Whistler Live Sites."

Next, we'll have a look at how the operations and capital planning are to work, and what money is expected to be spent and for what.

[See BACKGROUND, below]

Operations [for the pro-forma, see BACKGROUND, below]
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Whistler managers will work with VANOC's Ceremonies and Cultural Olympiad departments and the Whistler Arts Council (WAC) to provide daily and nightly programming at the Plaza in downtown Whistler, which, they expect, will be perceived as one seamless Olympic or Paralympic experience.

To date, Whistler has identified all but C$2.6 million of the operational revenues it needs to offset the projected costs. The operational shortfall, Whistler managers

suggest, the cost of the nightly finale during the Games, is expected to be covered by a sponsor -- whether corporate or government is not being revealed until the deal is done. However, they say that if the funds aren't forthcoming, they expect to still have time to cut back other aspects of the programming to compensate.

According to the Whistler managers, "Spectators will have the opportunity to participate in one seamless Live Site program that will incorporate the Victory Ceremonies and Concerts; the Olympic and Paralympic Arts Festival; the Paralympic Closing Ceremonies and 'Village Animation.' All three organizations believe that, during the Games, spectators should not be able to distinguish between -- or even be aware of -- the various organizations producing and presenting programming in Whistler. This fundamental belief is shared by the RMOW, VANOC, and WAC, and was the motivation for the integration, collaboration and on-going communication between the organizations, and for the combining of resources to create a single, unified, and engaging spectator experience that achieves the objectives of each organization."

In addition to the current programming, Whistler staff are still working to refine the budget itself, as well as on on the possibility of some additional entertainment concepts, for which sponsorship funding is still being sought (none of these program are expected to proceed if the funding can't be confirmed): These include "Late Night Live", which is estimated to cost C$307,950; Snow & Glow Olympics, budgeted at C$1.3 million and a companion program, Snow & Glow Paralympics, expected to cost C$23,280.

Whistler's C$1.3 million contribution involves C$1 million in cash, with the rest as value-in-kind (cleaning and waste, snow removal, accounting etc.) contributions, as well as funding for the Village appearance program for the Games.

Capital construction [for the pro-forma, see BACKGROUND, below]
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Whistler staff say they have identified all of the capital funding the Celebration Plaza needs for the basic operation of what they want to do, but they have not yet included the revenues nor costs of the landmark roof and the suggested ice connected with the proposed Whistler pavilion at Celebration Plaza's, as that's going through a separate approval process. The open-air ice rink, if built, is expected to have a suspended clear glass roof designed by Vancouver's Bing Thom of Bing Thom Architects -- if the engineering and snow loading can be worked out.

But, they suggest, the same sense of collaboration as exists on the programming and operations site extends to the construction on what is now lightly forested bush land in Whistler and the Plaza's later conversion shortly after the Games are completed, which is in March, 2010. "Post-Games, Celebration Plaza will emerge as the outdoor epicentre of performing arts in Whistler -– a place to showcase the richness of talent in the community, and to celebrate local heritage, adding a distinct maturity and sophistication to community life and the visitor experience. Celebration Plaza will be designed and programmed to attract community members and visitors from across Canada and around the world."

Whistler's already budgeted in its five-year plan for its C$6.2 million contribution.

BACKGROUND

Several Whistler managers have been working for the past year or so on the economics and constructing the future of the so-called Live Site at Whistler: John Rae, the manager of Strategic Alliances; Keith Bennett, the general manager of Resort Experiences; Diane Mombourquette, the general manager of Economic Viability; and, Jim Godfrey, the executive director of the Whistler 2010 Games Office and who is also Whistler's appointee on the Board of Directors for the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC).

The Plaza is expected to be built on the land known there as Lots 1/9, which was at one point planned to hold the arena that would be used as for sledge hockey and wheelchair curling during the 2010 Paralympics. Those sports have since been transferred to Vancouver after the arena's C$33 million capital cost was more than what Whistler council was willing to bear.

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Whistler's Preliminary Live Sites Program & Production Budget pro-forma
(All figures are in Canadian dollars)

Revenue
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Canadian heritage funding $5,000,000
VANOC subtotal: $8.95 million
-- VANOC Overlay $4,402,100
-- VANOC Ceremonies $2,251,566
-- VANOC Culture $2,300,000
Resort Municipality of Whistler: $1,269,800
Event Revenue $585,000
Other Contributions $2,637,815 (currently unfunded, funds possibly from sponsor or sponsors)
TOTAL: $18,446,281

Expenses
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Event Workforce $3,221,645
Creative & Artistic Services $6,049,515
Finance & Administrative Services $336,500
Production and Operations $5,710,630
Technical Operations $2,241,991
Media & Communications Services $886,000
TOTAL: $18,446,281

===

Capital Construction
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Whistler's Preliminary capital budget for the Celebration Plaza (Lots 1/9)
(All figures are in Canadian dollars)

Revenue
-------

Canadian Heritage $5,000,000
Resort Municipality of Whistler $6,200,000
VANOC $3,000,000
Total revenue: $14,200,000

Expenses
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Pre-Games

Hard Costs
-- Site Preparation $$880,000
-- Pavers $1,310,000
-- Infrastructure and Site Servicing $280,000
-- Utility Building $910,000
-- Performance Infrastructure $1,200,000

Soft Costs
-- Contingency $910,000
-- Escalation contingency (based on 09/2009 completion) $570,000
Soft Costs subtotal: $1,690,000
PRE-GAMES TOTAL $7,750,000

--

Post-Games Conversion

Hard Costs
-- Terracing and Hard Landscaping $1,260,000
-- Site Services 550,000
-- Lawn 350,000
-- Reforestation/Planting 170,000
-- Public Art/ Federal Recognition 250,000
-- Play Equipment 260,000
-- Water Feature 1,000,000
-- Soft Landscaping and Equipment 190,000
-- Contingency 760,000

Soft Costs 930,000
Escalation (based on 11/2010 completion) 730,000
POST-GAMES TOTAL 6,450,000

TOTAL CAPITAL COST: $14,200,000


RESOURCES

Our report on the City of Vancouver's Live Site operations and capital costs:
'Vancouver City staff propose two major Olympic Live Sites in downtown Vancouver'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:2523; Published on Wednesday, September 12, 2007]

Our story about the Whistler ice pavilion proposed for the Celebration Plaza:
'Some good news and bad news about Whistler's 2010 Celebration Plaza'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:2503; Published on Friday, August 31, 2007]

Our story about the overall look of the Celebration Plaza
'Vancouver architect team to design Whistler Olympic Ceremonies Plaza'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:2233; Published on Tuesday, April 3, 2007]

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Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on October 1, 2007

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2555

WHISTLER TO ASK CANADA FOR C$10 MILLION FOR LIVE SITES WORK

Whistler municipal council is expected to approve two applications next week to the Canadian government for up to C$10 million that can be applied against costs associated with the Resort's construction, development and programming of its 2010 Olympic Live Sites. The City of Vancouver's council approved a similar application earlier this month, also for C$10 million. In Whistler's case, the resort's staff say they intend to apply for C$5 million from Heritage Canada's under its Celebration, Commemoration & Learning Program, which Whistler staff says deals with the development and programming costs (the program exists, but is not listed in the Department's public information). Staff also say they intend to apply for the remaining $5 million under Heritage Canada's Cultural Spaces Program for the funds to help with construction of the 2010 Olympics main Celebration Plaza for the nightly medal ceremonies and the Closing Ceremonies for the Paralympics, on what was once called Lots 1/9. The Cultural Spaces program's rules say that the fund "offers support of up to 33% of eligible project costs for expansion, construction or renovation, and up to 40% of eligible project costs for specialized equipment purchases or feasibility studies. Under exceptional circumstances, [Heritage Canada officials] may consider increased levels of support towards eligible project costs." This program also requires federal-government recognition signage on projects that receive such money, which Heritage Canada also supplies. Staff say they're working with the Olympic offices of Vancouver and Richmond to coordinate programming and planning, to keep costs down.

NBC OLYMPICS HIRES PORTUGUESE SOFTWARE COMPANY TO HELP HANDLE 2010 DIGITAL DATA

NBC Olympics, a subsidiary of the American TV network that holds the broadcast rights for the 2010 Winter Olympics, has signed a contract with MOG Solutions of Portugal to provide it with software, include its new Toboggan suite, that works as an intermediary to integrate the operations of NBC's Blue Order Media Asset Management System, its editing suites and its video servers. High-definition TV, which is what the Vancouver 2010 Games is using, involves a lot of digital data, and hauling it around, particularly from country to country, for processing and editing requires a lot of bandwidth and computer processing power. Getting that data into presentation form doesn't necessarily require all the data all the time. As well, the Internet and telephone transmissions of such video don't need all the data. If only a portion of that data can be used by human editors to prepare a package, and then, when the package is ready, only the data that needs to be processed and moved is used, it cuts down on the sheer volume of data that needs to be moved, and it speeds up the editing and transmission processes. Toboggan is a group of software tools that enable the new-media production group within NBC Olympics to share the media feeds and work that process them for various types of transmission between NBC's operations located in Vancouver and in New York. The live video feeds, and the computer data that describe them, emerge from the 2010 Games, are processed by Toboggan, setting them up for the Blue Order warehouse computers, then the software exports a portion of the data into the Avid software NBC crews use to edit the feeds and set the packaged programs up for broadcast transmission on, say, the Internet or on video-telephones. “It is always a challenge to encompass NBC Olympics’ requirements within MOG’s state-of-the-art technology. This is a very exciting project following the rewarding collaboration during the coverage of the Torino Olympic Winter Games,” says Vitor Teixeira, MOG's vice president of Product Development & Sales. [See RESOURCES, below]

RESOURCES

MOG Solutions:
www.mog-solutions.com

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NBC Olympics:
www.nbcolympics.com

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Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on September 28, 2007

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2554

MORE INFO ON MORE FEDERAL MONEY FOR TRANSIT AND PORT SECURITY IN VANCOUVER AND BC

Here's a followup to our report that BC Transit is to conduct a terrorism security study in Whistler and the Whistler-Vancouver corridor, among other locations in BC, because those areas are going to be involved in the 2010 Winter Olympics. About $300,000 of the funding for the review, which is to be completed by the end of March, comes Transport Canada, which says the grant, issued earlier this year, is part of its Transit-Security program: "The Transit-Secure contribution program will defray the expenses of developing a security plan and a threat and risk assessment." We've also learned that Transport Canada has given Translink, the agency that looks after public transit in the Greater Vancouver area, C$9.9 million last May 29 for security related work; C$3 million of that is for the same type of study that BC Transit is undertaking outside of Greater Vancouver, while the balance is for defraying "costs related to high-priority projects such as a threat and risk assessment, a security plan, employee traning program, public awareness and the upgrade of security equipment." At the same time, it also gave TSI Terminals Systems C$210,558 for "marine security enhancements", although it's not immediately clear if it's for Olympics-related work. TSI, a wholly owned subsidiary of Orient Overseas International Limited of Hong Kong and Railpower Technologies of Montreal, is Vancouver's largest container terminal operator, and operates at Vanterm and Deltaport. The Port of Vancouver also received a total of C$2.3 million in similar grants late last year, while Westshore Terminals, which handles bulk commodities for Greater Vancouver, received C$1.4 million at the same time, also for "marine security enhancements."

BC OLYMPICS SECRETARIAT EXPANDS BENEFITS-STUDY PROPOSAL DEADLINE AND CONTENT

Within a day of asking companies to contact it by October 3 to do a series of major impact reports on the 2010 Winter Games franchise, the BC government's Olympic Secretariat has extended the closing date of the process by a week to October 10. It's also added an assessment of environmental impacts of the Games' activities to the lengthy list of economic impacts it wants covered in the reports, which are to be done annually for the BC and Canadian governments until 2013. We detailed the project in an article earlier this week [See RESOURCES, below].

RESOURCES

TSI Terminals:
www.tsi.bc.ca

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Our first article on the impact reports the BC and Canadian governments want done on the 2010 Games:
'BC, Canadian governments to mount $2 million, seven-year study of annual benefits to hosting 2010 Olympics'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:2547; Published on Wednesday, September 26, 2007]

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Business| #2553
BC TRANSIT TO CONDUCT TERRORIST SECURITY REVIEW IN WHISTLER AND OTHER LOCATIONS BY MARCH

BC Transit, the BC government agency that public transit systems outside of Greater Vancouver, is planning to conduct a major terrorist security review between October and March in Whistler and the Vancouver-Whistler corridor, among other places, because of the area's connection to the 2010 Winter Olympics.

"The context for this work is the 2004 attacks on public rail and bus transit in Europe," says a BC Transit planning document. BC Transit expects to "review and assess international and domestic terrorism risks to BC Transit operations, property, personnel and passengers" generally, but intends to focus on Whistler, where it operates 28 buses, as well as Victoria, Nanaimo, Kelowna, Kamloops and the central Fraser Valley, which includes such towns as Abbotsford and Chilliwack. It's chosen the other locations because of the mix of security risks and targets offered within them. It expects the work to start in mid- to late October.

BC Transit is paying for the work partly with its own money, partly from a grant it's been given by the Canadian government's Transport Canada department. It intends to use the money and the study to add or enhance "security measures and mechanisms to prevent, respond to and mitigate security breaches and incidents caused by international and domestic terrorist threat."

The first part of the plan, which it hopes to have by mid-December, is for the targets and risks to be assessed in the key areas, including Whistler, along with the status of existing anti-terrorism "mechanisms", along with an evaluation of how effective they are, plus some ideas on the gaps within those "mechanisms" that would affect BC Transit. It also wants to see some possible terrorist scenarios developed, with an eye to seeing how BC Transit might respond to them.

By the end of next March, it wants to see a list of recommended changes, how much upgrading each might cost in capital, administrative -- such as equipment, material, training -- and operational expenses, along with estimates of how long it might take to implement the recommended improvements.

BC Transit says it expects to use experts in terrorism that also have extensive knowledge of bus systems and, "given the upcoming Olympic Winter Games in 2010... an understanding of the special circumstances that will pertain to Whistler and the Vancouver - Whistler corridor."

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2552
VANCOUVER CULTURAL PLANNING TASK FORCE FLOUNDERING AS VANOC FINALIZES THE START OF ITS CULTURAL OLYMPIAD

One of the City of Vancouver's most extensive planning projects, a reworking of its cultural planning to incorporate the springboard of the 2010 Cultural Olympiad and Olympic ceremonies, has run out of money without yet handing in a final report, and, thanks to the current civic strike, is more than two months behind schedule.

The news comes only five months before the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) launches the first of its three-part Cultural Olympiad.

Vancouver city staff indicate the Creative City Task Force has spent all of the C$75,000 it was given by the City in 2005 to conduct the strategic planning process for the directions the city should take in supporting culture over the next decade, as well as an additional C$20,000 grant from the Arts Now program of 2010 Legacies Now.

Staff feel it will take another C$50,000 of civic money, and another three months to conduct the final public-consultation process the Task Force wants to do for reaction to its draft report, and publish its final report. They add that because of the civic strike, which is expected to last at least another week, the Task Force couldn't meet during the last few months, stalling its process.

Staff say, as part of the rationale for approving more money and time for the Task Force, that the city is home to the decision by the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) to spend C$20 million on its Cultural Olympiad, which also takes place in Whistler and Richmond, and that the city is "committed to supporting the Games [which expects to be] rich in sporting and cultural memories."

And, they add, there is expected to be more support from 2010 Legacies Now directed toward Olympic-related art in the next few years. VANOC is also expected to spend about C$60 million on the Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies program.

VANOC's vice-president of Culture and Ceremonies, Burke Taylor, who is not involved with the City's Task Force nor the city's issues with it, says 188 proposals were received by VANOC since it issued a public call June 12 for concepts of what might be done with the Olympiad, particularly for the 2008 celebrations, which he and his team are still analyzing. "We had the full spectrum, from off the wall to quite conservative, but it's a fantastic choice," he says.

Taylor says that while VANOC's budget is limited, particularly for 2008, it's able to do a lot more programming because of its co-production/co-presentation strategy. "It means that we, alone, don't have to foot the whole bill. It's a way of maximizing the program and sharing the load."

Taylor says VANOC will detail the 2008 program in November. "The final programming isn't complete yet, but it'll be a full spectrum of activity, with probably on the order of 55 or so partners and organizations we'll be working with to co-produce or co-present, and probably something on the order of about 100 events overall."

Taylor says this time through, it will be "very much the Whistler-Vancouver corridor" where most of the events will take place, but it will also include Richmond, where the sports complex that is to house VANOC's long-track speedskating venue is being built, and, while he declined to confirm it, likely the Vancouver Art Gallery as well.

Taylor says the 2008 musical events are likely to range widely, as well theatre and dance events, but he adds, "We're already talking to a wide range of organizations now -- locally, nationally and internationally -- about the '09 and 2010 programs." Taylor says he expects an open call will also be launched in November for the 2009 and 2010 proposals. The 2009 program is also expected to take place in February and March of that year.

The Task Force includes seven city managers, two City councillors -- Elizabeth Ball and Heather Deal -- the cultural sector -- such as artists, administrators, board members, and professional associations -- Tourism Vancouver, the Vancouver Board of Trade, the Vancouver Economic Development Commission, the Vancouver School Board, the Vancouver Park Board, the Vancouver Library and the University of British Columbia.

BACKGROUND

The City says that more than three million people attend live performances, screenings, exhibitions, festivals and special events every year in the City. Festivals in our parks and community centres present more than 1,800 performances. Music, dance and theatre groups introduce more than 540 different live productions and the city’s galleries and major museums feature more than 600 exhibitions.

Vancouver is home to the highest concentration of artists per capita in Canada.

The sector includes arts and cultural organizations, film and television production and "new media", such as Internet and video-games companies. Cultural employment in the Greater Vancouver area has increased by 23.7% between two censuses for which information is available, from 1996 to 2001, compared to the general labour force rate of 5.3%.

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The City of Vancouver:

Awarded C$10.1 million this year to non-profit arts and cultural organizations through 13 grant programs;

Develops public art through civic, private sector and community arts programs, street-banner programs and graffiti programs;

Supports the film industry through the Film Office;

Encourages new cultural facilities through planning and development incentives;

Is landlord of 36 arts and cultural organizations that receive rent-free and tax-free occupancy of public facilities;

Owns and operates the Queen Elizabeth and Orpheum Theatres, and the Vancouver Playhouse;

Owns an extensive collection of art and artifacts in the stewardship through the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver Museum and Maritime Museum; and

Owns the Pacific National Exhibition, which mounts the largest annual festival in the Greater Vancouver area every August.

RESOURCES

Our report on the overview of VANOC's Cultural Olympiad
'2010 organizing committee launches $20 million Cultural Olympiad and outlines $60 million Ceremonies planning'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:2367; Published on Tuesday, June 12, 2007]

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2551
BC GOVERNMENT'S C$900,000 TO HELP PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES BENEFIT FROM 2010 JOBS, VOLUNTEER POSITIONS

The BC government says it has given 2010 Legacies Now a C$900,000 grant to establish Access Works, a program that will help people with disabilities benefit if jobs or volunteer spots open up for them in connection with the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, among other situations.

Claude Richmond, the government's minister of Employment and Income Assistance, says, "Access Works is a unique endeavour that will aid persons with disabilities to take full advantage of all the exciting opportunities leading up to 2010 and beyond."

2010 Legacies Now is a non-profit society that was originally set up by the government so that it could work in a quasi-independent basis on a range of specific Olympic-related projects throughout the province with private companies, Olympic sponsors and other organizations. Much of the funding for the organization's projects, however, comes from government grants.

Carla Qualtrough, of the Accessibility and Inclusion Program at 2010 Legacies Now, says, "Right now, there are approximately 300,000 disabled, working-age British Columbians – people who are well-educated, highly motivated and want to work and contribute to our province. Access Works will open doors for many persons with disabilities and help them play an instrumental role in their communities."

More than two-dozen agencies -- including the Neil Squire Society, the program's lead disability-service provider, as well as the Canadian Mental Health Association, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind and the British Columbia Paraplegic Association -- have been enrolled in Access Works.

The concept of the program is to "establish connections between organizations needing to fill job and volunteer positions with disabled persons who are qualified for these opportunities," according to representatives of the government and 2010 Legacies Now. They add, "In addition to its role in facilitating employment and volunteer opportunities, Access Works will also identify potential joint economic ventures between businesses, disability-friendly organizations and disabled entrepreneurs."

VANOC has been steadily hiring people for a number of specific positions through open job listings; it's also using a number of volunteers for specific positions, such as vehicle drivers, but its first general call for volunteers won't start until February.

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2550

VANOC CONSIDERS NATIONAL COMPUTER SPONSORSHIP CATEGORY

VANOC has begun putting out feelers for companies in Canada interested in being a corporate supplier to the 2010 Games for the thousands of computers it will need to host the Games. It's doing so because so far Lenovo, the Chinese-owned laptop computer company that's still being strongly courted by the International Olympic Committee as a corporate sponsor of the 2010 Games, still hasn't confirmed it will extend its sponsorship past the Beijing Summer Games next year. VANOC had hoped Lenovo would make its sponsorship-extension decision, as it said it would, within six months of last year's February Olympics in Torino, Italy, and VANOC had expected it to have done so by the beginning of this year. Dave Cobb, VANOC's executive vice president of Revenue, Marketing and Communications, says, "We are starting to talk to companies to guage what the interest would be for a domestic sponsorship would be if the international deal doesn't get done, but we're nowhere near a conclusion. We're still hoping the IOC can do it." Gilbert Felli, the IOC's Executive Director of the Olympic Games, says, however, that talks with Lenovo should conclude soon. "We are negotiating this category. We are discussing a timeline about where and when the category is to be released, so that VANOC can move forward. It's not going to be long before the decision will be taken."

IOC STARTS NEGOTIATIONS WITH POTENTIAL 2010 SPONSOR JOHNSON & JOHNSON

Talks are also underway between the IOC and another potential 2010 international sponsor, the big American health-products firm Johnson & Johnson. Those discussions only began about two months ago. Another potential international sponsor, Kodak, isn't yet on VANOC's outlook because the timing of its supplies, which include X-ray films and related processing for the Olympic-related medical systems isn't nearing a VANOC deadline yet.

