As I write this, there’s an erie calm in the air in Whistler before the storm of Feb. 12. Everything is ready, more than ready. Manned snow plows wait, idling, with their lights on, in pulloffs along the clear, balmy Sea to Sky highway, with no snow in the forecast for the foreseeable future. RCMP vehicles poke out of side roads all along the highway, keeping the thin stream of traffic safe from terrorists.
Uniformed volunteers outnumber guests on the streets and in the buses. We were the only guests in a huge restaurant Sunday night. On Monday, chairlifts ran with mostly empty chairs. Whistler is in a deep, empty calm, poised for the onslaught.
Then, in a few weeks, the huge Olympic jolt will be over, and the word “hangover” will be everywhere, not least when the provincial budget comes down two day later.
My BIV colleague Bob Mackin, who has been following these Games for years, thinks the era of mega-events in our city is over. I’m not so sure: remember the Calgary bid for the 2010 Games after hosting them in 1988? What if the darkest rumours out of Sochi, Russia are true- that there’s no chance their venues will be built in time for the 2012 Games, and in two years the IOC is looking around for a replacement venue? Never say never.
Olympic dreams may fade away, but dreaming never dies, and one cure for a hangover (other than another party) is to move the mind to other things– even smaller things. So now what, Vancouver?
First, let’s pledge to follow up contacting all those people whose business cards we collected during the Games because they said they just might want to invest in our city– or come back for another visit. Boring, yes, but without consummating the deals, the Olympics will have been a wasted opportunity and the analyst’s reports showing no measurable economic impact from the Olympics will certainly come true.
Also boring but beautiful is the city’s new multi-million-dollar 311 all-request service, the new standard for citizen-friendly cities. It gives citizens a simple number to call and a commitment to answer every enquiry or problem. It’s been working for months, but for some reason the city won’t tell people about it. Let’s take the wraps off it.
As for spectacle, 2011 is the city’s 125th birthday, an occasion for celebrating. Unfortunately there’s no funding commitment so far, so it may already be destined for “cake-in-the-office” status.
Becoming the Greenest City is a powerful beacon. Leading ecologists remind us we have to reduce our ecological impact by 80% for greening measures to do more than just make our world more efficiently unsustainable. Vancouver and B.C. could vigorously embrace a massive building retrofit program that would create thousands of construction jobs and pay back in future energy savings. All it takes is a financing mechanism that could be modelled on those in many other cities. We could follow Seattle’s lead and declare 2010 The Year of Urban Agriculture, to increase community access to locally-grown food.
One city dream that’s been staring us in the face for years is a pedestrian-bike-(future) streetcar greenway along a redeveloped Arbutus corridor, financed by mixed-use development at major intersections. To do the deal with CP, the owners of the abandoned railway right of way, the city could offer increased development rights downtown around Granville Square. This would also generate impetus for a redesigned Waterfront Station precinct, drawing Granville St. pedestrians into a waterfront complex that opens all the ferries, trains, SkyTrains, buses and pedestrians into a common space rivalling the great stations of European cities.
And, finally, let’s make some decisions about job-creating land uses on False Creek Flats.
The magic of the departed Olympic circus will turn us on our axis. Then we too have to move on.
Tags: 311, Arbutus corridor, greenest city, Olympics, Whistler