LENOVO CONTEST UNDERSCORES BEIJING OLYMPIC TORCH SPONSORSHIP

Speaking of Lenovo: It is conducting a contest, as part of its Olympic sponsorship marketing activation, in Canada, among other countries, to find people aged 21 or older interested in carrying the Beijing Summer Games Olympic Torch next summer. Quebec residents aren't allowed to take part for legal reasons. The Olympic torch isn't coming to Canada, but one of the three Beijing Paralympic torches is expected to stop in Vancouver; this contest is only for the Olympic Torch. The concept of Lenovo's contest is to look for "new thinkers", which Lenovo describes as "motivating, provocative, imaginative, individualistic, explorative". It wants a 50-word essay in English, explaining why an entrant believes themselves to be such a thinker; applicants are registered for up to six draws for a Lenovo computer and Olympics pin. The 20 finalists and 10 alternates shortlisted are to complete a timed math or cultural question to side-step laws dealing with games of chance, and provide "a 30-second video, showcasing how your torch relay participation idea demonstrates new thinking and upholds the Olympic ideals." The videos are be the subject of public voting starting October 10. Voters are entered into a random draw to be one of three to receive a Beijing Olympic torch; the top three who win the vote have their names submitted to the Beijing Olympic Committee, who makes the actual decision whether they'll be included in the run. The winners get a free return trip to China for at least two days with a travelling companion of their choice, and a torchbearer's uniform. The original entry for the contest includes a check box to tick if it's okay with the applicant for their contact info to be used by Lenovo "about special offerings, products and services." There are quite a few restrictions on what can be in the video, for instance, it can't include anybody "under the age of 21 years old, depict someone smoking or intoxicated, [or] contain an advertisement or a solicitation of any business...", nor any of the Olympic symbols. The overall out-of-pocket cost to Lenovo for all of this appears to be about C$20,000.

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2549

TWICE AS MANY DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE VANCOUVER RESIDENTS OK WITH 2010 GAMES AS OPPOSE THEM

Apparently, twice as many residents of Vancouver's poorest neighbourhood are strongly in favour of the 2010 Olympics as oppose it. Anthropology professor Claudia Launhardt of Greater Vancouver's Trinity Western University has given the results of a poll by 47 of her students of 200 residents of Vancouver's downtown east side neighbourhood to VANOC and the City of Vancouver's Olympics manager, Dave Rudberg. The poll, which appears to have been done for anthropological reasons, as opposed to statistical reasons, indicated about a third of the interviewees strongly supported the 2010 Olympics, and 18% strongly opposed the Games, with the rest being either indifferent or unable to express how they felt. Two deeply religious Christians, Launhardt and her husband, Nasser, own or control small hotels in the area: they bought the 125-room Ivanhoe Hotel in 2001, and lease the C & N Backpacker's Hostel; until earlier this year, they also owned the Dominion Hotel. The survey was done through personal interviews over a two-week period in June while the students lived in the area. About 51% of those surveyed felt the government and Olympic-related programs affecting the area were doing the work to improve the look of the area, and two-thirds felt the Olympics would push people out of the area. However 30% said they would volunteer for the 2010 Games. The Vancouver Province newspaper interviewed Launhardt, quoting her as saying, "The general assumption is that people in the Downtown Eastside have a negative view of the Olympics. But we found people with a positive view -- people who want to be involved but don't have a voice to express that." Confidence statistics on the information were not available.

ROGERS' BEEFORTH FORTHRIGHT

Some information gleaned from an interview between Slam sports columnist George Gross and Doug Beeforth, 52, the president of Rogers Sports Net, one of the main Canadian cable TV channels that is part of the official Canadian consortium that won the right to broadcast the 2010 Winter Olympics. "We have 300 employees, most of whom are under 30. They have a huge amount of energy and are passionate for sports. Also, some of our key personnel are women," Gross quotes Beeforth as saying. Gross writes that sharing the two Olympic Games with CTV and TSN is, for Beeforth, something like asking a dog and a cat to eat from the same plate. "It's an interesting partnership," Beeforth said to Gross, likening the companies to two competitive NHL hockey teams. "Most days us and CTV are like the Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens. Suddenly you have to work with your competitors as partners. For instance, Rick Brace, president of CTV, is a friend, yet we never worked together before." Beeforth, it turns out, invented the hockey net-mounted camera for the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway.

US SPEEDSKATING ORGANIZATION RALLIES -- REPORT

A report today in the Detroit Free Press newspaper suggests the reorganization of the American Olympic speedskating organization since its poor performance at the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics is beginning to show results. The US women's short-track team failed to win a medal in Torino, and while the US men's team won three medals, the one gold and one of the two bronze medals were won by only one man, Apolo Anton Ohno. Since the Italian Games, US Speedskating has moved its headquarters from Cleveland to Kearns, Utah, and replaced much of its staff, and moved the national short track team from Colorado Springs to the Utah Olympic Oval in Kearns. The new US short track head coach is Jae Su Chun, a Korean who worked with the Canadian Olympic team. He told Free Press reporter Jo-Ann Barnas, "For 2010 Olympics, three gold medals for boys group; for girls, one silver. I see eight medals total. Until now, US Speedskating was only Apolo. We need to make other strong skaters. That is my goal." An new speedskater to the team, Ryan Bedford, 21, told Barnas, "You can feel things changing. In 2010 we're going to have more than one individual medalist. And in the relay, Apolo said, 'We're going to win gold, no matter what.' He definitely wants revenge. When there's pressure, Apolo feeds off that. He brings a little extra level of intensity to the group whenever he's with us."

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2548

ONLY HANDFUL OF TOWNS TO GET OLYMPIC PROMO VIDEOS UNLESS MORE MONEY FOUND

Here's a bit more information on that C$500,000 joint venture we reported yesterday, the agreement between the BC provincial government and Northern Trust to hire a video-production company to shoot high-definition television marketing videos of communities in northern BC for use at the 2008 and 2010 Olympics. The BC Olympics Secretariat is to hire the video crew at $42,000 per community so that there's quality control, but officials in each community that takes part will have most of the creative control. Since the amount of money available and the cost of the production indicates only about 10 or 11 communities can be involved, and there are about 40 communities in the Trust's area, which includes the main northern BC city of Prince George, some communities are being expected to work with smaller neighbouring towns for one video clip. However, Trust officials say they are hoping to bring in another financier to the project to increase the amount of money available; they're not saying who, but presumably it's the Canadian government. The video development work is expected to start next week, and is also expected to focus on summer and winter aspects of the communities.

VANOC BEGINS STAFFING PROCESS FOR WHISTLER NORDIC CENTRE

VANOC has begun to hire its initial staffing complement for the Whistler Nordic Centre, timing it so that they'll phased onto the payroll as the WNC's construction ends and it begins operations in December. Management is expected to start in November, with some of the workers starting in December. In many of the cases, VANOC's work plan means the employees will only be seasonal for this upcoming winter, until April, or seasonal for the next couple of years, although many are expected to be working after the Games. Some jobs involve dealing with lift or Winch Cat operations, others with refrigeration, still others with snow management, training or looking after volunteers. The positions being filled include venue management such as an events and range coordinator, a trail-grooming supervisor, a professional safety patroller, a mechanical supervisor, maintenance and safety crews. The staffing also includes several positions dealing with the two ski jumps, such as a landing-hill supervisor, a couple of jump specialists, and operators. These people will be working with grooming Staff, sport managers and the senior competition volunteers right through the Games and into its legacy mode. The venue staff also includes a venue manager and assistant operations manager.

RBC SPONSOR WORKING ON MARKETING AND ACTIVATION

A couple of Olympic sponsorship activation notes about the Royal Bank, VANOC's financial sponsor: RBC will celebrate the September 29 opening of its newest branch in Orleans, Ontario, but using Canadian winter Olympic aerial skier Jeff Bean to promote it. And, RBC says, "our on-site banking services at the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games will be green-powered." By that, it means it will be using the power with an EcoLogo certification from the province's electrical utility, BC Hydro. EcoLogo is a trademark and process that belongs to the Government of Canada. In this particular case, being able to provide that certification means the electrical power comes from technologies that use naturally occurring energy sources, such as the wind and sun, or power sources that, with the proper controls, are seen as environmentally friendly, such as small run-of-river hydro power and energy from some specific types of biomass. RBC will be offering various banking services at every VANOC venue used by the public and athletes when the 2010 Games are underway.

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2547
BC, CANADIAN GOVERNMENTS TO MOUNT $2 MILLION, SEVEN-YEAR STUDY OF ANNUAL BENEFITS TO HOSTING 2010 OLYMPICS

The BC and Canadian Olympic Secretariats, which are the bureaucracies that supervises the Canadians and BC's government's involvement in the 2010 Winter Olympics, intend to do a C$2 million joint study on the economic benefits of hosting the Olympics.

According to documents involved in the process, they want the study to be "a comprehensive assessment of the direct and indirect impacts of the 2010 Games, and of the steps taken by the [two governments] to maximize the benefits for Canada and British Columbia, by tracking a variety of economic and social measures, analyzing the results, and preparing a series of relevant reports on the findings."

The job of the company that's being sought now to do the work is to produce a benchmark report, five annual reports, and a final report, that are to be supervised by a professional economist and an experienced research team. The interim reports are also expected to show projections of how the benefits are likely to turn out to the end of the project.

The BC Olympic Secretariat, which has agreed to administer the project and cost-share the expense with the Canadian government, has now begun a Canada-wide search for a company to do all this work, which includes gathering the necessary data, processing it and then modelling and analyzing it, all the way from when the Games were handed off to Vancouver by the Torino Winter Olympic Committee on February 27th, 2006, through to May 31, 2013. The final report is expected to summarize the benefits gained during the entire seven-year period.

One of the comparison benchmarks they expect the company awarded with the contract to use is the federal government's policy for hosting international sport events, which says, in essence, that the Canadian government can only invest in events that produce "significant sport, economic, social and cultural benefits." But they also want Tourism BC economic study guidelines that cover tourism economic impacts from "gated and ungated events and festivals" to be followed [See RESOURCES, below].

The study is expected to be focused on the economic, employment, tourism, arts & cultural, sport, social and environmental aspects of hosting the Olympics. The government policy is that these benefits be "identified early and realized before, during and after the 2010 Games," and that they become legacies for communities and businesses in Canada. The governments are warning proponents right up front that if they are thinking about using proprietary or confidential methods of compiling and using the data, because the governments expect to make the reports public.

The governments want the reports to provide data on three scenarios:

Had the 2010 Games not been held

Had the 2010 Games been held, but no incremental activity was undertaken by any or all of the governments, and

Had the 2010 Games been held with full incremental participation by the governments.

They're in a rush: they want the first draft of the first report, the benchmark one that goes back to February, 2006, done by this November, and but they say they'll take up to two months to make comments to the contractor, so that it can make "appropriate revisions" to the data or presentation. Why the rush on the first report isn't clear, but likely has to do with budget-making for next year. Each of the annual reports are to be completed by the end of each April.

The contractor awarded the work won't be able to brag about it for marketing purposes; there's to be a gag order in the contract. The contractor can use Olympic related slogans, word marks and such that have to do with the 2010 Olympics, but only with written permission from the BC Olympic Secretariat.

BACKGROUND

The reason for ending the contract in the middle of May, 2013: The governments' rights to the Olympic franchise expire on December 31, 2012, but the government's fiscal years end the following March 31. That gives the analytical firm time to get the information they need and get the latest information just past the governmental year end. The governments want an event-to-date report prepared following each of their fiscal years.

What economic indicators can we expect to be in the final report? What measurements are important to the two governments? These:

MACRO-ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and its components

Employment, both full- and part-time, temporary and permanent

Tax revenue

Economic welfare

INFRASTRUCTURE

Value of spending on new construction

Impact on sustainable economic capacity

TOURISM

Number of tourists

Average spend/day/person

Room nights

Increase in tourism jobs (e.g., investment in tourism recruitment, sector employment levels)

Increase in product capacity and market readiness (e.g., investment in product formation, renewal and expansion)

Enhanced destination market position (such as Winter Olympic brand awareness; awareness and interest in BC across all seasons)

IMMIGRATION

Number of new and skilled economic immigrants

International business development

New exporters (e.g., based on the exporter registry)

New export markets

"INWARD INVESTMENT"

Number of additional investments

Value of incremental foreign direct-investment inflows

Cluster development and innovation system impacts

Penetration of multi-national supply chains by Canadian small- to medium-sized businesses

Return on current investments by the governments and corporate sponsors of VANOC in the 2010 Games

International awareness

Value of business, travel and other media coverage generated pre, during and post Olympics

Awareness and appeal of Canada and British Columbia as a place to do business, to live, and/or visit

IMPACTS ON:

Trade and investment opportunities for Canadian companies

Resources

Retail

Manufacturing

Construction

Indicators from The Federal Policy for Hosting International Sport Events, such as the impacts and legacies for athletes and sport system development, including those for officials, volunteers, and events

Youth involvement

Canadian identity and citizenship

Fitness

Arts and heritage activities

Exposure of Canadian culture

Impacts on "priority groups", such as the homeless, aboriginals, the disabled, ethnic and cultural communities


RESOURCES

Tourism BC's Resources for Researchers:
tourismbc.com/template_list_research.asp?id=7147

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The Federal Policy for Hosting International Sport Events:
www.pch.gc.ca/progs/sc/pol/accueil-host/index_e.cfm

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The RFP for this is on BC Bid, under the BC Olympic Secretariat's section
www.bcbid.gov.bc.ca

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2546

COSSETTE HIRED FOR VANOC MEDIA BUYING BUT THERE WON'T BE MUCH OF IT
VANOC has finally hired an ad agency, Cossette Communications (TSX: KOS), to do media buying for the 2010 organization, after it issued an RFP for the contract last January 9, telling applicants at the time it hoped to make the award last March. Terms of the agreement last month were not released, but Cossette will be working closely with The Hyphen Alliance, comprised of three small, independent agencies that are seen as relatively strong in their marketplace: Hyphen Communications of Vancouver, Downtown Partners of Toronto, and Blueblancrouge of Montreal. The Alliance is doing the creative. Cossette is an international communications firm with operations in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. The arrangement with VANOC is to do all of the usual media buying and contracting work, including distribution of the ads to the media channels involved. VANOC says it has a limited advertising budget and wanted the media buyer to take advantage of sponsor and co-branding arrangements. VANOC's chief marketer, executive vice-president Dave Cobb, says VANOC has just begun working through the early stages of briefing Hyphen. "Probably by the end of the year, you'll start to see some work from them." VANOC, he says, doesn't have "formal advertising relationships" with Bell Canada's subsidiaries that include the CTV television network, which is the Games' Canadian broadcaster, or The Globe & Mail, "at this stage". But, he adds, "we're working now with Hyphen Alliance to determine the best way to spend the resources that we have, though what avenues, such as radio, television, the Internet and what have you, and putting together the long-term plan, right through the Games." Cobb says VANOC will not do much in the way of traditional advertising for the Games until it gets much closer to the Opening Ceremonies, but he says, it will be doing advertising around specific programs, such as when ticketing goes on sale, expected next summer. "Some other things are important, like our transportation plan. We need to make sure that all of the community groups and others understand where our buses are going, street lane closures for us. These are things of necessity that we'll be doing [with advertising]. To be honest, at this stage, we were advised by the Salt Lake Organizing Committee that we don't need to spend a lot of money on advertising, because there's such a spotlight on us. With our website, for instance, we're tracking several times ahead of [the website for the Torino Winter Games]... so we don't necessarily have to put a lot of ads in the paper. We think through the media, through our stories, through our website, it will be the majority of what we would do, but there will be an element of traditional media buys as well." [See RESOURCES, below, for contact info.]

IDEAS ON SCHOOL CLOSURES DURING 2010 GAMES STARTING TO COALESCE

There's still quite a bit of consulting, public discussion and decision-making to do, so this is useful only for planning possibilities and human-resources issues, but here's how it currently looks for where and whether schools will be open or closed during the 2010 Winter Olympics:

-- Whistler, West Vancouver school districts: Schools of all grades probably closed.
-- University of British Columbia: probably closed during Olympics, students encouraged to volunteer for Games; open during Paralympics.
-- Richmond, Vancouver and rest of province: Schools of all grades probably in session as usual.

VANOC Paralympic staff have informally suggested that schools be open and students in class during the Paralympics in mid-March, 2010, but that classes consider attending Paralympic events, most of which are in Whistler, as class field trips. In other possibilities, schools may be asked to "adopt a country" that's competing in the Olympics, or may have live feeds of the Games transmitted to places within schools that will be remaining open. Ticketing details, which should include whether there will be special arrangements for students, haven't yet be revealed by VANOC. VANOC's general call for volunteers is scheduled to start in February, and, since they're mostly looking for those aged 19 or over, few grade school students would qualify, so that would not be a primary reason for a senior secondary school to close.

IOC'S HEIBERG HAPPIER NOW THAN FIVE YEARS AGO WITH VANOC'S WORK

Gerhard Heiberg, the chairman of the Marketing Commission of the International Olympic Committee, is spending two days with VANOC officials reviewing the status of the organization's venues. In 2002, he was head of the IOC's commission that evaluated the technical aspects of the Vancouver/Whistler bid. He told Vancouver Province newspaper reporter Clare Ogilvie yesterday following a Whistler venues tour with VANOC CEO John Furlong he was primarily interested in seeing for himself whether VANOC was able to keep the promises it made five years ago. He said that two things primarily worried him then, the plans for the Whistler Nordic Centre in the Callaghan Valley, and whether VANOC was too optimistic about its sponsorship revenue numbers. Ogilvie reports he's feeling much happier about things now. She quotes him as telling here, "There was absolutely nothing there [in the Callaghan Valley] and I was thinking, 'Can this be possible?'... I had some meetings with the First Nations at the time and they were opposed to this, and they told me this was impossible, and they told me that we should not do anything in the Callaghan Valley." VANOC subsequently made arrangements with the aboriginal groups, and is about to complete most of the Nordic resort by this winter, with test events starting in the first quarter of next year. As for the budget, Ogilvie quotes Heiberg as saying, "When I saw the budget, I thought it was too high a level, but after having watched what is happening and talking to the people involved, I feel VANOC may even exceed the figures in the budget." VANOC has said that it expects to meet its 2007 sponsorship-revenue targets.

RESOURCES

David Martin
President
Hyphen Communications Inc.
230 - 375 Water Street
Vancouver, BC V6B 5C6
Phone: 604.694.0844
Fax: 604.694.0845
e-mail: <david@hyphenweb.com>
Web: www.hyphenweb.com

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John Hall
Cossette Communication
1085 Homer Vancouver, BC V6B 1J4
Phone: 604.669.2727
Fax: 604.687.1243
E-mail: <jhall@cossette.com>
Web: www.cossette.com

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2545

BC AND NORTHERN DEVELOPMENT TRUST TO SPEND C$500,000 ON BC PROMO FILMS FOR OLYMPICS

The BC provincial government and the Northern Development Initiative Trust organization report they each intend to invest C$250,000 to support two initiatives designed to help BC communities take advantage of opportunities created by the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. Colin Hansen, the BC minister responsible for the province's aspects of the Olympics, and the Trust's chairman, Bruce Sutherland, made the pledge at the 2007 Union of British Columbia Municipalities convention that is being held in Vancouver this week. "The BC Stories and BC Explorer projects are video-production pieces that showcase British Columbia people, places and businesses to the world leading up to and during the 2010 Winter Games," said Hansen. "Local communities will have a chance to market themselves to journalists from around the world at the BC Canada Pavilion in Beijing at the 2008 Summer Games and again in 2010." The money is designed to help realize a government-led goal of adding at least 25 new BC Stories and 50 new communities to the BC Explorer project in time for the Beijing 2008 Games next summer. Participating communities will each receive copies of their footage to use in future marketing campaigns. The programs were both started during the 2006 Torino Olympics to support the BC-Canadian pavillion there, and BC officials say they helped to generate more than C$30 million in editorial coverage during those Games. BC Stories is aimed at supporting news media, particularly television, but the images can be easily adapted to other news programs, newspapers and magazines worldwide. The program creates stories that will help generate awareness of British Columbia as a preferred place to visit, conduct business and invest. The BC Explorer project highlights various aspects of communities throughout British Columbia; kiosks with touch screen allow visitors and investors to explore the province interactively, and experience its tourism, business and community features. During the next few months, officials from the community relations group at the BC government's Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Secretariat say they will help communities figure out how best to use the funds.

WHISTLER SLIDING CENTRE TO OPEN TO PUBLIC IN MARCH

Although VANOC has been talking about finishing the construction of the 2010 Whistler Sliding Centre track by November, it won't be open for public use until at least next March, according to the latest plans. Ice is expected to be first laid in December, at which time the international federations that supervise the sports of bobsleigh and luge will take the track through its paces, in a process known as homologation. Although their experts have been involved in the design and the construction of the track in a number of ways since the beginning by VANOC officials, their tests and the results of VANOC engineering testing will determine whether VANOC needs to make changes to it under operational condition before test events and, later, the Olympics, use it. About 50 Canadian high-performance athletes representing bobsleigh, luge and skeleton are expected to arrive to try out the track, unique among 15 in the world, for the first time in an organized way next March. They are expected to train for about four weeks. The Whistler Sliding Centre has also developed a Track Club, which now has about 115 members, and more promotion about the Club is expected to take place in on the North Shore of Vancouver on October 12 and in the Whistler area on October 13, in an effort to expand it as part of the WSC's business plan, constructed by VANOC. Officials courses are also planned for next month. In the fall of 2008, selection races for luge, bobsleigh and skeleton are tentatively scheduled to take place, and a luge international training week is also tentatively planned, where teams from other countries are expected to try out the track for the first time. The international week for bobsleigh and skeleton is tentatively set for January, 2009. The bobsleigh and skeleton world cup, which is an Olympic test event, is expected to be held in February, 2009, along with a separate luge World Cup event the same month. A second luge international training session is expected to take place in the third or fourth calendar quarter of 2009.

VANOC LAUNCHES EDUCATIONAL WEB PORTAL

VANOC has set up a portion of its website for students and teachers in classrooms across Canada, to focus on what a VANOC spokesman calls "the positive influence of the Olympic and Paralympic Movements and the three pillars of sport, culture and sustainability." This is to be accomplished through the web portal and an online, bilingual e-magazine. The website has four main sections: a lead story each month, and a teachers, students and school section. At first, the portal "will target Canadian schools, teachers and students looking to build content and maximize opportunities to showcase local and national education resources," according to the spokesman. Later, it will set up a teachers' forum, moderated by representatives of the University of British Columbia. The portal also provides links to programs affiliated with other non-profit organizations, such as the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Committees, Canadian museums, environmental groups, and organizations involved in arts and culture. Although VANOC first made it known it was working on such a site when it outlined its cultural plans a few months ago, it was formally introduced today in Victoria by BC Education minister Shirley Bond to ministers responsible for education from provinces and territories from across Canada shortly before the start of a regular meeting of the Council of Ministers of Education. Noting that the Quebec Summer Olympics in 1967 began the educational side of the Olympic cultural offerings, Terry Wright of VANOC, executive vice president of service operations and ceremonies, whose responsibilities include the cultural side of the Games and who was also at the launch session, said, "Canada has a history as an innovator in Olympic and Paralympic education, and as a leader in developing online learning and resources for teachers. [This website] is the first-ever fully online, interactive Olympic and Paralympic Games program." VANOC says it will add international resources and support after the 2008 Olympic Beijing Summer Games are completed next September. Previous Olympic cities would create a program for schools, package it in boxes and ship it out to educators.

RESOURCES

BC Government's "Explorer" project website:
www.bcstories.gov.bc.ca

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VANOC's new web portal for the educational community:
www.vancouver2010.com/edu

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC, Business| #2544
CPR SUSTAINABILITY PR EVENT OUTLINES CONCEPTS OF HOW VANOC TO ACCOUNT FOR TRANSPORTATION AND LOGISTICS EMISSIONS

The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) and one of its national sponsors staged a public-relations event this morning to focus on sustainability, but VANOC is still a year away from resolving how to make the 2010 Games carbon-neutral.

The PR event, which took place in downtown Vancouver at Waterfront Station, involved VANOC's executive vice-president of Sustainability, Donna Wilson and Fred Green, the president and CEO of Canadian Pacific Rail (TSX/NYSE: CP). The company is one of the national sponsors of the Games, with cash and value-in-kind estimated by VANOC to be worth C$15 million to it at retail rates.

CPR, at five minutes after the appointed time, brought into view two of its newest diesel engines and both machines, 8858 and 8859, recently had VANOC livery painted on them in the company's Calgary work yards. After the short speeches, Wilson and Green climbed onto 8859 to have their pictures taken next to the VANOC logo, which only included "Vancouver 2010" and "Canadian Pacific - Official Sponsor."

The choice of these specific engines is significant to VANOC. They are both made by GE Transportation Systems -- a division of General Electric, which is an international sponsor of the 2010 Games -- and they are nicknamed "GEVO". That's short for a fuel-efficient design of engines called the "GE Evolution Series" that was first approved to meet US government environmental-protection standards in 2002. The 12-cylinder engine -- which produces 4,400-horsepower, the same as the previous generation of engines that used 16 cylinders -- reduced emissions 40 percent over the then-current locomotives in use.

But the PR veneer is still quite thin on the event. While the big diesels may be lower in emissions than previous GE diesel generations, they still produce quite a bit of greenhouse gasses as they burn the 19,000 litres of fuel they can hold in their tanks while travelling an average 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) per tank, and Green expects to put the 2010 livery on "15 to 20" of these engines "which should be enough to get widespread coverage" as the machines pull trains through the 300 communities across Canada that CP serves.

VANOC's Wilson said after the sponsorship-activation event that her department is still at least a year away from resolving its methods of ensuring the emissions -- from these trains, from the hundreds of trucks and warehouse operations that CP will be using or developing in its role to support the 2010 Games, and from transportation services provided by other sponsors and suppliers to the Games -- are negated by VANOC's environmental efforts.

CPR, for instance, hasn't yet provided VANOC with estimates of the amount of pollution from these engines and other CPR vehicles that would expect to be produced as it fulfills its sponsorship, but that's in part because VANOC is still working on the amount of logistics it needs, in both materials and support, and that is expected to take a while yet for the planning to complete.

The VANOC-liveried engines will be used as needed by CP, so there's no particular guarantee that when they're seen they'll be hauling VANOC-related materials, and engines without the logo could just as easily be carrying VANOC-bound supplies. CPR trains, whether they bear the 2010 livery or not, have been bringing in construction supplies to VANOC renovations sponsor Rona and other firms from across North America for use at the venues since CPR became a sponsor last January. CPR transport trucks have also been used to haul goods from various places for pickup by the trains, and for VANOC from Greater Vancouver to Whistler, since CPR competitor CN Rail has control over the rail line between Vancouver and Whistler.

Wilson says that VANOC will also be asking CPR to carry supplies for athletes to the Games when the time comes.

Over the next two years, Green says his company will also be hauling the thousands of passenger vehicles and buses, many of them made by another VANOC sponsor, General Motors Canada, for use by VANOC during the Games. And, as VANOC sorts out its significant overlay requirements and arranges to rent the materials from a range of contractors during the next year, CPR will be involved in hauling those things as well. CP logistics personnel are in the process now of making sure there are places to temporarily store such materials when they start arriving, in addition to the amount of space VANOC has leased in Richmond.

In addition to all that, CPR staffers confirmed that the company will also be involved in VANOC's two Olympic Torch Relays, which are large-scale, cross-country marketing events for VANOC; the Olympic Torch Relay, which will be travelling across Canada, will begin in late 2009. The formal Paralympic Torch Relay will occur in the short time between closing of the Olympic Games on February 28, 2010, and the start of the Paralymics March 12, but VANOC expects to promote the Paralympics at the same time as the Olympics. CPR will be involved in supplying the Torch shows as they occur in various cities and towns across Canada, but is also expected to be carrying the Olympic Torch as well.

It's also expected that CPR and VANOC will announce, possibly later this year or early next year, a kind of Olympics-related "peace train" concept that will travel between communities to further promote the 2010 Games.

BACKGROUND

Each of the GE Evolution series of engines costs CPR about C$2.25 million, and the firm is still in the process of negotiating the cost and delivery timing of the 160 engines it intends to buy from GE. Today's engines were the first two it's purchased. Green says, however, that CP expects to take delivery of 20 this year and "between 40 and 60" per year over the next few years, adding, "I can't tell you all my secrets, because we're still negotiating."

Today's event was originally planned for the week of September 10, and CPR moved engines into position from Alberta early that week in anticipation. However, that was also the week the International Olympic Committee's commission that oversees VANOC was in Vancouver for briefing sessions, and VANOC's Communications staff and Wilson became simply too busy to contemplate taking part in the event, which was subsequently postponed to today.

VANOC was able to support two of its corporate sponsors in today's PR event: General Electric is an international sponsor of the 2010 Winter Olympics, though the International Olympic Committee's sponsorship program.

There were a total of seven reporters at today's PR event, only a couple of people from VANOC, but about two dozen people from CP Rail, most of them from the Vancouver section. There was only one police officer in plain view.

VANOC's Wilson ripped her skirt slightly as she took advantage of an unexpected invitation from a CPR media representative to climb up the steep steps of one of the engines with CP's Green, so they could stand next to the VANOC livery for the TV cameras and print photographers. She laughed it off afterward, as she admitted she shares her children's fascination with trains. "I can fix my skirt, but I was quite excited to be able to have the chance to be on the engine," she said, obviously pleased.

Each train carries the equivalent of materials that would be carried by 280 semi-trailer trucks; CP moves about 500 trains per day, but, of course, a lot of what it carries is unrelated to the 2010 Olympics.

Even though the GE Evolution engine technology was engineered in the late 1990s, and the first of these model diesels was delivered in 2004, CPR mechanical specialist Ken Perry says GE has been constantly improving the engine's machinery and software to achieve even better fuel efficiency with these latest machines, compared with the first in the series. The latest improvements, he says, focused on the fuel-injection system. GE, he maintains, has "found the sweet spot" when it comes to balancing the power demands with fuel-use efficiency with these diesels.

RESOURCES

The story we wrote earlier this month about today's planned ceremony:

'CP Rail engines spotted east of Greater Vancouver with 2010 livery'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:2514; Published on Monday, September 10, 2007]

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Our main story about CPR becoming a VANOC sponsor:
'Canadian Pacific Railway named as VANOC sponsors to move freight and supplies for 2010 Games'
www.morgan-news.com/2010/archives/2007_01_01_Bronze.htm
(Use your browser's Find function to locate story 2109)

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2543
WEST VANCOUVER DISTRICT FIRST TO OFFER COMMERCIAL SPACE MATCHING SERVICE FOR 2010-RELATED COMPANIES

West Vancouver, one of the venue communities of the 2010 Winter Games, has launched a District website and database to provide a free commercial-property matching service connected with the Olympics.

West Vancouver District, because its area includes Cypress Bowl, one of the skiing and snowboarding venues of the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC), is able to offer the service under VANOC's auspices.

"This service offers great possibilities," says the website, "by connecting you directly to the many potential renters, including groups associated with the Games (such as national Olympic committees, international sport federations and sponsors), who have a variety of space needs. Interested organizations and other potential renters seeking space in West Vancouver during the Games period will be provided with leads from the Games Clients whose requirements are similar to your commercial property features."

The site recommends that companies offering space check with West Vancouver City Hall to ensure that their space is zoned for whatever an Olympic-related operation might want to use it for, that owners get the advice of commercial realtors or lawyers for the contract negotiations, and that if a firm is already leasing space, to ensure before registering that there are no restrictions in the head lease about subleasing.

The District of West Vancouver says the matching service is for information exchange only, that it won't get involved in any negotiations between property owners and potential renters.

The database has a number of fields to fill in, including questions about whether the firm offering the space is interested in turning the space over completely to the renting organization for the period before during or after the Games that Olympic-related operations want it.

RESOURCES

Here's the website's address:
www.westvancouver.ca/olympics/games_client_program/register.htm

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Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on September 21, 2007

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2542

C$25 MILLION PRIVATE INVESTMENT TRIGGERED BY OLYMPICS UNDERWAY AT CYPRESS VENUE

VANOC expects to have completed and opened its 2010 venues at Cypress Bowl in the mountains just north of Vancouver, for freestyle skiing -- aerials, moguls and skier cross -- and snowboarding -- half pipe, parallel giant slalom and snowboard cross -- within the next few weeks, as well as finished the state-of-the-art snowmaking system it's installed. But it's not well known that the decision to do all that, taken some years ago, prompted a C$25-million investment in facilities, and, this year, the area's first significant ski-resort expansion since its first chair-lift opened in 1987. Nine new ski runs on the east-facing slope of Black Mountain represent a 40% expansion to the ski area, and they'll also be ready for operation this winter. Cypress is installing a new quad chair-lift that's much faster than the old one, which took 10 minutes to get to the top of the main ski hill. The Lions Express Quad Chair, as it's being called, will be much better suited to the task. Joffrey Koeman, Cypress's director of Sales & Marketing, says, "This new high-speed lift will wisk our guests up Mt. Strachan in only four minutes, getting them closer to the breathtaking view of The Lions, a Vancouver landmark located within Cypress Provincial Park." Another new project underway is the expanded base-area lodge, scheduled for completion a year from now. The new lodge will house a cafeteria and licensed pub, a corporate meeting area, retail stores, a ski school and a shop for renting skis and snowboards. Cypress is operated by Boyne USA Inc. of Boyne Falls, Michigan. CNL Income Properties, a real-estate investment trust based in Orlando, Florida, acquired the assets of Cypress Bowl Recreations Limited Partnership, a subsidiary of Boyne USA, and is leasing it back to the partnership for operation under two long-term, triple-net leases.

VANOC'S STRUCTURE FOR RUNNING ACCOMMODATIONS BECOMING CLEARER

Some of the way VANOC intends to structure its own Accommodation function that will supervise operations of the thousands of bedroom units it now has under contract in Greater Vancouver and Whistler is becoming clearer. The middle-management portion of the hierarchy starts with a Director of Accommodations, which will then have several managers of accommodation report on aspects within their specific areas. One manager, for example, will look after workforce accommodation and that position, in turn, will supervise a manager dealing with worker housing in Vancouver, and another will do the same thing in the Whistler area. They'll all be dealing with room-usage schedules, allocations among various client groups, payment schedules for those who need to pay, meet with the people who look after the actual lodgings, work with accommodation suppliers and even tourism agencies. It will also be their job to, of course, report any housing issues that are going to raise financial problems for VANOC -- but, we understand, they are also expected to keep watch for any issues that put VANOC's reputation at risk.

CTV DESIGNER SOUGHT TO GIVE NETWORK OLYMPICS MAKEOVER FOR 2010, 2012

CTV, the national Canadian television network that has the rights to broadcast the 2010 Winter Games in Canada, this week began the process of looking for a senior broadcast designer to develop the network's "broadcast identity" for the 2010 and 2012 Olympic Games in London, England, for which it also has the Canadian rights. The designer will be responsible for conceiving and detailing the network's look whenever the network is broadcasting something about the 2010 Games. The person would, for instance, supervise the design and production of animated graphics for packaging shows dealing with the Games, on-air promotional campaigns or special campaigns. The position is based at CTV's Agincourt facilities in the eastern part of Greater Toronto.


RESOURCES:
==========

A Google satellite image of the Cypress Bowl area
tinyurl.com/2gq846

Boyne USA Inc:
www.boyneusaresorts.com

--

CNL Properties:
www.cnl.com

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Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on September 21, 2007

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2541

DETAILED LOGISITICS FOR 2,200 OBSV PERSONNEL TO BEGING PLANNING SHORTLY

Work is expected to begin in November for Olympic Broadcasting Services Vancouver, the management subsidiary of the IOC that will be the pool broadcaster for the 2010 Winter Games, to begin detailed planning on the logistics involved in housing the more than 2,000 personnel who will be involved in the broadcasting, most of whom don't live in Greater Vancouver or Whistler. The accommodations -- expected to be about 1,600 beds, as not all 2,200 people will need to be directly housed by OBSV--are already under contract, because of the work VANOC has been doing for the last three years in the Greater Vancouver and Whistler areas. But the OBSV's Logistics Department looks after catering, uniforms, accommodations, accreditations, air travel, ground transportation and warehouse operations to support all those people. And OBSV staff have to sign-off on the accommodation VANOC assigns them to ensure they meet the quality and other criteria that OBSV sets. if more accommodation is actually needed, it will be up to OBSV to find it, not necessarily VANOC. Individual rooms also have to be assigned to specific people, and there's quite a bit of management and planning to that. Much like operating a huge hotel, staff reservations need to be tracked, OBSV Logistics managers need to respond to changes in arrivals and departures of personnel, and adjustments need to be made to the housing requirements depending on the needs of the people getting the beds. They also have to manage what needs to be done before check-in for each room prior to a staffer's arrival. OBSV also expects to develop welcome packages for each person, and that means procuring what's going in them, going through all the steps to publish the information in the packages about the locale for the incoming staff. OBSV won't be operating entirely in isolation from VANOC. The 2010 Organizing Committee is expected to provide transportation, among other things. It's the job of OBSV to produce and distribute 24 hours a day of unbiased radio and television coverage for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. In conjunction with this coverage, OBSV also provides various facilities and services to international broadcasting companies that have paid the IOC, and through it, VANOC for the rights to broadcast the Games in their countries. You'll hear them referred to as RHBs -- rights-holding broadcasters -- or as accredited broadcasters.

ORIGIN DESIGN HIRED TO MARKET WHISTLER OLYMPIC VILLAGE AS EMPLOYEE HOUSING

Whistler 2020 Development, the subsidiary of Whistler that is responsible for building most of the 2010 Whistler Olympic and Paralympic Athlete Village, has hired Origin Design & Communications of Whistler to help it market the housing after the 2010 Games are finished. Origin's job is to develop and implement a communications plan over the next year to help market the housing, mostly aimed at employees of the area, in the neighbourhood that is officially called Cheakamus South, near Function Junction, south of the resort municipality. Whistler 2020 development manager Craig Marcyniuk says, "The quality and variety of employee-restricted projects coming on stream in Whistler in the next three years will address the needs of a majority of people on the [Whistler Housing Authority] wait list. We recognized early on in this process that we would need to communicate the benefits of resident housing, and this project in particular, if we were to get people excited again about the prospect of living in an employee-restricted neighbhourhood. That's where Origin comes in." Origin's president, Danielle Kristmanson, has her office in Function Junction, not far from the development site.

FASEL TELLS CONFERENCE DELEGATES 2010 MEN'S HOCKEY MOST IN DEMAND AT MOMENT

The head of the IOC's commission that supervises its 2010 Winter Olympic franchise, Rene Fasel, told delegates to the International Ice Hockey Federation's semi-annual conference, held in Vancouver this year, that the most in-demand events for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics currently are men's hockey, the Opening Ceremonies, the Closing Ceremonies and women's hockey, in that order. Fasel is also president of the IIHF. Meanwhile, his vice-president, Kalervo Kummola, confirmed that, starting with the 2008 IIHF World Championship, international ice-hockey playing time will follow the National Hockey League's method of counting down on the timekeeping clock, instead of up, to make it easier to keep track of timekeeping issues, especially with penalties. A VANOC-related medical conference issue also arose: IIFH Medical Committee chairman Murray Costello says that a special conference in conjunction with the Canadian Association for Sports Medicine will be held in Vancouver in June, 2009. He urged the member federations to send their chief medical officers to the conference, which will feature reports from international experts, with a focus on team sports and up to a day and a half dealing with hockey-specific concerns.

RESOURCES

Danielle Kristmanson
President
Origin Design & Communications
201, 1002 Lynham Road
Whistler BC, V0N 1B1
Phone: (1) 604.932.8482
Fax: (1) 604.922.8418
www.origindesign.ca

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Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on September 21, 2007

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Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2540
POLL SHOWS CORPORATE SPONSORS WERE THE MOST REMEMBERED BY THE PUBLIC ABOUT WHO HOSTED THE 2007 CANADA WINTER GAMES

A major new poll about the public's response after the 2007 Canada Winter Games in the Yukon last winter shows that 23% of Canadians either watched or listened to the Games, but because they were in Whitehorse, 74% of Yukoners did.

And who they remembered most clearly as being involved in mounting those games were the commercial sponsors, not the government contributors, but, in truth, there were few who remembered any sponsor, government or commercial.

The telephone-based survey of 2,152 Canadian adults by Decima Resarch was commissioned by the Canadian government's Department of Canadian Heritage, which is also the agency that supports the development of the 2010 Winter Olympics. The survey is considered accurate within 2% overall, but the accuracy varies depending on the question. The Canada Winter Games were held from February 23 to March 10; the survey began on March 15 and concluded 10 days later.

The Canada Winter Games is not the same brand as the much better known Winter Olympics, and so general recognition comparisons aren't valid, however:

Only 23% of Canadians watched or listened to the 2007 Winter Canada Games, but that rose to 74% in the Yukon. Almost three quarters -- 74% -- watched them on English-speaking TV, only 12% watched them on Francophone TV. The number of those who listened to them on radio were negligible. What's intriguing about this result is that Rogers-owned radio stations in southern BC are contemplating continuous or major coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games when they begin.

Only one in seven Canadians were able to recall where the Canada Games were held, and only one in 10 knew they were in Whitehorse.

However, according to the report, "Corporate sponsors were the most frequently recalled funding partner for the 2007 Games. Awareness of funding partners, particularly corporate sponsors, was significantly higher among those living in the Yukon compared to other Canadians (60% vs. 10% respectively). Yukon residents are more likely to recall federal (30%) or territorial (32%) government as being funding partners when compared to other Canadians, among whom 7% recall a federal partnership and 3% recall territorial partnership."

While supporters of such enterprises may have to do much more marketing focused on getting themselves remembered, they can skip the part about telling Canadians what a wonderful thing such competitions are overall.

The report says that 88% of Canadians generally feel that the those winter games create positive economic benefits to the community hosting the event. About 42% of them believe that there are both long-term and short-term benefits, while 41% believe the benefits are exclusively short-term.

Virtually all Canadians (94%) also agree that the 2007 Canada Winter Games help Canadian athletes achieve international excellence. Most Canadians (88%) also agree that there are positive cultural benefits for the host community. Among those who do, about half (48%) believe that the benefits are both long-term and short-term.

Interestingly, only 35% of Canadians surveyed said they had been involved in sport in the previous year, according to the survey, which added, "Those more likely to have participated in sports include men (43%), younger Canadians aged 18-24 (58%) and anglophones (36%). Among those who have participated in sports in the past 12 months, most (82%) did so at least once per week. A smaller proportion (16%) indicated that, in the past 12 months, they had been involved in sport in an alternative role, such as being a coach, referee, official, umpire, administrator or helper."

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Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on September 21, 2007

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Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2539
VANCOUVER COUNCIL APPROVES CONCEPT OF TWO MAJOR OLYMPIC LIVE SITES IN THE DOWNTOWN BUSINESS CORE

Vancouver City Council today unanimously endorsed staff initial concepts for the two 2010 Olympic Live Sites in the city's business core.

The decision authorizes spending C$200,000 on doing more detailed planning on the concepts of using a city-block sized parking lot next to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre at the corner of Georgia and Cambie Streets, and David Lam Park, on the north shore of False Creek, which are ultimately expected to have a budget in the neighbourhood of C$23 million.

The two Live Sites, with video links to equivalent sites in Richmond and Whistler, sponsor villages, as well as government and aboriginal pavilions, are expected to be connected by Robson Street to the BC government's 2010 business pavilion at Robson Square, called BC Showcase, which is expected to open next March, and the nightly 2010 Victory celebrations when the medals are awarded and additional entertainment occurs, at BC Place Stadium and the daily Olympic hockey games at GM Place, only a block away from the parking-lot plaza.

City Olympics manager Dave Rudberg says that while there will still be some public consultations on how things will work around the sites, which are surrounded by businesses and residential buildings, and that only VANOC sponsors will be allowed to have business pavilions on the sites, and there will be issues around noise and crowd control.

"It's our intention to mitigate those impacts to the extent possible," he suggests, "but we need to be clear though that it won't be business as usual. These will be celebration sites, areas of high activity; there will be some disruption to people's lives."

He said that he's already had discussions with the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) and its Communications department about letting businesses and people know about all the events, and how people can participate in the process leading up to the Games, as well as in the Games themselves.

Rudberg says governments, far more than expected, have expressed interest in having pavilions at the two Live Sites, "There has been considerable interest from provincial governments, territorial governments -- even the national government... it's our intention to charge a rental fee for the opportunity to be a part of the Live Sites."

Rudberg also says that downtown street closures are a potential factor, but no decisions have yet been taken. "Planning is happening at a number of levels. We're trying now to identify the nodes of activity, and the flow of pedestrians between those nodes. That leads to a number of other considerations, such as how we mark them [Robson, Mainland, Hamilton, Beatty and Cambie streets], how we sign them, how we orient people to go from site to site, how they'll experience the various activities. The issue of street closures is one that is being looked at from the transportation perspective. There are a lot of potential needs out there [regarding closures or openings]... we want to see all the requests on the table, so that we can better analyze the needs of pedestrians, but also the needs of vehicles, goods movement and other servicing to residential and business properties. At some point, some decisions will be brought forward to council regarding potential closures, but doing it in a way that considers all of the needs of the downtown community."

Rudberg says that while the current plans involving the Live Sites are in the lead, "We don't want the downtown to become the sole celebration site for the Games. We think there are opportunities out in the communities [that make up Vancouver] and the communities can celebrate the Games without having to go downtown and experience the crowds down there." Rudberg says City representatives are going to malls, community centres and community events asking people how they'd like to celebrate the Games, and the type of activities they'd like to see. Business groups are also being consulted.

He says an ideas fair is scheduled to be held in November as an extension of this work. "We hope to bring to council a parallel program... that will generate an Olympic experience in the community." Rudberg says such a program, however, would not involve expenditures on the order outlined in the pro-forma budget provided for the two official Live Sites.

Rudberg also points out that, because the Live Sites are expected to be open 12 hours a day and, potentially other locations in the City will be involved, "we have a lot of hours to fill" with entertainment; but having schools involved and having Olympic or Paralympic athletes make appearances, "hopefully with gold medals around their necks", will be part of the programming.

RESOURCES:

Our previous feature on the Live Sites:

'Vancouver City staff propose two major Olympic Live Sites in downtown Vancouver'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:2523; Published on Wednesday, September 12, 2007]

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2538


VANOC TO HELP VANCOUVER PAY FOR CROWD-CONTROL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

VANOC has agreed to provide C$30,000 toward a budget of C$240,000 to help the City of Vancouver develop a software program called the Downtown Vancouver Transportation and Emergency Management System, to be developed by PTV America, the winner of a formal request for proposals for the project, which submitted a bid of C$172,255, plus taxes. The budget, approved by Vancouver City Council today, also includes a 3.2% contingency. The software, which will have an Internet-based interface, is to help model traffic flows and pedestrian crowding in the downtown business core in the area of BC Place Stadium and GM Place, which are both 2010 Winter Olympic venues, but the various agencies have other reasons to use it before and after the Games. VANOC joins several other agencies in paying for the project: Natural Resources Canada, through its GeoConnections program, which is providing most of the funds -- C$150,000, the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority and the BC Provincial Emergency Program, which are each contributing C$15,000, and C$30,000 from the City of Vancouver. It's also supported by the Justice Institute of British Columbia, but through in-kind support. The city's chief engineer notes that, the software, once it's done, will "help plan events in such a way as to improve the quality of the event experience, reduce impacts on the transportation network and improve the planning of emergency services. The DVTEMS will also support transportation and emergency planning efforts for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games which will have multiple event sites (including BC and GM Places) within the Downtown peninsula, generating large volumes of event related pedestrian and vehicle traffic." The new system is to connect into the GeoConnections project.

SIZABLE PORTIONS OF "BELIEVE" DOWNLOAD FEES TO GO TO 2010 OWN THE PODIUM

We now have information on how the Olympic-related portion of the royalties work for Bell Canada's "Believe" program. They involve audio and video downloads of singer Suzie McNeil's video of the song, backed by Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra, the production of which was underwritten by Bell. The proceeds we're talking about go to the 2010 Own the Podium program. For audio downloads, which cost C$0.99 cents, more than 60% of the proceeds will be given to Own The Podium. For mobile audio and ringtone downloads, which are approximately C$3, more than 80% will be donated. The Own the Podium program, with a five-year budget of C$110 million is a project that's jointly funded by the Canadian government and private fundraising through VANOC. Bell is a VANOC corporate sponsor.

RESOURCES

The full story we wrote about the "Believe" program:
'Bell Canada "Believe" fundraiser for 2010 Games launches on schedule'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:2528; Published on Monday, September 17, 2007]

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The GeoConnections Internet portal:
www.geoconnections.org/en/index.html

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2537

ELECTRICAL SUPPORT WORK FOR VANOC'S COLLISEUM VENUE INCREASING IN COST, COMPLEXITY

The projected work that VANOC needs done to bring additional power supplies to its Hastings Park venue in east Vancouver are proving to be more complicated and expensive than first thought. VANOC is upgrading the power supply between one of the main BC Hydro feeder station and the Pacific Coliseum, the short-track speedskating and figure-skating venue. It's part of the work on the venue that VANOC has been undertaking over the last couple of years, with a total budget before contingency draw-down of C$23.7 million. The existing 12.47kV feeder system to the Pacific Coliseum is underground and it needs a backup feed to meet the IOC's reliability requirements for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, so new underground feeds have to be dug. After reviewing the RFP specifications and holding a site meeting, contractors have been told the trenches will now be deep enough that they'll have to include shoring, and some trees may have to be removed. Contractors are also worrying about running into contaminated soil during the job; VANOC has replied that if it does, it will issue change orders to offset the cost of getting the soil removed safely. In addition, WorkSafeBC, the province's equivalent to a Workers Compensation Board, is now requiring a $20,000 engineering risk-assessment report from the contractor eventually chosen for the job before starting work. Two new 12.47kV underground transmission lines are expected to carry power from the Rupert Substation at the southeast corner of the PNE grounds to new outdoor power switch-gear that is to be located outside the southeast corner of the Pacific Coliseum. New duct banks and manholes, together with the use of existing spare ducts that are currently empty, will be required. Once it's installed, both the Coliseum and an adjacent horse-race track are to get their electrical power from the new switch-gear.

VANCOUVER, COC TO SIGN MOU TOMOROW

The City of Vancouver and the Canadian Olympic Committee are expected to officially sign tomorrow morning the memorandum of agreement they've reached in working cooperatively on projects related to the 2010 Winter Games. Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan; Korina Houghton, the vice-chair of the city's quasi-autonomous Vancouver Park Board; City manager Judy Rogers, who is a member of VANOC's Board of Directors, and Canadian Olympic Committee president Michael Chambers will be taking part in the small ceremony. The City approved the MOU on Tuesday.

ADIDAS TO BE REPRESENTED THROUGH BRITISH OLYMPIC WINTER TEAM AT 2010

Adidas AG today became an official national corporate sponsor of Britain's 2012 Summer Olympics for about C$200 million (£100 million), but as a part of the deal it will also provide the British Winter Olympic team uniforms when the team travels to Canada for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Adidas, known for its three-stripes logo, is the world's second-biggest sporting-goods company after Nike. Adidas will have British marketing and licensing rights for the 2010 and 2012 events, as well as rights to sell branded and unbranded sportswear at British-related Olympic and Paralympic pavilions.

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2536
VANCOUVER'S ROBSON SQUARE, VANCOUVER ART GALLERY AND ROBSON STREET ENVISIONED TO BE MAJOR PUBLIC, BUSINESS AREAS DURING 2010 GAMES

The director of the BC government's 2010 Commerce Centre, which has primarily been a web presence, says its new office and pavilion BC Showcase space in downtown Vancouver's Robson Square will become one of the city's main Olympic anchor points by the time the 2010 Winter Games begin, and Robson Street will become the city core's major Games-related thoroughfares for the public.

Brian Kreiger told business people at a meeting to discuss renovating several thousand square metres of space at Robson Square by next March 31 for BC Showcase that, "Down at one end of Robson Street you have the BC Place Stadium, where the Opening and Closing Ceremonies [of the Olympic Games] will take place, where the medal ceremonies will take place every night, of 16 nights. You have right next to it GM Place, where the Olympic hockey games will take place... Across Georgia Street at the old bus depot, by the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, will be an Olympic Live Site. And then people will come this way [toward Robson Square], because this is where the hotels are, this is where the restaurants are. And Robson Square is really the only other public plaza [in the area] that the city of Vancouver has. There's no other place, really, for people to gather." The interior design concept for the BC Showcase location was developed by Orca Creative Group.

Kreiger says he expects the front of the neighbouring Vancouver Art Gallery, which will be hosting major parts of the 2010 Cultural Olympiad at the time, is expected to be an area for event program and perhaps the location of some large TV screens that will be rebroadcasting 2010 Olympic events. "We're looking at NBC with their Today Show booth being in this vicinity," he said. "We're talking to a sponsor about putting [the Robson Square] ice rink back together so we have a public venue. There's a whole revitalization going on down here at Robson Square to re-do all of the paving stones and -- there's a lot more going on down here. The face of the landscaping will change down here. This is going to become a really, really, popular and strong public place, especially during the Olympic Games. And while the official broadcasters and accredited media will be down at the Trade and Convention Centre in Vancouver, the unaccredited media, especially the broadcasters, will be here and [University of British Columbia's rooms at] Robson Square. We're leasing this space, this entire space from UBC, downstairs and upstairs here. And that's where the unaccredited media are going to be."

The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) estimates about 10,000 unaccredited media are expected to arrive in Vancouver to cover the Games, along with about that many accredited media. Kreiger explains the difference, "There's only one broadcaster in each country that pays for the rights. So in the US it's NBC. They own the rights to broadcast the Games inside the venues. But CBS will be in town, FOX will be in town, CNN will be in town. It's the same story for Canadian media and 78 other countries. Their broadcasters won't really have a place, they'll be roaming around. We're going to give them a home, right here, to work out of. And interestingly enough, it's going to be right across from our B.C. Showcase. And so our goal here for the BC Showcase is to use it for business to business, to use it for events, use it for inbound delegations to come and learn about British Columbia, but largely to use it for the media and to tell people the story about British Columbia. And not just British Columbia as a great place to get wood and minerals, but as an innovative place, as a creative place, as a place that's Canada's Pacific gateway, and that it has incredibly creative people that can do a lot of amazing things."

Kreiger says that because of the way the events surrounding an Olympics works, BC only has 2010 and the time leading up to it to attact the attention of the growing number of people that will become interested in Vancouver because of the attraction of the Games. "We have people coming from all over the world who are interested in doing 2010 business, and we want to partner our companies with great companies from all over the world using 2010 as the hook. We're very interesting to the rest of the world because we're hosting an Olympic Games. In 2011, we're not going to be so interesting. So we want to use that time between now and 2010, when we're still interesting, to show the world what we can do here, and to host the world and to build partnerships for our businesses and to create more business opportunities for our companies. So that's what the hosting space is largely all about. From time to time, we envision this space being open to the public to walk through but, most of the time, it's a business-to-business space. One area can flex out; we can have mini-trade shows for agriculture folks, and our communities up north can come down and show what they do and what they have. And there's an opportunity for us to throw the doors open here and maybe cover the space in the middle, and run programs back and forth that use the plaza outside."

Initial design concepts for the BC Showcase pavilion involves quite a bit of wall, ceiling, window and floor displays using flat-screen and flat projection technology, but officials are hoping for some of them to have a three-dimensional effect. Kreiger, however, says he's not interested in simply showing industrial videos; what will appeal to the broadcasters, which will have a world-wide audience, he says, are things that British Columbian businesses do that amaze. "We're presenting British Columbia through multimedia. We may have temporary exhibits. If our wireless sector, for example, wants to do a week in that space, then they may want to bring some things in. Our goal is to incorporate as many innovative companies into this space as possible. We have an opportunity here."

Kreiger notes, however, that even though the Robson Square plaza is related to the Olympic Games, the spaces are not going to be branded as Olympics. "There's no rings on them, they're not going to be associated with the 2010 Commerce Centre or the B.C. Olympic Games Secretariat specifically. They're going to be branded Ministry of Economic Development."

BC Showcase project manager Colin Grady says that even once the space is set to open in March, it may not be the same thing a year later or by the time the 2010 Games are underway. "If we get this thing walking, and almost running in February, March, that's a year before 2009, and we have a year to sort of move it up. Because we expect, by the time 2010 rolls around, to be current with the latest technology; so if things change between now and then, we're going to have to upgrade." But, he adds, there's an expectation the display space will still be available for some time after the 2010 Games have gone. "Our hope is that this operation stays until 2012."

Kreiger also notes that because the BC government's Olympic Secretariat is in charge of developing the 2008 Summer Olympics pavilion in Beijing, it has commissioned camera crews who are now touring British Columbia to shoot film footage in high-definition television format, which will be the standard for the 2010 Winter Games in BC, and that some of that footage could be reused in the 2010 BC Showcase space.

Although the opening ceremony of the space is projected for the end of next March, the BC Secretariat wants all the work and machinery installed and working by February 11.

BACKGROUND
Here's a list of some of the firms interested in working on helping to develop the space for the BC government, in alphabetical order. The RFP for work on the space closes on September 27:

• Commercial Electronics
• Conti Electronics
• CPS Electronics
• CTM Exhibits
• Digit Multi Media
• Geo Discovery Interactive
• Orca Creative
• Seascape Multi Media

RESOURCES

Robert Boyd
President
Orca Creative Group
211-2323 Quebec St.
Vancouver, BC
Canada V5T 4S7
Phone; 604.675.9030
Fax: 604-675-9032
www.orcacreative.com

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #2535
AUSTRALIAN FIRM CHOSEN TO PRODUCE 2010'S MAJOR CEREMONIES

David Atkins Enterprises of Australia, which produced the Opening and Closing Ceremonies for the Sydney 2000 Summer Games and the 15th Asian Games in the middle-east city of Doha, Qatar, last year has been chosen as executive producer for the major Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games ceremonies.

Terry Wright, the executive vice-president of Ceremonies and Services for the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) says: "Beyond the sports competitions, the Opening and Closing Ceremonies are among the most memorable events of the Games and are some of the most complex events to create and deliver. They typically set the scene and offer the first 'wow' moments of the Games. Historic ceremony protocols must be integrated into unforgettable shows that translate well to live audiences -- both in the stadium and watching on television around the world."

Wright and his staff spent quite a bit of time over the summer assembling the group from various applicants and industry knowledge. VANOC estimates three billion people will be watching the Opening Olympic Ceremonies, and about a quarter of that for the Closing Ceremonines.

The company's founder, David Atkins, 51, and two others from his firm, Catherine Ugwu and Ignatius Jones, will work with a group of Canadians to produce VANOC's Opening and Closing Ceremonies, as well as the nightly medal ceremonies.

The team includes people who are well-known in Canada's cultural industry for music, producing, creativew work and events production:

Music impresario and agent Sam Feldman of SLFeldman & Associates, with "access" to about 200 artists;

Bruce Allen of Vancouver's Bruce Allen Talent;

Dan Fraser of Nettwerk Records;

The cofounder of the Canadian College of Performing Arts, Jacques Lemay -- he was one of the team who produced VANOC's controversial eight-minute segment in the closing ceremonies of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy;

Montreal director Érick Villeneuve of Voltige Inc.; and,

Two of the main members of VANOC's Ceremonies' staff, technical director & production manager Ian Pool; and program director, Ceremonies & Production Services, Marti Kulich.

Kulich supervised the 90-minute ceremony that launched VANOC's logo. The group's members, separately, have been involved in some of Canada's largest concerts and touring music shows, major games ceremonies.

A year ago, VANOC's Culture & Celebrations division and the BC government, invited the cultural ministries of the federal, provincial and territorial governments in Canada to create a working group on the Cultural Olympiad to contribute concepts that would produce, as a VANOC document puts it, "a lasting significance for every region of the country."

The 2010 Olympic Opening Ceremony is scheduled to take place on February 12, 2010; the Closing Ceremony, on February 28, 2010. Both are to be held in the 55,000-seat BC Place Stadium in downtown Vancouver. This will be the first time in Olympic Games history that these ceremonies will be staged inside a building, under a roof. The Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony will be held on March 12, 2010, also at BC Place Stadium, followed by the Closing Ceremony on March 21, 2010, in Whistler.

RESOURCES

David Atkins Enterprises
Sydney office:
Level 1, 1129 Pittwater Road
Collaroy NSW 2097 Australia
Phone: +61 2 9972 3880
Fax: +61 2 9972 4009
E-Mail: Dae@Dae.com.au

www.dae.com.au/contact/

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Sam Feldman
SL Feldman & Associates
200-1505 West 2nd Avenue,
Vancouver, BC, V6H 3Y4
Phone: 604.734.5945
Fax: 604-732-0922
www.slfa.com

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Bruce Allen
Bruce Allen Talent
#500, 425 Carrall St.
Vancouver, BC V6B 6E3 Canada
Phone: 604.688.7274
Fax: 604-688-7118
www.bruceallen.com

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Érick Villeneuve
Voltige Inc.
5100 Hutchison, Suite 200
Montreal, Quebec H2V 4A9
Canada
Phone: +1 (514) 879-9002
Fax: +1 (514) 879-900

---

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2534

VANCOUVER TO HOST DEMONSTRATION STREET CAR PROJECT DURING 2010 GAMES

The City of Vancouver is, as we understand it at the moment, planning on running a demonstration passenger train system from Granville Island, along False Creek past the Vancouver Olympic Athletes Village, around the eastern edge of downtown Vancouver's business section during the 2010 Winter Games, connecting with other forms of public transit. The giant international transportation firm Bombardier Inc. of Montreal (TSX:BBD), is expected to donate the rail cars for the run. Bombardier's revenues for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2007, were US$14.8 billion, and that announcements are expected shortly. The City did quite a bit of research in to the costs and feasibility of a street-car project last year [For links to that information, including traffic and tourism studies, see the link in RESOURCES, below.]

BC FERRIES FIRST TRAVELLING BILLBOARD FOR THE 2010 GAMES DELAYED BY ENGINE ISSUES

The travelling international billboard of the 2010 Winter Games -- also known as the three new ferries being built for BC Ferries for use on its main runs next spring and summer -- was supposed to begin its marketing trip on Friday when the first of the ferries was due to be launched from Flensburg, the site of the German shipyard that's building them. Problems with its propulsion systems, however, mean that it won't be leaving as scheduled for the trip to London, England, where the 2012 Summer Games are being built, through Panama and along the key 2010 markets of the California and Pacific Northwest coasts on time. The ship is now expected to leave about two weeks later, in early to mid-October. However, the launch party is still going ahead Friday, since it involves about 3,000 people, including a number of Canadian and BC government leaders, such as BC premier Gordon Campbell. The ferries have huge wrap images of 2010 symbols and athlete photos on their sides and ends. BC Ferries president David Hahn said the first ship, the Coastal Renaissance, should arrive in Vancouver about December 15 and be in service between Horseshoe Bay and Departure Bay by the spring.

BELL TO LAUNCH HIGH-DEF TV SATELLITE IN SPRING

The 2010 Winter Olympics is the first such Games to be broadcast completely in high-definition TV, including the coverage by the country's host broadcaster, CTV. Bell Canada, VANOC's telecommunications sponsor and owner of CTV, confirms that its newest digital TV satellite, Nimiq 4, which is designed to handle the much wider bandwidth required by high-definition television, is to be launched in the spring. "The Nimiq 4 satellite will further enhance our digital TV services by offering even more high definition and interactive channels," said Kevin Crull, President of Bell Residential Services. The new TV satellite is being built and launched by satellite developer and operator Telesat of Ottawa, and will be launched next spring from the from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, one of Kazakhstan's longest-serving and largest operational launch pads. The company, through its ExpressVU subsidiary already provides about 50 high-definition channels.

RESOURCES

The City of Vancouver portal website page that provides the studies of how a streetcar system might work, and its alignments, is here. There is a document on the site that shows the alignment using satellite photos taken in 2005. On page 5 of it, the line makes a right-angle turn. That turn marks the location of where the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Village's main entrance is expected to be located. Here's the link:
city.vancouver.bc.ca/engsvcs/transport/streetcar/projectUpdate.htm

Our main story about the 2010 relationship and the routes of the new BC ferries:
'3M Canada, VANOC reach supplier deal and, with BC Ferries, work out intriguing Games marketing project'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:2365; Published on Monday, June 11, 2007]

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2533
GRANVILLE ISLAND CONSIDERS CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP TO HELP PAY FOR ENTERAINMENT, CULTURAL EVENTS DURING 2010 GAMES

The manager of Granville Island's Business Development & Marketing department says she expects there to be a major federal government involvement on the Island during the 2010 Winter Olympics. And the Island is expected to look for corporate sponsors to help underwrite the cost of Olympic-related celebrations there.

Marcia J. Freeman of the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which administers the Island, told a public meeting of business owners and operators on the Island that "I would be very surprised if you didn't see a substantial federal presence on the Island during the Games."

Granville Island, a 14-hectare (35-acre) man-made isthmus that is linked to the south shoreline of False Creek by a viaduct, is the only piece of Canadian government land in the City of Vancouver, and its shops and public market are a major tourist destination. However, Freeman said, "How that [government involvement] plays out, and which ministries would be involved, is still being discussed."

The Island has about 275 retail businesses and similar organizations, such as several stage theatres, which employ about 2,500 people and generate more than C$130 million in economic activity annually. It's located just across False Creek, a tidal inlet, from David Lam Park, which is expected to be one of the city's Olympic Live Sites, drawing about 12,000 people per day during the Games.

Typically, retail and tourism-related destinations that are unconnected to the Winter Games don't do well when the Games are underway, because domestic and international spending by people is focused on Games-related activities. She told the audience that plans for a series of entertainment and events is being considered to help draw tourism to the Island before and after the Games are underway.

That's because experience shows that trying to compete with Olympic events isn't normally successful, but so far the federal government has indicated that it does not expect to foot the bill for events, and that so far the Granville Island CMHC office would have to stay within its normal operating budget.

"Our funding comes from two sources," she told the group, "store rents and parking fees." As a result, she says, the Island's administration is considering temporary sponsorships, probably through approaches to several companies, to help pay for things. "Although we don't normally entertain corporate sponsorship on the Island, during the Olympics, there will be some flexibility... It's not a change in our policy or our initiatives," she said.

Freeman said the highly successful "White Nights" that were launched during the Torino Winter Olympics, in which specific areas of the city near the sponsor plazas and Live Sites were allowed on two separate nights to stay open all night, may draw significant crowds, but it "wouldn't be aligned with Granville Island's values. We are what we are. But, as a cultural centre for Vancouver and British Columbia, there would be every expectation that we would be a cultural hub during the Olympics. So, international programming, theatre, dance, music... those kinds of things would be highly likely. We're also an artistic capital, and we have a creative-arts community. There all kinds of things on the cooker. So we're certainly entertaining that type of initiative."

Research into the experience of previous Winter Olympic locations shows that there is an important and steady lift in the interest of tourists in the years following the Games, and so it would be important for Island marketing purposes that when the 12,000 to 13,000 unaccredited media expected to descend on the city to report on events that surround the Games, the Island look busy and animated when TV cameras film it. She said that extensions to the Island's retail hours of business from its normal 6pm or 7pm closures, perhaps to 9 or 10 in the evening, are also being considered during the period of the Games.

"Operationally," she says, "all of that is being looked at now, along with first-aid, washrooms, transportation plans... hours of operation, traffic patterns, that type of thing, will emerge." She said it would not be "operationally feasible" to close off the Island to vehicle traffic during the period to encourage pedestrian activity, but she said, "You may see limited traffic patterns for certain periods, for example, like what happens on Canada Day, when we close off the whole east end of the Island -- that type of thing -- to allow for concentrations of people."

Freeman notes that access to the Island is significant part of the planning. "Obviously, it's a huge issue. Access to the Island is an issue at the best of times. We're anticipating it's going to be a real challenge during the Olympics." She says, for instance that Aguabus, a company that provides ferry taxis along False Creek, "are in serious planning right now, and I would not be surprised to see their capacity significantly enhanced during that period."

Freeman said that the Island would be conducting "a consultation process" over the next few months to allow business owners and operators to offer comments and suggestions.

RESOURCES

A satellite image of Granville Island, from Google Maps:
tinyurl.com/2rnk4z

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Marcia Freeman
Manager, Business Development & Marketing
Granville Island Office
2nd Floor, 1661 Duranleau Street
Vancouver BC V6H 3S3

Phone: 604.666.2529
Fax: 604.666.7376
E-Mail: MFreeman@CMHKC-SCHL.gc.ca
Web: www.GranvvilleIsland.com

---

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #2532
BOARD OF DIRECTOR'S MEETING APPROVES C$25 MILLION FROM CAPITAL CONTINGENCY FOR ANOTHER 800 BEDS FOR ATHLETES, OFFICIALS IN WHISTLER

The Board of Directors of Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) has agreed to pay for the cost of providing an extra 800 beds in Whistler to accommodate more athletes, their supporting teams and officials than the International Olympic Committee had originally requested, and it will do so in using temporary, portable and rented bunkhouses.

The IOC had made the request for additional accommodation late last year, posing a number of headaches for VANOC management because the call had come after the federal and provincial governments had signed off on VANOC's expanded capital budget of C$580 million, and promises had been made by VANOC and both governments that there would be no further tax money provided, nor requested, for capital construction.

It also meant that the cost and extent of Whistler Olympic and Paralympic support services, from basics like electrical power to the amount of toilet paper required would also need to be adjusted within VANOC's separate and privately raised operations budget to deal with all the additional people arriving.

Acting Board chairman Rusty Goepel confirmed today C$25 million would be drawn from VANOC's venue development budget central contingency fund to pay for the additional beds as part of the Whistler Athlete Centre, a separately funded component inside the Whistler Olympic Village, which the Resort Municipality of Whistler is providing with VANOC help. That's about half of the contingency fund. And additional C$1.6 million was transferred from the contingency during today's Board meeting in Whistler to be divided among a number of other projects. Goepel says the remaining fund now stands at C$26.8 million. He also notes the contingency is part of the total C$580 million.

The Whistler Athlete Centre, one of the key promises of VANOC to the IOC, consists of several parts: a stand-alone high-performance training centre and gymnasium, about 20 townhomes and a lodge -- a four-storey modular building that will contain 98 accommodation units housing two occupants each. It will also contain an eating area and patio by the lobby, common areas for the occupants as well as meeting rooms, and is connected to the high-performance centre.

The Centre is part of the economic lynchpin for the Whistler venues after the Games, because it allows high-performance athletes, their support teams and their families to stay in Whistler while doing indoor training to complement their work on the outdoor venues for their sports with staff at the training centre, which in turn helps to make their on-going operations more economic and provides an economic benefit to the area.

VANOC's Revenues executive vice-president Dave Cobb says, "That's probably the biggest change that's occurred anywhere in our project, I would say, between the time we had our budget approved by the two senior governments and our final plans. We became aware of these requirements after the Torino debrief, and from that time we've been working on what the solutions would be. We're covering the entire cost within this allocation of the contingency."

The Board's agreement for increasing the budget from its original C$16 million was part of a detailed application for the funding submitted by VANOC's executive vice-president of Capital Construction, Dan Doyle, who has been negotiating with an as-yet unidentified contractor over the cost and scope of the Centre.

"Right now," Doyle says, "Our plan is to use camp-style facilities, that could be used after the Games in the oil-fields of Alberta or the oil-and-gas camps of British Columbia. We'll have the ability to rent it just for the time that we need it for the Games."

That prompted Goepel, who was listening to Doyle explain the situation, to smilingly protest "this won't be a rough campsite -- this will be a very nice place to be accommodated."

Doyle notes that, "The overall Athlete's Village is going to hold about 3,200 athletes and team officials. Of that, the Whistler Resort Municipality is building accommodation for about 2,050. We are building accommodation for about 350 permanent beds for athletes and team officials [through the Whistler Athlete's Centre], and we're also providing the 800 beds for temporary accommodation."

Doyle says that while the largest portion of the contingency dealt with the temporary housing, "the other thing that occurred to us that the price for a building in Whistler that we estimated in 2002 was quite a bit more than what the reality is [in 2009 dollars], and that's driven the price up." Doyle also noted that Whistler council also added about C$5 million more as part of its contribution to improving aspects of the gymnasium component, which will also be used after the Games for community activities.

The rest of the contingency draws approved by the Board, which includes representatives of the federal and provincial governments, were for:

C$850,000 to the Cypress Mountain venue

C$500,000 to the BC Place Stadium venue project -- Doyle says this actually reflects a return to VANOC's original budget for the work it needs to do at the Stadium to bring it up to accessibility standards, particularly for washrooms. He had hoped that the work could be done for less, and so that decreased amount showed up in VANOC's Business Plan budget when it was published in May, but he said the savings couldn't be realized.

C$150,000 to the Richmond Oval

Whistler Mayor Ken Melamed attended a portion of the meeting to provide a status report on Whistler's planning for the 2010 Winter Games; his report was not immediately made available. However, the Whistler Development Corporation, the Whistler municipal subsidiary responsible for delivery the area's Olympic and Paralympic Athlete Village expects work to begin in the next few weeks on foundations for the three Development Permit applications approved earlier this year (which we reported on earlier). The WDC has also finished preparing the sites for the start of construction for VANOC's Whistler Athlete Centre, which is expected to start before the end of this month. The municipal waste-transfer station has now been fully relocated from the site, and final landfill closure works have been begun with scheduled completion this year.

In other news from the Board meeting:

The Board endorsed VANOC management's choices for the overall Ceremonies leadership team for the Vancouver 2010 Opening and Closing Ceremonies and nightly Victory Ceremonies, as the medal ceremonies are now being called. VANOC will announce tomorrow morning the name of the executive producer and the main production team of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Games, which draw more broadcast audience on their own than any other Olympic event -- VANOC estimates more than three billion people will see the Opening Ceremonies on broadcasts. The team is also expected to be responsible for producing the events at the nightly medal ceremonies for the Olympics and Paralympics. VANOC staff, particularly the executive vice-president of Ceremonies, Terry Wright, have been doing the interviews of those on the shortlist during the last few weeks. The names were gathered as the result of an RFP earlier this year. VANOC says that it will also provide an overview "of the consultative process that will be undertaken to develop the ceremonies."

VANOC Board chairman Jack Poole, reports Goepel, continues to recover from pancreatic surgery in July and participated in the meeting by phone from Seattle, where he is being treated.

For the first time in recent Olympic history the IOC has canceled its normal bi-annual IOC project review that was scheduled to take place in Vancouver in December. It's the second time it's done that; VANOC CEO John Furlong says the Commission felt VANOC's progress made the visit unnecessary. The next IOC Coordination Commission is scheduled to be held in Vancouver in February, led by IOC President Jacques Rogge.

Gerard Heiberg, chairman of the IOC's Marketing Commission will meet with VANOC management for three days next week from September 24-26. Heiberg oversees the IOC's arrangements with international corporate sponsors, among other things. His visit is expected to include a venue tour, meetings with government representatives and some corporate sponsors, and speeches in Richmond and at VANOC.

The International Skating Union, the sports federation that supervises skating athletes around the world that are expected to take part in the 2010 Games, has accepted a proposal by VANOC to change its practice facility from the Agrodome to the Killarney arena, which is being rebuilt in east Vancouver. The ISU also approved VANOC's test event schedule which will include a world Single Distance Championships for long-track speedskating, a World Cup for short-track speedskating and a Four Continents Cup in figure skating.

The final pour of concrete for the winding, 1.6 kilometre, U-shaped track at the Whistler Sliding Center, which is to be used for bobsleigh, skeleton and luge events, has been completed.

Fabrication and erection of the ski-jump structures at the Whistler Nordic Centre finished ahead of schedule.

The new refrigeration system at the Pacific Coliseum has been successfully tested.

The roof of the main arena at UBC has been erected.

Excavation for the skier underpass on the women's downhill course at Whistler Creekside, where a test event, which VANOC CEO John Furlong says is proving to be "challenging", is complete. Construction of the underpass structure is "well advanced." Meanwhile, the finish-area works at Whistler Creekside are complete and Boyd Creek, which is adjacent, has been diverted to support the tailed frog habitat, which had been a conservation issue.

Capital construction procurement activities for VANOC are nearing completion on the projects that are due to finish late this year, procurement for the Whistler Athlete Centre and a number of minor trade contracts at the Hillcrest curling rink continue; but these are projects that will be underway for some time yet and which VANOC is directly supervising. Major work is underway outside of VANOC's direct responsibility on the two Athlete Villages and the Richmond sports complex that is to house the long-track skating oval.

The footing and foundation preparation work is underway at the Vancouver Olympic Village in parcels two and nine, with all parcels expected to be at grade by the end of fall. The City's hard and soft landscaping works on the waterfront, which began in late May, is said to be "progressing well."

VANOC's Workforce function is still expecting to start its call for volunteers in February. Historically, 59% of volunteers come from the host city, with 30% coming from the provincial area, 10% from across the country, and the remaining 1% from the rest of the world. VANOC says it expects to need 25,000 volunteers, and that it expects there will be 15,000 participants in the Ceremonies its planning for the Games. There are a number of skilled volunteer positions required for the Games, particularly those with experience in particular winter sports and in medicine.

The Finance Committee of VANOC's Board has approved key parts of VANOC's ticket-pricing strategy and award for the as-yet-unidentified company that is provide the ticketing service on contract. More information is expected on that in the next few weeks. The Committee also reported on the sales strategy of VANOC's out-of-home media program.

VANOC's 2007 annual financial report is scheduled for release on October 17. VANOC's fiscal year ends July 31.

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2531

THREE VANOC VENUES STILL MULLING OVER WINDFALL WOOD FROM STANLEY PARK

Consultants working with the Vancouver City Parks Board at three 2010 Olympic venues are still assessing the type and amount of windfall wood from last winter's storms that blew down about 10,000 of the 150,000 trees in Vancouver's Stanley Park. The expectation is that some of the better quality would could be used to reduce the cost of construction. The venues include the Trout Lake arena which is being razed and rebuilt in east-central Vancouver, the combined Hillcrest curling rink and swimming-pool project in central Vancouver that VANOC is supervising, and the Vancouver Olympic Village and its surrounds in southeast False Creek. Parks Board people have also located an old-growth cedar north of Stanley Park's Lost Lagoon, which they believe fits the request by the BC government, which intends to display one inside its 2008 Summer Olympics pavilion now being prepared in Beijing.

DENVER TO HOST US CURLING CHAMPIONSHIP TO DETERMINE 2010 TEAM

The US Curling Association today chose Denver, Colorado, to host the country's National Curling Championships. The Metro Denver Sports Commission won over bids from Bismarck, North Dakota and Rochester, New York as finalists. Other cities that submitted bids were Milwaukee and Fairbanks, Alaska. Twenty teams will compete in the trials that take place from February 21 to the 28, 2009, at the Broomfield Event Center, with the top teams advancing to the 2010 Vancouver Games. The event will double as the 2009 national championships, a qualifier for that year's world championships.

VANOC SPONSOR RONA ADDS BC'S DICKS LUMBER TO ITS STABLE

VANOC's renovations corporate sponsor Rona, based near Montreal (TSX:RON), is to purchase Dick's Lumber of BC in the fourth quarter of this year, from the family that owns it. It has two 5,600-square metre (60,000-square=foot) specialized stores in the Greater Vancouver suburbs of Burnaby and Surrey, and a 3,000-square-metre (32,000-square-foot) store in North Vancouver as well as nine hectares (22 acres) of lumber yards. It employs about 200 people. Rona did not say what it will pay for the privately held three-store lumber, building materials and hardware firm in which 80% of its customers are corporate. "This acquisition is another step into our rapid consolidation of the market in British Columbia," president and CEO Robert Dutton said Tuesday on a conference call from Vancouver, adding, "Rona is highly involved in B.C. development projects through its association with the 2010 Vancouver Olympics." The acquisition brings the total number of Rona stores in BC to 54. Rona bought Curtis Lumber and Mountain Building Supplies in the Sea-to-Sky corridor in 2006, plus it's added 14 other stores over the past two years. Dick's Lumber generated more than C$100 million in sales in the past 12 months as well as "strong" profit margins, according to Rona.

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #2530
GOEPEL TAGGED AS LIKELY TO CHAIR VANOC'S BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING IN WHISTLER WEDNESDAY

Rusty Goepel, the senior vice president of Raymond James Ltd, the Canadian arm of investment firm Raymond James Inc, is expected to be elected chairman of Wednesday's meeting in Whistler of the Board of Directors for the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC).

If it occurs, Goepel will be sitting in for Board chairman Jack Poole. Goepel is one of three representatives of the BC government on the Board. Poole is still recovering from surgery July 5 for pancreatic cancer.

Although apparently still too ill to run the meeting as he normally does, Poole is expected to listen to it by teleconference. VANOC CEO John Furlong says Poole and he, as they have done for years, continue to discuss the status of the 2010 Games by phone "nearly every day," according to Furlong, adding. "Jack's right in the middle of what's going on."

The Board, which will meet in private but hold a media briefing afterward, is also expected to hear a report by VANOC's executive vice-president of Construction, Dan Doyle, recommending it move part of the C$53 million capital contingency budget to cover the expected cost of developing the Whistler Athlete's Centre, a component of the Whistler Olympic Village, because of scope changes.

As of last January, VANOC's Risk Register report for the project, originally budgeted at C$16 million, was pegging it at C$37.5 million because of scope changes and construction cost escalation, but there have been a number of proposed construction options which may adjust that figure. Doyle's report to the Board, which he has so far kept confidential as negotiations with contractors continued this summer, is expected to deal with the status of the project and how much of the contingency is expected to be needed. Whistler mayor Ken Melamed is also expected to meet with the Board just before Doyle's presentation.

Board director Ken Dobell is also expected to report to the Board about the regular meeting of the Board's Finance Committee on September 10, which has been dealing with aspects of venue construction, operations, planning and oversight of the Games.

The Board is also expected to hear reports on VANOC marketing and the status of the Olympic Torch Relay program from executive vice-president of Revenue, Marketing and Communications, Dave Cobb. Cobb and Jeff Mooney, a City of Vancouver appointee to the Board and executive chairman of A&W Food Services of Canada, are due to report jointly on VANOC's strategic communications, likely in connect with how VANOC communicates the development of its transportation policies in the new year.

Cathy Priestner, VANOC's executive vice-president of Sport and Terry Wright, the executive vice-president of Facilites and Ceremonies are to jointly report on the planning they've been doing for some months on how they expect games-time operations are proceeding. Priestner is also expected to report on development and planning aspects of her own portfolio.

David Guscott, the executive vice-president of Corporate Strategy and Government Relations, is also expected to report to the Board on the status of memoranda of understanding involving provincial governments that have not yet set up such arrangements with VANOC.

And Donna Wilson, VANOC's executive vice president of Sustainability is expected to recommend changes to the terms of reference for the Board's Advisory Committee on Sustainability Performance.

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2529

VANCOUVER MAYOR CONSIDERS 17-YEAR-OLD CONNECTOR NOTION A CITY OLYMPIC PROJECT

Vancouver City mayor Sam Sullivan is now considering that a 100-metre pedestrian bridge proposed since 1990 to link BC Place with the nearby Georgia Viaduct should be viewed as a legacy project related to the 2010 Winter Olympics. The idea is to build the connect from Beatty Street to the BC Place pedestrian concourse that wraps around the east side of building, but which also involves setting up a right-of-way through land owned by Central Heat, a utility that provides steam heat to commercial buildings throughout the downtown core. The topic of it being Olympics-related came up when Vancouver city staff proposed that council move on Wednesday to preserve a pledge for a C$150,000 contribution to the City from Concord Pacific toward the cost of building the bridge, even though council has not yet agreed to build it, and the full cost of the bridge project has not yet been settled. Concord is developing about 200 luxury apartments at the corner of Georgia and Beatty Streets, adjacent to GM Place, which is just across the Viaduct from BC Place, and its building would benefit from such a connector. BC Place is where VANOC will host the Opening and Closing Olympic Ceremonies, GM Place is where three Olympic-related hockey games per day will take place while the Olympics are underway, and the area is about a block away from where the City proposes to set up an Olympic Live Site, where it expects up to 10,000 people to congregate daily for entertainment while the Olympics and Paralympics are underway. The service agreement between the City and Concord in connection with the condo development, which was first set up in 2002, a year before the City won the bid for the 2010 Games, is about to expire, along with the $150,000 cash pledge to contribute towards the connector's construction if it were built, so, until council can decide whether to approve the capital construction, staff suggest that the city "request" Concord provide a letter of credit for the amount that will stay in place after the service agreement is discharged. A city manager familiar with the issues notes, the project would "enhance pedestrian links from the Georgia Viaduct level to the Expo Boulevard and False Creek level since it will be a direct pedestrian corridor down Georgia Street to False Creek." It's also suggested by city staff that the link would improve pedestrian movement between BC Place and the nearby Stadium Skytrain station.

VANOC TO WORK ON PLANNING FOR INTEGRATION OF SECURITY AND TRANSPORTATION AT GAMES

VANOC, for the last couple of years, has been distancing itself from all matters related to security of the Games and leaving them in the hands of the RCMP-led Vancouver Integrated Security Unit, the federal-provincial shared Games Security Committee and its purported C$175-million budget. There are a few things that are related to security, however, that VANOC is embracing in its own privately funded operations budget, and one of those is integrating security measures into its logistical operations, particularly in dealing with transportation. An offspring of VANOC's Government Services Integration department, or function, as VANOC terms it, Transportation & Security Integration. There is a lot of work for it to do, because there are a lot of security agencies involved in, for instance, just dealing with the plans VANOC is working out with all of the local governments about its road=management plans, let alone handling the intricacies of the security methods and needs from a range of health-and-safety agencies. The job of that section is to ensure that security requirements at Vancouver International Airport dovetail with the range of jobs VANOC needs to perform as most of the people who are responsible for putting on the Games, including the athletes and their teams from around the world, arrive and depart. It's job is also to ensure the complexities of those security arrangements continue to work smoothly with VANOC's logistics and transportation departments as the Games goes through the two-week transition period between the Olympics and the Paralympics. A lot of these details are expected to be hammered out and tested, starting early in the new year.

TEEN "ALTITUDE" CONFERENCE PROPOSED FOR OCTOBER BY 2010 LEGACIES NOW

2010 Legacies Now, the society spun off by the BC government to work with private companies and governments on a range of 2010-related social programs, is planning to convene a first-annual conference of teenage British Columbians in Squamish next month to "learn about community opportunities arising from the 2010 Winter Games," among other things. The all-expense paid weekend leadership retreat at Camp Summit is to run from October 19-21 for up to 60 of those aged 16-18, and is being called the Spirit of BC Altitude Youth Experience. Another of the concepts to be covered at the camp is how to organize a youth event for Spirit of BC Week, which is held in February each year to coincide with other activities marking the 2010 Games. The concept is also to work out ways to encourage young people to support the 95 Spirit of BC committees in communities throughout BC, which are also coordinated and supported by 2010 Legacies Now. Applicants for the conference have to write an essay of up to 300 words, or provide a short video, explaining why they should attend and include two letters of references from non-family members explaining how those people believe the applicant can "contribute to the program." The form has to be in by September 28.[See RESOURCES, below, for a link to the application form.]

RESOURCES

2010 Legacies Now application form, in PDF format, for conference attendance:
www.spiritofbc.com/PDF/Altitude_Brochure.pdf

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Business, VANOC| #2528
BELL CANADA "BELIEVE" FUNDRAISER FOR 2010 GAMES LAUNCHES ON SCHEDULE

Bell Canada, the top corporate sponsor of the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC), today launched its "Believe" fundraiser for Canadian winter Olympic athletes and promo for the Games themselves.

This is the latest of Bell's extensive Olympic-related sponsorship activations, and it comes with sophisticated and simultaneous marketing support from VANOC's Communications department, the Own The Podium program, Bell Canada itself, Bell's Sympatico/Microsoft and ExpressVu subsidiaries. Mass media advertising buys are also expected to make an appearance.

As we noted earlier, Bell had commissioned Canadian singer Suzie McNeil and the 61-piece Canadian National Arts Centre Orchestra to perform her song "Believe" this spring in a music video, in French and English versions, to promote the 2010 Winter Games.

The video also includes Olympic footage supplied by the International Olympic Committee. Also in the video are three Canadian Olympians: freestyle skier in two Olympics, Steve Omischl; figure skater Joannie Rochette and speed skater Clara Hughes. The video is available for on-line sale and download at C$0.99, with an undisclosed amount of the "proceeds from every download... donated to Own the Podium 2010."

Although the campaign has its own easily linked website portal on Sympatico, which Bell is using to deal with the retail-store aspects of viewing or paying to download the video, VANOC's PR department, which wrote a feature about the video and is headlining it on its own home page, chose to link it in the feature in such a way that people looking for the video are first taken to the Own the Podium website, which then provides a further, and this time direct, link to the download site. The effect is to tie the Own the Podium website into the traffic flow.

Sympatico's home page has a link to the video portal, but there isn't any such support at Bell Canada's main retail home page, nor on that of Bell's corporate owner, BCE Inc, nor on Bell's Mobility website, which handles traffic for its mobile phone network. Also not so far participating are the home web pages of CTV, Bell's television network subsidiary which has broadcasting rights to the 2010 Games, or its Vancouver subsidiary that includes a retail store focused on souvenirs from the shows it broadcasts.

At the download site, however, there's also a 14-minute video about how the "Believe" video was made, with behind-the-scenes footage and interviews. The music video and "making of" feature are also available for viewing by Bell Mobility customers with specific types of phones, as well as on ExpressVu Channel 370 and HD Channel 830. Bell ExpressVu is the division of Bell Canada that provides satellite television service across Canada.

Own the Podium 2010 is a national sport technical initiative designed to help Canada's winter athletes win the most number of medals at the 2010 Olympic Games, and to place in the top three nations with the most gold medals at the 2010 Paralympic Games. The OTP program was set up with a budget of C$110 million, half contributed by the Canadian government and up to half pledged by VANOC to be raised through the private sector. VANOC's executive vice-president of Sport, Cathy Priestner, developed the OTP concept for the Canadian Olympic Committee shortly before she was hired by VANOC.

"Believe", which has been widely available for free download for some time now from music-sharing sites in its original studio performance, was written by Marti Frederiksen and Kara DioGuardi of K'Stuff Publishing, which is, in turn, administered by Arthouse Entertainment of Hollywood, California.

RESOURCES

The Bell Canada website page for the Suzie McNeil "Believe" video:
entertainment1.sympatico.msn.ca/Music/Believe/index

VANOC's feature PR story about the video:
www.vancouver2010.com/en/OrganizingCommittee/MediaCentre/FeatureStories/2007/09/17/45436_0709170810-986

or tinyurl.com/3ydq7c

Previous stories we've written about this project:

Bell commissions music video for 2010 promotion plan this fall
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:2427; Published on Wednesday, July 18, 2007]

'VANOC sponsor Bell Canada to launch "Believe" campaign September 17
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:2520; Published on Tuesday, September 11, 2007]

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #2527
TRANSPORTATION SCENARIOS TO START TESTING TO START NEAR YEAR'S END, WITH A FOCUS ON TRAFFIC COMING FROM WHISTLER TO VANCOUVER

The executive vice president of Service Operations for the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) says VANOC will begin to test transportation scenarios in the next few weeks, and continue refining its policies until Games time.

Terry Wright, who says, "it's a pretty intricate exercise," and "we still have to put some basic building blocks in place," says the scenarios are designed to help VANOC understand what it needs to do in a wide range of situations where people and goods are blocked in some way from getting to where the need to be during Olympic and Paralympic test events and during the Games themselves in 2010. And, he says, VANOC will be asking some of those who helped run the transportation components of previous Olympics to help VANOC as it works through the testing. "One of the scenarios we'll look at is: do we close the Sea to Sky highway between 4 am and 7 am, but what we'd really have to understand is what the implication would be for the community."

Greater Vancouver and the highway between Vancouver and Whistler, have a number of roadway bottlenecks that, when they are forced out of service for some reason, such as an accident, rock or snow slides, cause major traffic jams. VANOC needs to understand what it must do in those or other cases when it's trying to get athletes from, say, the Vancouver or Whistler Athlete Villages, or support staff to or from venues, or trying to move supplies destined for venues from warehouses.

VANOC in its earlier, general planning, anticipated the issue and developed its large planning to ensure that, as much as possible, all the essential people for staging an Olympic or Paralympic event, are staying as close as possible to where that event is to be held, so that such situations have as little impact as possible whether an event can go ahead.

The International Olympic Committee's list of priority categories for events puts spectators last. Events are expected to be cancelled if athletes, Games officials such as referees, or broadcasters can't televise an event, but they'll go ahead if spectators are, for instance, blocked by a landslide on the Sea to Sky Highway. If a group of spectators, for some reason beyond their control, can't get to an event for which they hold tickets and the event goes on without their attendance, the ticket price is simply refunded. That's because the IOC is focused on broadcast audiences, not local ones -- and even ticket-holders can watch the event on TV, or in other, delayed broadcasts.

Wright says it's still too early for VANOC to know what kind of impact VANOC's eventual transportation plans will have on residents or commercial interests, such as trucking companies, however, VANOC's chief marketing executive, Dave Cobb and vice-president of Communications, Rene Smith-Valade, have been working on plans for consulting with a wide range of the public and stakeholders as the transportation plan is developed. VANOC already has in hand several base-line traffic studies which it commissioned for the Whistler, Whistler-Vancouver corridor, and Greater Vancouver areas where it expects its competitive and non-competitive venues are located, or will be.

"Obviously," he says, "our objective would be to minimize any disruption [to others]. Most of our events are beginning early in the morning in Vancouver. People who will be heading to Whistler will be crossing the [two key bottlenecks, the Lions Gate and the Second Narrows] bridges at six in the morning, which is not a peak time going north-bound in the community... our big thing will be how we moderate the movement coming south during the day. We'll spend a lot of time thinking about that, and talking to the community, and planning what we can do in that regard."

Wright notes that there will be no public parking at any of the competition venues in Whistler, and there will "really be no public parking in the Resort, because the lots One to Four will be used for bus operations, and the ones in the mountains will have Olympic installations on them, such as at Creekside. So, if you want to get to a venue, you'll have to ride a form of Olympic or public transit at some point in the journey. What we haven't determined yet is where that point will begin -- we know it'll end at the venue."

Wright adds that VANOC has "quite an open mind" on the different ways to solve the issues, "and we'll put a fair bit of effort into trying to explore the different options." It's possible, he says, that there could be park-and-rides set up fairly close to the venues, which is how the issue was solved at Torino during the 2006 Winter Games, but he points out that VANOC has much different infrastructure to deal with than Tornino's organizing committee did.

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Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on September 14, 2007

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2526

VANOC SPONSORS USED AS OBJECT LESSONS IN FORTUNE MAGAZINE ARTICLE

Two of VANOC's major corporate sponsors are being used as examples by Fortune Magazine in an article discussing the political impact of major Canadian companies being acquired by foreign firms. Controlling interest in VANOC's major retail-store sponsor, the Hudson's Bay Company, which is also the largest and oldest retailer in Canada, was bought by American billionaire Jerry Zucker in March, 2006, about a year after HBC became a VANOC sponsor, and Vincor International, VANOC's vintner, was purchased by Constellation Brands of New York state in 2006 as Vincor was negotiating its VANOC sponsorship. The article, by reporter Erik Heinrich, details in general some of the political complaints by Canada's federal New Democratic Party and unions about the issue of foreign ownership; similar stories appear every few years. The current article does not mention that the owner of one of VANOC's major venues, Intrawest Development, the general partner of Whistler Mountain Resort Limited Partnership, which owns the facilities on Whistler Mountain that are to be used by VANOC as its venue for alpine downhill, super-G, combined downhill and slalom skiing events in 2010, was sold in 2006 to the New York-based asset-management firm, Fortress Investment Group for US$2.8 billion. [A link to the full Fortune article is in RESOURCES, below.]

900 VOLUNTEERS NEEDED TO HELP VANOC DEAL WITH NATIONAL GROUPS AT 2010 GAMES

VANOC expects it will need about 900 of its estimated 25,000 volunteers to help look after the national Olympic and Paralympic committees and their teams that are expected to come to the 2010 Games. More than 80 countries are expected to provide teams for the Olympic Games, and more than 40 countries for the Paralympic Games. When VANOC formally begins its major volunteer recruitment drive, starting next year, the 900 volunteers for the national committees will be provided with a year-long training course that is expected to deal with the myriad of multicultural issues that attend the national arrivals, the details of which won't be developed until early next year. The process of developing that training course involves getting suggestions, ideas and requirements from as many of the countries as possible, and integrating them into the Games-time planning process. By the way, part of the wrangling process for volunteers involves newsletters for the specialized groups of them, such as those for the national committees.

VANOC SPONSORSHIP-AQUISTION ACTIVITIES TO BE TURNED UP A NOTCH

VANOC is expected to expand its sponsorship-acquisition workforce as it works on finding more supporting sponsors and suppliers to the Games. The marketing team keeps close control over its plans for who it approaches and why, however. Its basic process, however, is to identify budgets-spending line items that can best be suited to a sponsorship where goods or services can be exchanged for a package of defined marketing and association rights with the Olympics, staff research internally the firms most likely to be in favour of such a deal, then the potential companies are approached by VANOC about the idea. That's followed by the negotiations, the closing and signatures on the term sheets VANOC uses to define what's provided in exchange for the package. Yes, it many ways it's like the standard job of a salesman. National, or Tier-1, sponsorships are valued (by VANOC, if it were paying retail prices for the goods or services) at C$50 million and up; Tier-2, or supporter sponsorships, are valued from C$15 million to $50 million, while supplier-sponsor deals are valued at C$3 million to C$15 million.

RESOURCES

"Is Canada for sale?", the Fortune Magazine article, is here:
money.cnn.com/2007/09/12/news/international/100259540.fortune/?postversion=2007091211

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Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on September 14, 2007

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Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #2525 (Feature)
OVERLAY DEPARTMENT NEARS HALFWAY MARK OF ITS MAJOR PLANNING PHASE, AS IT TESTS THE MARKETPLACE WATERS

The 2010 organizing committee's director of Overlay expects the organization to have reached the half-way mark by the end of this calendar year in developing detailed plans for the materials and systems it will need as the department turns facilities into useable venues for the Games.

The Overlay Function of the the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) develops the integrated design of the competition and non-competition venues. It then installs the temporary infrastructure required to provide the Games' working environment for athletes, Olympic and Paralympic teams, corporate sponsors, broadcasters and the rest of the Games-ready needs. When the Games are over, it takes the installations away. The Function has an operations budget of C$134.7 million, with the major spending expect to go to trailers, temporary seating, temporary washrooms, fencing, various things necessary to adapt the site to VANOC's requirements, and labour.

The function also prepares the facilities for the test events that occur at each of the 12 competition-and-training venues before the Games, then sets things up for the Olympics, then the Paralympics, and it also deals with the needs of nine major non-competition venues -- including the two Athlete Villages, the media centres, even the Vancouver International Airport -- plus a wide assortment of about 30 VANOC support venues, such as warehouses, park-and-ride lots and bus malls.

Overlay director Randy Desrochers says, "By the end of this year, "we'll be at the halfway mark of our major design process, and we'll be able to go out to the market with our major commodity requirements early in the spring." It's a lengthy and detailed design & integration phase, the second of six phrases of Overlay's overall work plan. The D&I plan is the detailed work about where a myriad of things go at each venue. Some of the huge quantities of materials VANOC will require to accomplish the task, when Overlay installation begins in late 2009, have been quantified, and more are being done, and it's beginning to ask the marketplace how it can supply the materials.

VANOC has also just begun its third Overlay phase, contract management, which overlaps the design & integration phrase. VANOC has already issued a list of some of the major materials and quantities it expects to be purchasing over the next two years, and has asked companies interested in providing the materials to let it know by October 12 how much the firm can do, and under what pricing conditions. A shortlist of firms or consortiums is expected to be developed once the expressions of interest have arrived, with more details in a formal Request for Proposals issued late this year or early next, assuming the marketplace reacts as expected. [See RESOURCES, below] for the story we've already written about the expressions of interest information.]

Desrochers says the D&I process is expected to continue through to the end of the 2008 calendar year. Overlay plans go through a number of iterations as more and more needs, from VANOC itself and from its corporate and government sponsors, are determined. "The packages of requirements, when they go out to market, are staggered, so that as we go through our design phase, we'll be going down to the detail of what's in specific rooms, what is in tents, in compounds, in venues."

He says that the goal of issuing and awarding contracts during the first calendar quarter of next year for some of the major quantities of materials is to "get our suppliers in, to work with them, on the final details prior to installation. It looks like there is a lot of time between now and the Games, but in our planning, we start installing some of material in less than two years from now. There's not that much time to get some of the quantities of things that we need, work with the suppliers to do the logistics, to get the materials into the cities [where VANOC venues are located], and figuring out where they're going to go."

The work is split within the Overlay team between mountain and non-mountain venues, but VANOC expects to issue two tenders for each commodity package -- depending on the results of the EOI -- based more on geography: one for the Greater Vancouver area and one for the Whistler area, in each of 14 commodities, for a total of 28 packages. "We sat down and looked at how we wanted to go out to the marketplace, and we did a lot of research, talked to a lot of people, in Salt Lake [where the 2002 Winter Games were held], and how it worked for them, and what worked, and didn't work, and we decided to go for the geographical split. Our initial approach is to have one supplier for each area, Whistler and Vancouver, of each commodity, unless there's an opportunity for a company or a consortium that wants to go after both."

But Desrochers notes that the approach VANOC ultimately uses in formulating the packages in the new year will depend on what the marketplace tells the organization in this EOI process. "It's a real exercise for us to see what's in the marketplace. We're putting our numbers out and seeing what we get back, in enough time to adjust our process. The last thing we want to do is go out and engage companies, and put them in a position where they've overtaxed themselves and they can't deliver. There were some instances of that prior to the Salt Lake Games, and immediately after; some of the companies that were contracted either failed before the Games began, or immediately after, because they over-extended themselves. I'm not interested in going through the trauma of having a company end up in trouble... because we've asked them for too much."

For the most part, he says, he expects much of what VANOC will acquire will be rented, not purchased -- in fact Overlay is the only department in VANOC that focuses on rentals instead of purchases in procurement. Packages are also expected to be broken out into goods -- fencing, toilets, flagpoles, etc. -- and services, such as engineering, lighting design, temporary-seating design. VANOC, however, is also setting up its own design and procurement system, rather than relying on turn-key companies to provide what it needs. "It gives us more control," he says as he talks about this particular strategy, adding, "We prefer to have a one-on-one relationship with our suppliers; we prefer not to have a middleman... and that's why the only thing on the street right now are commodity packages."

VANOC gets its Overlay material from three main places: corporate sponsors, such as Rona for building materials, and from its own in-house factory that deals with wood construction, such as stairs and ramps, but he says that by far, the marketplace will be the largest supplier to VANOC of the Overlay commodities.

VANOC expects to start installing the overlay materials in the mountain venues first, starting in the second calendar quarter of 2009, and the city venue overlay work is expected to begin in the third quarter of '09.

Once the venues are ready, the Overlay group switches to a support role during the defined period known internally as Games-time -- as Desrochers puts it, "We've built the Wal-Mart; somebody else runs it for the Games" -- then the Overlay workers go back in and tear it all down as quickly as possible. "There's a lot of scheduling and logistics work for us once the contracts are let, and just as importantly in planning how to get it all out. It's a lot of detail work."

Even venues such as park-and-rides, he says, might require a tent or fencing. "It doesn't matter what size of venue, it still requires some level of commodities."

RESOURCES

Our story about VANOC's initial overlay requirements for most of the venues; the story outlines the initial quantities for a lot of the material needed for the overlay across the whole of the Games:
'The 2010 Games runs requirements up 1,675 flagpoles to see who wants to supply the Games overlay requirements'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:2448; Published on Friday, July 27, 2007]

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Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on September 14, 2007

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Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2524
CITY OF VANCOUVER AND CANADIAN OLYMPIC COMMITTEE WORK OUT MOU FOR OLYMPIC-RELATED ISSUES; MORE MOUS TO COME

The Vancouver Olympics & Paralympics office has negotiated a Memorandum of Understanding with the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) to define "areas of collaboration" between the City and the Committee during the run-up to the 2010 Winter Olympics.

City Olympics manager Dave Rudberg notes that the MOU is similar to one earlier negotiated with Tourism Vancouver and the Four Host First Nations Secretariat, which is working with the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC). And the City is working on other MOUs, with the Canadian Paralympic Committee and the Resort Municipality of Whistler.

The MOU with the Canadian Olympic Committee lists potential collaboration on hosting of Olympic athletes and their families, a "Canadian Olympic House" in Vancouver, logistics involving the COC, helping COC athletes and COC staff working on the Games to become more familiar with Vancouver and what it has to offer; Canadian athlete development and training; "community engagement" to have Canadian athletes meet and inspire Vancouver children, and setting up opportunities for Canadian athletes to appear at Vancouver's Live Sites in 2010 during the Olympic celebrations.

Rudberg says that while there are no financial implications for the City to sign the MOU, there may be costs associated with specific projects. But, he suggests, those will come before council either separately or as part of a budgeting process.

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Government| #2523 (Feature)
VANCOUVER CITY STAFF PROPOSE TWO MAJOR OLYMPIC LIVE SITES IN DOWNTOWN VANCOUVER

The City of Vancouver's Olympic and Paralympic Operations Office is proposing City Council on Tuesday adopt a recommendation for two 2010 Olympic Live Sites in downtown Vancouver, connected by city streets through the Yaletown area with a pro-forma break-even budget of C$23.2 million.

Dave Rudberg, working with the City's Managing Director of Cultural Services and supported by the City's General Manager of Parks and Recreation, is recommending the City set up one of the Live Site locations on a block-sized vacant property on Beatty Street and adjacent to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, as expected, and the other at David Lam Park, on the north shore of False Creek in the business core's Yaletown area, about 1.4 kilometres away.

They would be connected by Hamilton and Mainland Streets, through the heart of Yaletown. The streets would be decorated in Olympic themes during the Games period, but there's no word yet on how traffic and pedestrian control would work. Over the past several months, Fireworks Consulting Group, which the City hired through an RFP to help it with the project, has worked on the planning process. [See RESOURCES, below, for a link to a map of the locations.]

The locations and connectors would tie into nearby General Motors Place, which is to be the prime location for as many as three NHL-sized hockey games a day in February while the Games are underway, and BC Place, VANOC's site of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, and nightly medal ceremonies for Greater Vancouver Olympic events during the last half of February, and additional entertainment. An additional proposed link along Robson Street would connect the Live Sites to the BC government's plans to have a business-related Olympic program area at Robson Square.

The peak capacity for the Beatty Street site is estimated by the City at about 10,000 people, and up to 13,000 at David Lam Park. There won't be an entrance charge and both locations will not allow alcohol, but the two areas will be fenced and there will be bag-checking for security reasons. Rudberg proposes that both locations would probably be operated 12 hours a day, each day the Olympic and Paralympic Games are underway, likely from 11 am to 11 pm, although, as the finale each evening is proposed for the Park, it's possible the bus-depot location might close a bit earlier to allow people to make their way to the Park. As well, only the Beatty Street location would be used during the two-week transition period between the Olympic Games, which end February 28, 2010 and the start of the Paralympic Games the following March 12.

Under the preliminary plan, site preparation with "legacy elements", such as construction work on the connector roads, installation of the fibre optic feeds necessary to connect the sites and VANOC's broadcasting feeds and stages, would begin during the summer of 2009, while construction of the event infrastructure would begin early in January, 2010.

The City's contribution to the two-sites option would be C$5 million, with the balance of the funding coming from C$10 million offered by the Canadian government for the City's 2010 celebrations, from potential sponsorship revenues from companies setting up pavilions at defined sites on the two locations, and from value-in-kind entertainment provided through the 2010 Cultural Olympiad at stages on the sites or via huge TV screens at the sites.

Rudberg suggests that Vancouver staff would work with the the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC), Whistler, the BC government and Richmond on the Live Site celebration planning "to ensure that the programming and development plans are coordinated to deliver a consistent program and achieve cost efficiencies."

Rudberg says there aren't any specific corporate or government agreements in place yet to populate the sponsorship "villages" on each site, but preliminary plans show the corporate areas at the Park would be along the Pacific Boulevard and Drake Street sides, with concession areas in the same general area, but separated from pavilions. At the Beatty location, the sponsorship village in two banks along the Dunsmuir side of the block, with concessions along the Georgia Street side. Cambie Street, to the west of the block, would be closed off for the duration, to accommodate a potential aboriginal pavilion on the Queen Elizabeth Theatre plaza sponsored by the Four Host First Nation Secretariat that is working with VANOC. Rudberg reports that the two sites option maximizes the possibility for rental revenue of space on the sites by sponsors, and that governments from other nations have also expressed interest in the possibility of being on the sites.

If council accepts the two-site concept -- until now, only the Beatty Street site has been discussed -- Rudberg recommends it spend up to C$200,000 to further refine the concept, with details to go to council in 2008. The trick is where to find that money in the existing City budget. City staff a year ago had recommended the City put C$5 million per year into an Olympic Reserve Fund for this kind of thing. Council created the Fund, but hasn't yet put any money into it. So, Rudberg proposes that the $200,000 come from an existing Olympic budget for his office, as a loan to be repaid when -- or if -- the Reserve Fund is given cash.

BACKGROUND

The pro-forma for the two-sites concept (all figures are in Canadian dollars):

INCOME (Total: $23.2 million -- numbers below are rounded)
Direct Funding: $15 million ($10 million from the Canadian government's Heritage Canada, and $5 million from Vancouver)
Operations income, from concessions for food, drink and merchandise: $1.5 million
Space rentals from companies and governments: $4.4 million
Programming (value-in-kind): $2.3 million

EXPENSES (Total $23.2 million, numbers below are rounded)
Site preparation and infrastructure: $4.5 million
Technical production (video, stages at each site, production trailers and equipment rentals): $6.1 million
Legacy Elements, including public art: $2.2 million
Operating Costs: $8.8 million
(Operating costs include: talent, utilities, site clearing, traffic control, technical staff, security, project management and marketing)
Contingency at 7%: $1.5 million

Rudberg says a detailed budget will accompany a detailed operations report in early 2008 if council approves the concept.

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The sites are expected to have a range of security:

A secure, fenced perimeter

A bag check for everybody entering the site

Other security technology at the entrances

24-hour remote-video surveillance in the sites and behind both stages

Video surveillance of the streets surrounding the Live Sites

Closed circuit monitoring of the Live Sites

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The Beatty site is proposed to have:

A large stage for live entertainment performances

Big TV screens for broadcasting 2010 competitions "and other related events"

Potential Olympic and Paralympic sponsor "showcase opportunities"

Good accessibility to the Expo Line Skytrain rapid transit and buses

Concessions for merchandise, food and beverages

Information booths

Washrooms

Back- and front-of-house service facilities

The David Lam Park is proposed to have:

A large stage on the water’s edge for live entertainment performances and a nightly closing show

Big TV screens for broadcasting Games competitions and other related events

Potential Olympic and Paralympic sponsor showcase opportunities

A "False Creek water feature"

Good accessibility to the Canada Line Skytrain station, which will be in operation then

Concessions for merchandise, food and beverage

Information booths

Washrooms

Back- and front-of-house service facilities

===

RESOURCES

Here's a link to a geographical map and satellite view of the two proposed Live Sites and related locations in downtown Vancouver:
tinyurl.com/2kj5pn

The green arrow, in the top centre of the map, shows where the Beatty Street site would be located. David Lam Park is at the bottom of the map view, on the north edge of False Creek. Robson Square, where the BC government is to locate a business pavilion and operate it from next spring through the 2010 Games, is located near the top left of the map view. BC Place Stadium is the large white dome in centre right of the view, while GM Place is the smaller dome just to the upper right of BC Place. It's proposed the two Live Sites be linked by Hamilton and Mainland Streets.

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2522

IOC PRESIDENT JACQUES ROGGE TO VISIT VANCOUVER IN FEBRUARY

The president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, is expected to accompany the IOC's 2010 Co-ordination Commission when it meets again in Vancouver late next February, according to commission chairman Rene Fasel. The last time Rogge was in the city formally was in February, 2005, and he spoke to a packed gala dinner hosted by the Vancouver Board of Trade, as well as met with VANOC officials and attended other functions.

JEAN-CLAUDE KILLY TO BE CHAIR OF 2014 OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES IOC COMMISSION

Jean-Claude Killy has been appointed chairman of the Co-ordination Commission that will oversee the IOC's Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games franchise by Jacques Rogge, the president of the IOC. The former French Alpine skier was also the chairman of IOC's co-ordination commission for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino. He won all three Olympic gold medals in Alpine skiing at the 1968 Winter Games in Grenoble, France. The 2014 Games will be sending observer teams to watch the 2010 Winter Games unfold, and will have a place in the 2010 Closing Ceremonies.

ATOS ORIGIN TO SOON BEGIN INTEGRATION WORK ON 2010's TV COMMENTATOR SYSTEM

The branch of the Major Event Unit of Atos Origin that is working out of the computer lab at VANOC's headquarters is expected to begin detailed development work in a few weeks on its TV Commentator Information System. It's a browser-based application that provides the results of the scoring and timing to computer screens of broadcast commentators at the media locations at each competition venue, as well as sending them to TV broadcasters around the world in real time. The system also provides what's known as "colour", background information for broadcasters to use during their commentary. It's available for all of the winter sport disciplines and events that are expected to be held at the 2010 Games in Vancouver, Whistler, Richmond and West Vancouver's Cypress Mountain. Non-competition venues, such as the two Athlete Villages and the two media centres -- one each in Vancouver and Whistler -- also receive the feed for distribution to hundreds of desktop computers. The work involves tailoring the commentator system to VANOC's conditions and structure, and ensuring that it's all tested and works well with Atos Origin's core computer systems, and working through the networking company's detailed protocols for integrating and testing. The work also involves ensuring the system works according to the business plans provided by VANOC managers. Atos Origin has been expanding its work at VANOC in recent weeks.

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2521

PELLEY CONFIRMED HIRED FOR OLYMPICO BROADCASTER

CTV and Keith Pelley have now both confirmed that Pelly has been hired to run Olympico, and he'll start in November, after the Grey Cup game. The consortium intends to deliver continuous coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics in both English and French 24 hours a day, for a total television commitment of more than 4,000 hours over the course of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. It will be available as over-the-air television and radio with CTV (English), TQS (French), Omni channels 1 & 2 and the 51 stations of Rogers Radio. It will also be on specialty television with TSN, Rogers Sportsnet, RDS, OLN and RIS Info Sports. Additional television coverage will be on the Aboriginal People's Television Networks, and ATN, a South-Asian national cable and satellite service. Also transmitting the Games, will be the mobile platforms of both Bell Mobility and Rogers Wireless, and it will be online via CTV's Broadband Network.

MONCTON TO GET FINAL 2010 CURLING QUALIFIER CONTEST

Moncton, New Brunswick, has been awarded the final curling qualifying contest for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The Ford world men’s curling championship is to be held in the 7,000-seat Moncton Coliseum, from April 4-12, 2009. It is expected to be the final championship of the season for member associations of the World Curling Federation to gain points that would qualify countries for curling events at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

VANOC'S DUFFY TO SPEAK AT KAMLOOPS WOMEN'S CONFERENCE NEXT MONTH

Organizers say that the keynote speaker of next month's Women of Resource Communities conference in Kamloops is to be Ann Duffy, Program Director for Sustainability at VANOC. The conference, whose focus is ways to create positive mentoring experiences for women who live and work in B.C.’s resource communities, is to start October 17 in the city in BC's south-central interior. About 175 attendees are expected.

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2520

TORONTO COLUMNIST PREDICTS KEITH PELLEY TO BE NAMED TO HEAD OF OLYMPICO THIS WEEK

A well-placed columnist for the Globe & Mail newspaper in Toronto, William Houston, reports that Keith Pelley will be announced this week as the president of Olympico, a joint venture by the two Canadian companies that hold the rights to broadcast the 2010 Winter Olympics in Canada. They include CTV, a national television network which is owned by VANOC corporate sponsor Bell Canada, and Rogers Media, which owns a number of cable distribution firms and cable broadcast channels in Canada. Olympico will be the corporate vehicle that looks after the broadcasting. Pelley is currently the president of the Toronto Argonauts, a Canadian football team, but is also the former president of TSN, the Sports Network. Houston writes that Pelley's skills in marketing, promotion and broadcasting were the key reasons for his choice. Houston reports Pelley will switch to Olympico at the end of the Canadian Football League season, which is marked by the national east vs. west contest for the Grey Cup, on November 25. The Argonauts are the host team for the game.

VANOC SPONSOR BELL CANADA TO LAUNCH "BELIEVE" CAMPAIGN SEPTEMBER 17

Bell Canada says it will activate an area, called "Believe", of its corporate website on September 17 as a way of inspiring Canadians to support the 2010 Winter Olympics. It's part of Bell Canada's sponsorship activation program. The site is expected to include "a special Olympic-inspired version" of the song "Believe", written and recorded by Suzie McNeill, a popular-music star who was most prominently involved in the TV program "RockStar INXS," sung to the music of the Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra conducted by Dave Pierce. The recording session was sponsored by Bell, VANOC's major corporate sponsor. The concept behind the website and the music, according to a Bell spokesman, is that it "chronicles the inspirational journey of Canada's athletes on the road to 2010." [The web address, which won't work until September 17, is in RESOURCES, below].

MINT TO RELEASE VANOC BIATHLON CIRCULATION COIN SEPTEMBER 12

The latest 2010 circulation coin from the Royal Canadian Mint is expected to be released to Canadians on September 12. The 25-cent biathlon coin is the fourth quarter in the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games series. Coins released earlier marked ice hockey, curling and wheelchair curling, and are in circulation. The next coin in the series is scheduled to be issued next month and represents the alpine skiing.

RESOURCES

Bell's web address for the "Believe" section, which won't go live until September 17:
bell.ca/believe

--

You can see examples of the Mint's 2010 coins by going to the organization's home page and following the 2010 link in the middle of the page:
www.mint.ca

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2519

VANOC DELVES DEEPER INTO PLANNING FOR THE MAIN PRESS CENTRE...

VANOC is in the process of expanding its planning for the Main Press Centre, part of the International Media Centre on the downtown Vancouver waterfront. The MPC is to be located in the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre, near the north foot of Burrard Street. It's adjacent to the Convention centre expansion project, which is to host the International Broadcast Centre. VANOC will have full use of the entire area -- which covers 3.25 hectares – from September 1, 2009 to March 22, 2010. The MPC is expected to be serviced by a wide range of VANOC functions during Games time -- Technology, Site Management, Logistics, Security, Accreditation and the like -- as thousands of reporters for written media gather to cover the Games and file stories and photos from the MPC. The facility is also expected to have facilities to look after the day-to-day requirements of the media from some of VANOC's major corporate sponsors, such as the Royal Bank, Bell Canada telecommunications, even a general store and catering is expected to be available. There are expected to be briefings several times a day at the facility, which will operate 24-hours a day while the Olympic and Paralympic Games are underway. For the next few months, VANOC staff will be working with its Overlay department to work out a lot of what's likely to be needed or installed in the MPC. In the meantime, overlay planning is also expected to begin in a month or two on plans for the news media centres at each of the competition venues. They'll be working on establishing the terms of various service agreements, and figuring out the needs for technology, so that there is consistency for media reporters at all of the venues. Planning will also get underway on incorporating the way the press centres at the venues can are used during the test events that will be set up for each, as well as work the press centres into VANOC's master Model Venue Exercise, which is designed to help the organization work through various issues before the venues are heavily used. Planning also includes figuring out what kind of training staff and volunteers at the venue press centres will need.

... AND THE GRAPHICS OF THE GAMES

Later this fall, VANOC is expected to work on planning and implementing in another corner of the Overlay project: the look of the Games from venue to venue. VANOC has already established its colour scheme of blues and greens for its Look of the Games, with flowing wave forms, and, of course, its logos. But there's a lot of detail to implementing the Look scheme across all of the venues. There are, for instance, banners, flags, backdrops, fence fabric -- even ice graphics -- that VANOC will be purchasing from suppliers and using, and they all have to be designed with the Look themes in mind. There is also all the wayfinding signage -- some will give directions, some will provide information, some will instruct visitors and spectators, and they, too, all have to be designed with the Look themes.

HAMILTON, ONTARIO, CONSIDERS BIDDING FOR 2010 SKATE QUALIFYING EVENT

Hamilton, Ontario, a city near Toronto, is contemplating the idea of bidding to host the 2010 Skate Canada ice skating event. The qualifying event for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver is scheduled for January 2010, with the Winter Olympics beginning on February 12 that year. Hamilton has successfully hosted Olympic qualifying skating events at Copps Coliseum in the past. The Tourism Hamilton organization is investigating the possibility.

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Paralympic| #2518
VANOC BOARD MEMBER NAMED TO CANADIAN PARALYMPIC HALL OF FAME

A member of the Board of Directors for the 2010 Winter Olympics, Paralympian Patrick Jarvis, was inducted into the Canadian Paralympic Hall of Fame today at the same time as a permanent display honoring all inductees was unveiled at the Olympic Hall of Fame and Museum at Calgary's Canada Olympic Park.

David Legg, vice-president of the Canadian Paralympic Committee, noted that "Patrick is not only a former elite-level athlete, but also a current mentor and leader whose contributions to the Paralympic Movement are lengthy."

Jarvis served on the board of the Canadian Paralympic Committee from 1992 to 2006, and was president from 1999 until he joined the governing board of the International Paralympic Committee in 2006. He continues to represent the CPC on the VANOC board, and was recently appointed by the IPC to also sit on the London 2012 Games Coordination Committee.

Jarvis competed at the 1992 Barcelona Summer Paralympic Games, served as Chef de Mission for the Canadian team at the 1998 Nagano Paralympic Winter Games and was an official CPC representative at the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games and the Salt Lake City 2002 Paralympic Winter Games.

RESOURCES

VANOC's Board resume and photo of Jarvis:
www.vancouver2010.com/en/OrganizingCommittee/AboutOrganizingCommittee/BoardDirectors/PatrickJarvis

or

tinyurl.com/2evnfp

---

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2517

IOC CALLS FOR 2010'S BROADCAST-RIGHTS BIDS FOR NEW ZEALAND BY OCTOBER 5

The IOC has started the tendering process for the sale of the broadcast and exhibition rights in New Zealand for Vancouver's 2010 Winter Olympics and the 2012 Summer Games, in London, England. The IOC has asked companies interested in acquiring the rights to submit their bids by October 5. The IOC says it will assess the bids on an ability to meet "the highest standards in broadcast quality, their capacity to reach the broadest possible audience within the territory, and their commitment to promoting the Olympic Games and the values of the Olympic Movement."

VANCOUVER PUBLIC TO BE ASKED ABOUT CEREMONIES FOR 2008 PARALYMPIC TORCH EVENT

Vancouver City mayor Sam Sullivan says that community forums will be held by the city before decisions are made on what will happen in the city when the 2008 Summer Paralympics Torch Relay arrives sometime between the closing of the 2008 Summer Games next August 28 and the opening of the Paralympic Summer Games on the following September 6. So far, the Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Organizing Committee has only issued the invitation for Vancouver to participate in one of the three parallel legs of the Relay, and details still have to be worked out about the date, how long it will be in the area, and whether Whistler will be involved in some way. Sullivan was disappointed the City wasn't going to be on the route of the main Beijing Olympic torch relay, but says the Paralympic stop will still provide publicity for the city internationally as the home of the 2010 Winter Games.

2010 OLYMPIC WINES TO LAUNCH SEPTEMBER 22 AND 29 IN ONTARIO

VANOC vinter sponsor Vincor and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario have agreed to roll out the company's Jackson-Triggs "Esprit" wines, the signature vintage of the 2010 Olympic Games, for the first time in Canada's most populated province at four LCBO stores: two in Toronto and one each in Ottawa and St. Catherines, simultaneously on September 22. Two additional stores, one in Maple, near Markham, north of Toronto, and the other in Burlington, southwest of Toronto, will launch the wines a week later on September 29. Vincor, a corporate sponsor-supplier of wines for the 2010 Games since last January, launched the wines publicly this summer in British Columbia. In addition to point-of-sales displays and other promotions, Vincor staff will be giving away Vincor/VANOC lapel pins to purchasers of the wines, a red and a white.

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2516

SPECTATOR-ROOM BOOKING DELAYED WHILE VANOC HUNTS FOR MORE OLYMPIC-USE ROOMS

VANOC's executive vice-president of Facilities, Terry Wright, has told Vancouver Province newspaper reporter Damian Inwood that VANOC has secured about 19,000 bedrooms in Greater Vancouver and Whistler so far, 2,000 more than it promised to provide in the Bid Book it gave to the IOC in 2002. The rooms are for client groups of the 2010 Games. But Inwood reports him as saying that it hopes to book another 2,000 rooms yet "which will take a lot of effort," because of what Wright describes as, "an unprecedented demand for the Vancouver product" by members of the Olympic family. The current number of rooms, he told Inwood, is about 75% of the available rooms in the two communities, but he says it may have to book up to 85%. The decision to continue booking rooms for Olympic clients means that the start of a companion plan to book accommodation for spectators arriving as part of ticket packages is to be delayed until January. But Wright maintains that since ticket packages aren't scheduled to be offered until about this time next year, "We'll have time to zero in on what we need to do to meet spectator demands." Wright told Inwood that there are a lot of rooms in the valley areas outside Whistler Village that could be made available, and "In Vancouver, we haven't even begun on bed-and-breakfasts, on properties under 20 rooms and on our home-stay program. There's huge potential." VANOC has been working on its Olympic-family accommodation program since 2004.

WHISTLER OLYMPIC VILLAGE A PILOT PROJECT FOR NEW LEED STANDARD

The Whistler Olympic Athletes Village has been registered as one of 256 pilot projects to develop the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design - for Neighbourhood Development (LEED-ND) industry standard for neighbourhood development. The Whistler Development Corporation's Board of Directors registered the 36-hectare (89-acre) project. The Athletes Village is planned to be used first for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and then to become the centre of a much larger, permanent, mixed-use neighbourhood, called the Chekamus Legacy Neighbourhood, designed to support Whistler's goal of housing 75% of its employees within the community. The rest of the neighbourhood is to be built out between 2010 and 2020. The LEED-ND rating system is its first international standard for neighborhood design. Other LEED standards focus primarily on environmentally friendly building practices, with only a few credits regarding site selection, LEED-ND emphasizes planned growth and development with green building practices. The concept includes compact design, proximity to transit, mixed use, mixed housing type, and design that's useful for pedestrians and bicycles.

2010 LIVERY OF CP RAIL ENGINES FINISHED, BUT COVERED UNTIL CEREMONY

Here's an update to the CPR story we wrote about earlier today. The 2010 livery is completed on the two diesel engines we mentioned, but one of the panels of the covering, which are held in place by magnets, had inadvertently come loose as the engines were moving a freight train into Greater Vancouver yesterday. And, yes, they'll be used in a sponsorship activation ceremony by CPR and VANOC soon. The two engines that have the painting applied, CP 8858 and 8859, won't be the only engines sporting the 2010 logo. Quite a few of them will get the livery job, we're told, but the exact number isn't yet available.

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Sports| #2515
ALPINE CANADA'S ATHLETES WON'T BE STAYING IN THE WHISTLER ATHLETES VILLAGE DURING THE 2010 OLYMPIC GAMES

The head of Alpine Canada, the national sports organization that represents the Canadian Olympic ski team, says the team has arranged to stay at a location outside of the Whistler Olympic Village during the 2010 Winter Games.

The International Olympic Committee is in the process now of attempting to determine the maximum number of people that will be allowed on each national team intending to come to the Olympics, and FIS, the international skiing federation has told the IOC it wants to have at least the same number of people allowed to attend the 2010 Games as were allowed to attend the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy. In the case of Team Canada, that would be 22, with approximately that number again of supporting officials, such as coaches, physiotherapists and nutritionists, for a total of more than 40.

Alpine Canada president Ken Read, during an interview with Morgan:News:2010, says, however, "The notion of the Olympic village is an antiquated notion. All of the elite teams do not stay in the Village. We are not staying in the Village; our athletes are not staying in the Village." Read says he finds it odd that "to use the number of bedrooms in the Village to restrict [team] accommodation is, to me, completely backwards. To focus [the restrictions] on ensuring that only the very best are there, that should be one of the guiding principles, and we'd back a focus on excellence and quality."

Read says that instead, the team will be staying at a nearby location in Whistler, which he declined to disclose, but added that arrangements have been completed. He said that Alpine Canada intends to "go through the extra effort" of working and communicating with the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Committees, the Vancouver Integrated Security Unit and the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) about the location, because of security protocols and the "interface with the rest of the [Canadian] Olympic team."

Read says the decision was taken because of the importance of the 2010 Games to Alpine Canada. "We are preparing for an extremely important event, and we want to ensure that we have all of the optimal performance opportunities there, which means that we want [the athletes] to have close and easy access to the coaching staff and the support staff -- the doctors and what have you -- that may be required to optimize performance. We're insuring as much as possible that the living environment -- access to the athletes, food, et cetera -- is completely within our control, and not removed from our control." Leaving alpine athletes in the Olympic Village, he adds, removes quite a bit of Alpine Canada's control.

Read says the decision has nothing to do with what he expects will be a credible job by VANOC in operating the Village, but he says VANOC will optimize the Village's performance for "hundreds and hundreds of people", not for "optimal performance" of Alpine Canada team members. "It's common that you hear of flu bugs that go ripping through a Village when you bring everybody together into close quarters," so by moving the Alpine Canada athletes out of the Village, Read says, it helps to reduce their potential exposure to such illnesses.

Read says it was Alpine Canada's intention, for a while, for its support staff to stay at the Village, but they, too, will now be staying at the same location as the athletes. Read says that none of the major sports organizations bring more people with them than they need, because doing so would not improve conditions for the athletes. "We know that bringing extra people who are really not in the competitive mix is a distraction from the very best. You want to have a team that is there for business."

Read says that Alpine Canada, as an organization, won't find it difficult to handle the requirements of being in a separate location. "We have World Cups and other events in various places around the world, and the teams stay in hotels all the time."

Read says the number of Canadian athletes fielded by Alpine Canada will be determined by competitions and whether enough of them can quality for all 22 positions according to benchmarks set by the organization. Alpine Canada only sent 20 competitors to the Torino Games for that reason. He says he feels no additional pressure to field a full team because the Games are in Canada, nor because of funding support for athletes through the Own the Podium program.

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2514

BC GOVERNMENT 2010 BUSINESS PAVILION OPENING DATE SET

The BC government's expanding BC 2010 Showcase and Hosting Centre that's to be officially opened by the end of next March in Robson Square in downtown Vancouver is expected to actually be open on February 12, six weeks earlier, to coincide with celebrations by VANOC and the BC government in various venue communities marking the two-years-to-go event. We first broke the news about the small-business 2010 pavilion last month [see RESOURCES, below, for more details].

CP RAIL ENGINES SPOTTED EAST OF GREATER VANCOUVER WITH 2010 LIVERY

There was a bit of buzz among train-spotters in communities along the north side of the Fraser River east of Vancouver yesterday. Two of the diesel engines that Canadian Pacific Railway, VANOC's freight-transportation sponsor, intends to use to highlight its sponsorship were spotted pulling trains through the towns of Matsqui and Coquitlam sporting a new Vancouver 2010-themed paint job -- but it appears to be only partly finished, or perhaps only partially displayed, in both cases. The two engines, CP 8858 and 8859, were in CP Rail's Calgary yard for the paint work earlier this month. [For photos, see RESOURCES, below]. The choice of these specific engines is significant to VANOC. They are both made by GE Transportation Systems -- a division of General Electric, which is an international sponsor of the 2010 Games -- and they are nicknamed "GEVO". That's short for a fuel-efficient design of engines called the "GE Evolution Series" that was first approved to meet US government environmental-protection standards in 2002. The 12-cylinder engine, which produces 4,400-horsepower, the same as previous models which used 16 cylinders, reduced emissions 40 percent from the then-current locomotives in use. One of VANOC's social mandates is to focus on ways to reduce the environmental footprint of the Games. CPR's main role is to bring to Vancouver more than a thousand vehicles VANOC intends to use for the Games, provided by yet another VANOC sponsor, General Motors Canada, as well as other materials used by the Games in bulk and sourced in Canada or the United States.

NEW CANADIAN PARALYMPIC EXHIBIT TO OPEN TODAY IN CALGARY

Representatives of Canada's Paralympic athletes are expected to officially open that new exhibit celebrating the Paralympic Movement in Canada at the Olympic Hall of Fame and Museum at Canada Olympic Park in Calgary today. The exhibit is a tribute to the athletes and builders who have already been inducted into the Canadian Paralympic Hall of Fame, sponsored by the Calgary Olympic Development Association, for making a significant contribution to the growth and development of the Paralympic Movement in the country. Following the official opening, Dr. Robert Steadward, founding president of the International Paralympic Committee and the man who was the first inductee into the Canadian Paralympic Hall of Fame, will also announce the 2007 inductee.

RESOURCES

For our detailed story about the BC 2010 pavilion for small business, see:
'BC Olympics Secretariat to open small business-to-business pavilion in Vancouver for 2010 Games starting next April'
[Morgan:News:2010:Number:2496; Published on Tuesday, August 28, 2007]

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Two photos of CP rail's diesel engines, taken Sunday in the Fraser Valley east of Greater Vancouver:
www.railroadforums.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=80992&d=1189406987
www.railroadforums.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=80995&d=1189416283

---

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Business| #2513
FIVE YEAR ECONOMIC FORECAST FOR BC SHOWS 2010 OLYMPICS AFFECTING ECONOMY IN SEVERAL WAYS

The 2010 Winter Olympics will affect a number of areas of BC's generally robust economy, according to a major five-year economic forecast that includes the Olympics and the year following it.

BC Central Credit Union chief economist, Helmut Pastrick of Vancouver, who authored the detailed report that covers the time from 2007 to 2011, says the growth forecast for real gross domestic product this year has been downgraded to 3%, owing to the stronger Canadian dollar and weaker American housing market.

Growth should rebound to 4% next year and stay high through to 2011, he says, adding, "Investment and consumer spending are the main growth drivers going forward. The current financial market turbulence will have a slight negative impact in the short term, but a positive effect in the medium term because interest rates will be lower than otherwise."

As for the Olympics, he says, it will have an effect on:

The overall economy in 2010: "Beyond 2007, the [BC] economy's growth rate profile will remain robust, driven by a strong domestic sector led by business investment and consumer spending. A growth rate spike will occur in 2010, coinciding with the Winter Olympics held early in that year. The trade sector will continue to hold back overall growth as the trade deficit grows, though at a slower pace."

Government spending, "Government capital investment spending will accelerate this year and next during 2007 and 2008, but subside noticeably by 2010 as the Winter Olympic venues and related infrastructure projects are completed."

The BC construction industry, "Industry output will maintain its robust growth until 2009, and then decelerate to below 2% per year. Completion of the Winter Olympic venues and related infrastructure, along with less housing construction, accounts for the slower growth later in the forecast period."

The tourism industry -- mainly of accommodation, food, transportation and retail: "Growth is increasing despite a drop-off in US visitors. Overseas visitor traffic is up and, perhaps more important, domestic tourism is rising in tandem with the stronger western Canadian economy. The 2010 Winter Olympics will give a strong boost to tourism that year."

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Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on September 6, 2007

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Morgan:News:2010 |Paralympic| #2512
VANCOUVER ON ROUTE OF PARALYMPIC TORCH RELAY

The City of Vancouver and the Canadian Paralympic Committee have been invited by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympic and Paralympic Summer Games to take part in its Paralympic Games Torch Relay.

The invitation was announced by BOCOG during a ceremony at the China Millenium Monument, marking the one-year countdown to the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Summer Games which are scheduled for September 6-17, 2008. Representatives from more than 90 National Paralympic Committees are currently meeting in Beijing for the Chef de Mission Seminar. Those attending the ceremony included International Paralympic Committee (IPC) President Sir Philip Craven, IPC Governing Board Members Greg Hartung and Shen Zhifei as well as IPC Chief Executive Officer Xavier Gonzalez and other IPC staff members. The IPC is based in Germany.

The Beijing 2008 Paralympic Summer Games Torch Relay is the first of its kind. BOCOG says the flame will take three separate routes simultaneously, and other future Paralympic host cities, including London, England, home of the 2012 Games and Sochi, Russia, where the 2014 Winter Games are to be held, are also on the list of stops. The flames will merge in Beijing and used to light the Paralympic torch. Most of its stops are in China, but it agreed to include Vancouver as one of its international stops after pressure from a number of fronts following BOCOG's decision to skip Vancouver for the main Olympic Torch Relay.

The Relay will start next August 28, when the Beijing 2008 Olympic Summer Games ends, and finish on the following September 6, the opening of the Beijing Paralympic Summer Games.

"We are very pleased to welcome this invitation," said Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan, who is a quadriplegic. "Hosting the 2008 Beijing Paralympic Summer Games Torch Relay will promote our city, our province and Canada as one of the most inclusive and accessible societies in the world. In addition to increased tourism, the Torch Relay will build community spirit in advance of 2010."

Carla Qualtrough, the CPC's president, adds that, "The Canadian Paralympic Committee looks forward to partnering with the City of Vancouver in hosting the 2008 Paralympic Torch Relay. This is a unique opportunity to increase awareness of the Paralympic movement in Canada."

In June, Vancouver City Council, taken aback by the fact Vancouver wasn't on the Olympics relay route, directed staff to ensure it was considered as a candidate city for the Paralympic Torch Relay.

David Hurford, Director of Communications for the Mayor's office, says the City will work with the Government of Canada, the BC provincial government, the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC), the Canadian Paralympic Committee, the Four Host First Nations secretariat, which represents the four aboriginal bands that VANOC is formally incorporating into its planning, and the Resort Municipality of Whistler to coordinate the events involving the Torch's arrival.

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Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on September 6, 2007

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2511

PREPARATIONS UNDERWAY FOR IOC COMMISSION MEETING WITH VANOC NEXT WEEK

The IOC Coordination Commission for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games is expected to arrive for one of its regular official inspections of the IOC's franchise in Vancouver next week, from the 11th to the 13th. This time they'll also have with them representatives of all seven international federations (IFs) that govern the Olympic winter sports that are to take place at the Games. The Commission expects to review the progress made by VANOC and its corporate and government partners since the Commission's last visit in March. During the upcoming meetings, the Commission expects to examine and be briefed by VANOC officials on a wide range of of Games preparations, particularly the planning for the facilities of the athletes and sports officials, and get an update on the progress made in venue construction. Talks between the IFs and corresponding VANOC supervision teams are also expected to take place.

VANOC'S VENUE LOGISTICS STRUCTURE BECOMING CLEARER

Some of the structure of how VANOC intends to handle the movement of materials in and out of its venues is being developed, and should be expanded over the next few months so that detailed planning can be done. VANOC has a director in overall charge of venue logistics. Reporting to that position will be four managers of regional venue logistics, two for the Greater Whistler area, the other two for the Greater Vancouver area. One in each area will deal with the competition venues, the other in each area will deal with the non-competition venues, such as the athlete villages. Reporting to them will be the logistics manager at each venue, who have not yet been hired. The planning that still has to be done, and is soon to get underway, includes, in general, developing venue-specific operational policies that detail how to efficiently receive, store, distribute the continuous supply and recovery of equipment at each of the venues, competition and non-competition alike. This involves figuring out the best roads to use between VANOC's warehouses to the venues, the best time of day to do the supply and removal -- delivery schedules need to deal with load-in, re-supply, transition, and load-out -- working with the Vancouver Integrated Security Unit to figure out how to move the trucks in and out of the venue and what kinds of protocols will take place as they do, where logistical storage compounds are set up at the venues, and working with other VANOC functions -- such as Material Planning. Health & Safety and suppliers themselves, many of whom are expected to be VANOC corporate sponsors -- to set up the supply chain. The planning will also include figuring out what types of materials-handling equipment, such as forklifts or utility vehicles, will be needed, how they'll be staffed and what kind of training they'll need. Also, work still has to be done in figuring out what kind of information flows will be necessary to keep the logistics processes running smoothly, which involves IT planning and policies. VANOC also has sustainability commitments, as well as goals of minimizing waste, and actions taken to deal with them need to be worked out along with their reporting concepts. The logistics department is also charged, as are other departments with maximizing revenue, particularly when it comes time to dispose of the materials after the Games are finished.

SOME EUROPEAN HDTV CHANNELS EXPECTED TO BE READY FOR GAMES BROADCASTS

The 2010 Games will be the first to be fully covered by high-definition TV, and North American networks are expected to have fully embraced the extensive and expensive technical switch to the new technology, which uses much more bandwidth than the systems it is replacing. However, European networks are still in the planning stages. The first public broadcaster in German-speaking Europe to offer an HDTV service is Switzerland's SRG SSR idée suisse. The channel is expected to be launched via cable and satellite on December 1. It appears that Austrian public broadcaster Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF) will switching to HDTV next year, while German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF expect the first major broadcasts of HDTV to their audiences will be the feed they carry from the Vancouver Olympics.

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Originally published to Morgan:News:2010:Gold subscribers on September 6, 2007

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2510

TORCH RELAY TECHNOLOGY...

Planning is expected to get underway this fall at VANOC's headquarters to deal with the technological requirements for the Olympic and the Paralympic Torch Relays, which are independently sponsored. The Olympic Torch Relay starts in Olympia, Greece, 114 days before the Opening Ceremonies and is to travel internationally and across Canada during that time. The Paralympic relay starts after the Olympic Closing Ceremonies at the end of February, 2010, and also is expected to cross Canada in the two weeks leading to the Paralympic Opening Ceremonies March 12 of that year. The technology involved in supporting the relay as it moves from city to city is extensive. It's expected to include mobile=office equipment and related equipment -- such as laptops, photocopiers, printers, faxes, scanners, and they're expecting to use Windows XP Pro, Microsoft Office, Outlook software at a minimum -- radio systems -- two-way radios, batteries, headsets and chargers will all need to be sourced -- mobile-phone systems, networking and file-handling requirements and access to information and the status of the Relay from remote sites. That includes uploading on-going reports, videos and photos to VANOC's website and other broadcasters. There will also be day books -- internal and external to VANOC -- reporting on the status of the Relays, as well as brochures and day-route flyers that will be published as the Relays evolve.

... METHODS OF TESTING THE VANOC GAMES SYSTEMS...

Here's a bit more information on how VANOC sponsor Atos Origin, the big European-based systems provider for the 2010 Olympics and Paralympics, will be testing its main systems as it prepares for the Games. The company, working through its Major Events Unit field team at VANOC headquarters and augmented by hiring IT experts in Greater Vancouver, sets up test cases and scenarios -- a lot of them -- to ensure its software and applications are in working order on the complex VANOC computer network, and runs tests as they're developed and brought on stream. Atos Origin has been doing this for years at other Olympic Games, the field unit travelling from Games to Games with many of the necessary software and hardware tools. While its primary goals are to provide highly reliable Games administration applications on time and reusing, as much and as often as possible, material and procedures from previous Olympic Games, it also uses the work it does on each set of Games to building or enlarge Atos Origin software and equipment for use at subsequent Olympics. The focus is getting underway this fall with management of what it calls the Core Games System (CGS). It uses Mercury Test Director and Mercury QuickTest Professional, software programs from California's Hewlett Packard, to help supervise the testing and tracking defects or other failures. As it does so, the Atos Origin unit works with VANOC CGS business analysts and integration managers to ensure the system dovetails with VANOC's corporate and IOC obligations. It also works on developing methods to support VANOC's own technology, and that of its corporate sponsors and other stakeholders.

... AND TICKETING OPERATIONS ALL BEING PLANNED BY VANOC OVER NEXT FEW MONTHS

And here's some more information on the kind of planning that'll be underway in the next few months as VANOC firms up its event- and venue-ticketing operations. The ticketing operations work with VANOC's customer-service functions to figure out how ticketing will work at each of the venues, and how the seating plans at each will be married to the ticketing and accreditation systems that allow people to buy seats and be allowed into the venues, with seating that works for disabled people flagged as part of the information that is expected to be handled by the software systems supporting the ticketing portion of the Games. Each venue will have a ticket box office that will be set up for the test events at the venues and for the Games themselves. Also to be planned are the roles of all the staffing that'll be required for the ticketing. Also to be planned will be how cash and other payment systems will be set up, processed and tracked with VANOC's accounting and banking systems. Visa credit cards will be the only ones accepted, because the organization is an international sponsor of the 2010 Games, and the Royal Bank, also a corporate sponsor, will be handling the banking aspects. The ticketing systems for the Cultural Olympiad, which starts next February as a set of what are essentially test events, and systems for tickets to the rolling Torch Relay events also are to be planned and coordinated. There's also quite a bit of work to be done by VANOC on setting up such support aspects to ticketing, such as establishing web servers to handle it, planning and creating ticket-related signage, setting up ticket sales locations outside of VANOC's venues, and integrating them and their sales into VANOC's operations, a call centre to handle questions or adjustments to tickets and ticket packages, as well as ticket printing operations, methods and support, as well as dealing with the security of locations where the tickets and their supplies are held.


RESOURCES

Test Director
www.mercury.com/us/products/quality-center/testdirector/

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2509

VANOC SPONSOR CPR TO BUY LARGE US REGIONAL RAILWAY FOR US$1.48 BILLION

Canadian Pacific Railway (CP, CP.TO), freight services provider and a corporate sponsor of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, reports in intends to buy Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad (DME) and its subsidiaries for US$1.48 billion within the next two months. The deal is subject to review -- which is expected to take about a year -- and approval by the US Surface Transportation Board. The shares of DM&E are expected to be placed into an independent voting trust, which is required by US law so that the company does not exercise control over DM&E prior to approval of the transaction by the Board. The company says the acquisition would enable it to expand its network by about 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles) and increase its access to US midwest markets, including agri-products, coal and ethanol. The deal consists of a cash payment of US$1.48 billion at closing, and future contingent payments of up to about US$1 billion. DM&E is the largest regional railroad in the U.S. and the only class II railroad that connects and interchanges traffic with all seven Class I railroads, connecting with Canadian Pacific at Minneapolis, Winona, Minnesota and Chicago

NO BC PLAYERS ON ROSTER AIMED AT 2010 CANADIAN WOMEN'S HOCKEY TEAM

Jim Swanson, the sports editor for the Prince George Citizen newspaper, reports he's looked at the list of the top 47 players in women's hockey, who are gathered in the north-central British Columbian city this week for the International Women's Hockey Fall Festival, part of the lead-up to the 2010 Olympics, and he's discovered none of the women are from BC. "Ontario leads the way with 21 of the rostered players," he writes, followed by Quebec with 13, Alberta (5), Saskatchewan (4) and Manitoba (4). Melody Davidson, the general manager for the national women's ice-hockey program, told Swanson, that BC "has been a little bit slow in coming along with the rest of the country, getting their programs together and developing the athletes. Some good things are coming, and [assistant coach] Nancy Wilson is involved in putting that together. Unfortunately for [2010], there may not be any B.C. players, but the direction they're going bodes well for the future. There is some talent coming up."

TEENAGER DETERMINED TO REPRESENT VIRIGIN ISLANDS AT 2010 GAMES - IN SKELETON

Every once in a while, we come across a story about an athlete who wants so badly to be in the 2010 Winter Olympics, that it drives home -- again -- the reason for all of the corporate activity that leads up to presenting them. Eighteen-year-old Alexa Putnam is so determined to represent the Virgin Islands in skeleton at the Vancouver Games, she is taking two years of high school in Germany to do it. There are not a lot of places to practice her skill of racing down a slick ice track at more than 100 kilometres per hour on a sled the size of a serving tray on the tropical Caribbean nation, so she's linked up with the German skeleton Olympic team -- one of the best in the world -- and is training with them. To stay in Germany long enough to get the training and coaching she needs, she aims to go to a German university. To do that, she has to take at least two years of German high school -- and pass the grades -- which is why she's taking exams this month in math, physics, chemistry and other essential classes. To do that, she had to learn German fluently. If you're wondering why she is in high school at 18, note that she graduated from high school in St. John, VI, her home town, last year; yes, she's doing high school for a second time. Putnam says she is looking forward to competing in the 2010 Olympics, and she is adamant about earning her position on the Olympic team. "My main goal is to get there and be a competitor," she said. "I don't want to get there because I'm a Virgin Islander and they have to give opportunities to smaller countries." How is she paying for all this? "To help raise money for my sport, a famous perfume manufacturer has created a fragrance especially for me," she says. She won't name names, yet. "Check back for more details!" [There's more to her story. See the link in RESOURCES below.]

RESOURCES
Alexa Putnam's story:
alexaputnam.org/?p=138

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2508

BURNABY FIRM TAGGED FOR C$1.9 MILLION UTILITIES CONTRACT FOR RICHMOND OVAL LANDS

Richmond City staff are going through the process this week of obtaining city council approvals for awarding a C$1.9 million contract to Fred Thompson Contractors of Burnaby in Greater Vancouver for doing the underground work necessary to bring electrical and communications networks to the housing lands adjacent to the sports complex that will house the 2010 Olympic speedskating oval. The work itself -- which involves a line from River Road to Number 2 Road, to Hollybridge Way, Elmbridge Way, Alderbridge Way to Westminster Highway -- was made necessary when River Road was re-aligned to make way for the sports complex. This particular capital project wasn't scheduled to be done until next year, but BC Hydro, the utility which supplies electrical power in BC, was offering a time-sensitive "beautification grant" of up to a third of the project's cost to a potential maximum of C$480,000, and that wouldn't necessarily be available next year. The underground conduits are also to carry lines from Telus Telecommunications and its competitor, VANOC teleco sponsor Bell Canada, and Shaw, a cablevision distribution firm. Because BC Hydro and Telus lines had to be moved due to the realignment, Richmond is covering the C$185,000 of direct costs to Telus as well as the C$1.2 million for Hydro, but Bell Canada and Shaw are new additions to the conduit line, so they'll be paying Richmond back for their portion of the installation costs for the new line -- $31,000 in Bell's case, C$279,724 in Shaw's case. Since the capital project is being advanced from next year's Richmond capital budget, staff are asking for council's approval to use funds from the C$7 million alloted to realigning River Road to cover the immediate cost of the contract, in exchange for submitting a capital budget request for the net amount in next year's budget. Fred Thompson Contracting's bid was the lowest of two. Hyland Excavating's bid was about C$800,000 more.

MAIN US OLYMPICS BORDER CROSSING REVAMP EXPECTED SIX WEEKS BEFORE GAMES OPEN

A revised construction schedule for rebuilding the American side of the main Canada/US border at Blaine, the primary land bridge for US tourists and ticket-holders coming to the 2010 Games, shows the new facility is expected to be finished and open only six weeks before the Games begin in 2010 -- assuming there's no unforeseen delays in construction. The planning indicates that the work, budgeted at US$70 million, is to start this October on replacing the aging customs checkpoint by reducing the current seven lanes to two for the first month or so. While it will at first affect US-bound visitors, the work also coincides with construction on Interstate 5, which will affect those heading to Canada. This fall, traffic heading north to the border on I-5 will be diverted onto lanes of southbound I-5, which will become a two-way thoroughfare while the northbound freeway is rebuilt as a bridge over the new customs building. When the entire project is completed, there are to be 10 lanes for the thousands of travellers who use the route each year, and the customs site itself will expand from just over one hectare to 4.8 hectares (2.5 acres to 12 acres) so more space is available for inspecting vehicles. The Canadian customs facility, which has been under construction for about a year, is due to be completed next spring with 10 lanes open.

CONSULTANT SUGGESTS 2010 GAMES BE USED TO IMPROVE CANADA'S GREEN BRAND PERCEPTION

A brand management consultant suggests that the 2010 Winter Olympics may be a way for Canada to improve its international "green" brand. David Wigder, the vice president and a director at Digitas, a direct and digital marketing agency based in Boston, develops and executes marketing strategy for Fortune 100 companies. Writing in his personal blog, "Marketing Green" today, he looks at the environmental sustainability branding of China, which is hosting next year's Summer Olympics and Vancouver, and its 2010 Games. He concludes that, "the Canadian national brand will likely benefit from Vancouver hosting the Olympics given that [Canada's national] brand perceptions are already favorable today, and the relative pristine physical environment of British Columbia will only reinforce this perception when visitors arrive for the Games." He notes comments made last year by Paul Lavoie, the chairman and chief creative officer of Taxi, a Canadian advertising firm, adding that "Canada may have the opportunity to build on this perception by creating a national brand synonymous with sustainability. Perhaps this is Canada's ticket for overtaking the UK, Germany and France as the top national brand globally."

RESOURCES

Fred Thompson Contractors Ltd
7379 Gilley Ave
Burnaby BC, V5J 4X4, Canada
Phone: 604.435.7665
Fax: 604-435-1971

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Hyland Excavating Ltd
11436 132a St
Surrey BC, V3R 7S2, Canada
Phone: 604.580.2222
Fax: 604-580-1550

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David Widger's full blog entry about China and Vancouver is here:
tinyurl.com/yvjybf

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |Moguls| #2507

PYEONGCHANG TO BID FOR 2018 WINTER GAMES

The government that oversees the South Korean city of Pyeongchang says the region intends to bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics, a third consecutive attempt after the city narrowly lost two previous bids, including the one to Vancouver. The government of Gangwon province, to which Pyeongchang belongs, said it made the decision because it needs a "growth engine" for the province, and it expects there will "more favorable conditions" in the next bid, though it didn't specify what these might be. "Hosting a winter Olympics still remains the yearning" of Gangwon province, the local government said in a statement today, calling the Games a "springboard" for the region's growth. In July, Pyeongchang, located 175 kilometers (110 miles) northeast of Seoul, lost its bid for the 2014 Winter Games to the Russian resort town of Sochi by a margin of four votes. Four years ago, Vancouver won the 2010 Games after beating Pyongyang by a margin of three votes.

2010 GAMES STAFFING ONE OF MANY POINTS OF CONTENTION IN VANCOUVER CIVIC STRIKE

Staffing during the 2010 Olympic Games remains one of several issues that remain unsettled in the strike of Vancouver's three civic union locals, members of the Canadian Union of Public Employee. The three represent the indoor, outdoor and library workers, and their representatives met informally with city negotiators yesterday to see if there was a chance for talks to re-open; neither side said they were optimistic afterward, but both said they'd think about the discussions. No new dates for talks was set up. The strike has been underway for nearly 50 days and settlements similar to those offered have been reached in a few other jurisdictions in the Greater Vancouver area. However, the impasse is primarily over contracting out and other quality-of-working aspects over a five year deal. Vancouver wants, among a range of other things that include layoff issues, job classification, seniority rights, that a portion of the agreement that's eventually negotiated cover how city staff would be assigned during Games time.

NORDIC CENTRE DEVELOPMENT GROUP COMPLETE THIRD GLACIER TRAINING CAMP

The Callaghan Valley Training Centre (CVTC), a national athlete-development centre that is to be headquartered at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Whistler Nordic Centre when it opens this winter, completed its third glacier training camp of the summer last week, working with the BC cross-country skiing team in Smithers, in north-central British Columbia. The five-day camp included four days of skiing on the Smithers glacier, but also included rollerskiing, "core strength" sessions and related athletic work. The terrain of the Smithers glacier, which is at a relatively low altitude, is varied. That allowed the athletes to train more quickly than at other locations, and they were able to concentrate on improving their uphill techniques, according to senior coach Amy Caldwell, who added, "We were even able to complete a level or zone-3 workout on the glacier, which was a great treat." She says the team members were flown onto the glacier by Canadian Air, but had to hike down a technically challenging descending trail following their skiing sessions.

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |VANOC| #2506
VANOC CIO SAYS 2010 TECHNOLOGY "DAUNTING", BUT NORTEL DEAL IS HEAVENLY

Ward Chapin, the chief information officer for the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC), calls the organization's relationship to Nortel Networks of Toronto "a marriage made in heaven."

Chapin made the comment in a three-minute customer-testimonial video made for Nortel and published today, noting that he visited Nortel's headquarters last year and was "so impressed with the passion and the commitment of the people that I met."

The 2010 Winter Olympics is the first set of Games to put all of its voice, video and data traffic onto a single network, using Internet protocols to make it all work together, a process known as convergence.

Chapin, who says in the video that preparing the technology to support the 2010 Winter Olympics is "a daunting undertaking," says the key to delivering the information is the telecommunications network, which is being provided by VANOC's largest domestic corporate sponsor, Bell Canada.

Chapin says VANOC has three major technical challenges: geographically dispersed venues that have to be connected to two VANOC data-processing centres and its international broadcast venue in downtown Vancouver; a goal of industrial-strength wireless capability at every venue so the media can file stories and send large photos to their editors; and the third challenge is VANOC's "extremely mobile workforce."

Chapin says that Bell first chose Nortel as a supplier "for the binary network," adding, "We then went out and selected Nortel to be our local-area-network supplier."

Chapin says that the concept of providing wireless, high-speed coverage of a venue has "traditionally... not worked well in past Games, mainly due to compatibility and capacity issues."

VANOC's vice-president of Techncial Infrasturcture, Andy Platten, also appears in the video, and deals with the workforce issue. "We're hiring 20 to 30 people a month," he notes, "and they never sit still; they move around the organization all the time." He adds, "In a normal environment, IT would have to work with them for months in advance to organize each move, to make sure the phones and services arrive at the right place at the right time, the same time they do, and it's frustrating for them and its frustrating for us."

With VANOC's technology architecture, he says, "Technology doesn't get involved at all. They get a phone number and a laptop when they come in through the door, and they can move all the time." The phone number is for VoIP, the voice-over-Internet technology; the network can find the phone wherever it happens to be plugged in, and the network can acknowledge the laptop wherever it's located.

Nortel's main job is to supply the thousands of parts for all of the individiual connections to the local and wide-area networks, and, using their engineering services, ensure they work. It also provides systems to admit legitimate uses and detect security breaches and local-area network firewall systems, as well as for setting up virtual private networks over the main system as well as WiFi infrastructure -- but its arrangements with VANOC specifically exclude wireless receiving devices.

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

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Morgan:News:2010 |IOC| #2505
PANASONIC JOINS GROWING LIST OF MAJOR FIRMS SPONSORSING THE 2010 WINTER OLYMPICS

The International Olympic Committee and Panasonic today confirmed the giant audio-and-video technology corporation has renewed its Worldwide Olympic Partner agreement for sponsoring all Olympic Games, including Vancouver 2010, through to the summer Games of 2016.

The 22-year-old sponsorship agreement between the IOC and Panasonic, a brand division of Matsushita Electric Industrial Company of Japan, was extended eight years during a signing ceremony with IOC President Jacques Rogge, and Fumio Ohtsubo, President of Panasonic, in London, England, host of the 2012 Summer Olympics, earlier today, while IOC Marketing Commission chairman Gerhard Heiberg looked on. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Panasonic's sponsorship is in the Audio and Video Equipment product category, and continues its global marketing rights for the organizing committees of each set of Games, as well as for the 205 individual national Olympic committees around the world, including Canada's, and their Olympic teams.

The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) is expected to receive both cash and technology, such as big-screen videos for use throughout venues, particularly those used outside, and at Games-supporting locations. The Games are the first to be entirely broadcast using high-definition technology, and Panasonic is deeply involved in its expansion. Sponsorship revenues, both international and domestic, account for 59% of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics' C$1.63-billion operating budget, which is all raised through corporate operations.

The IOC pledged C$201.4 million for VANOC's operating budget by shares of international sponsorship revenue. Panasonic's renewal means that nearly 80% of that has now been confirmed. Other large international sponsors have agreements with the IOC that c over the 2010 Games, such as Samsung, Visa, General Electric, Atos Origin, Coca Cola, McDonald's Restaurants and Omega, a brand division of watchmaker Swatch.

However, two current international sponsors haven't yet said they'll extend their agreements to cover 2010 -- Kodak and computer-maker Lenovo -- and it's known that the IOC is also negotiating with additional potential sponsors. VANOC has been hoping Lenovo would have made a decision last fall. VANOC, which looks after negotiations with sponsorships that cover only Canadian marketing rights, is in negotiations with about a dozen companies, most of them dealing with food and drink, although Coca-Cola's rights include provision of an extensive line of soft drinks, and McDonald's covers fast food, while national sponsors Weston deals with baked goods and Vincor supplies wine.

Panasonic president Fumio Ohtsubo says: "We want to make it possible for people around the world to share the passion of the Olympic Games with our high-definition technologies, whether they are in the stadium or watching from home."

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

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