Toronto 2015 Pan American Games

[hbl33]

Masterpiece of the horrendous reality today in T.O.

There will be minor spending on infrastructure and absolutely no money for the TTC. Expect no additional subways. They will, of course, make some new signs. Many of which will be hand written as that is the way the TTC does these things.

Union Station will continue to languish in it's current state.

There will be no train service to Pearson. That will be deemed too extravagant for something as insignificant as the Pan Am Games.

A number of shabby buildings will be put up to form a Pan Am shanty town. These will serve as excellent candidates for the annual Pugly Awards, so maybe it's not such a bad thing. It's not as if one has to go into that section of town anyway.

Early in the construction process, the money will dry up. Organizers will declare this a potential disaster to the beloved games. The Fed and the Province will vanish. Leaving the poor citizens of Toronto fix the mess.

At this point, UT Forum will be filled with angry rants about how this happened.

The 8 or so clowns who got the city into this mess will all be long gone. But the bills will continue to mount and we will be expected to pay.

A handful of developers will make a fortune.

Another election will roll around. Candidates will swear -- something like -- the Pan Am Games fiasco will never happen again. They will also talk about cleaning up city hall. And so on and so forth.

And then it's back to business as usual in Toronto.












​

Brilliant poem! I hate to belive this, but it is no wonder that it will be like this in Toronto in 2015.

I will disagree with this poem only if the plan is pushed ahead just in time for the Games!

Of course, it doesn't follow the relatively strict rules of either haikus or reality.

This may or may not make money or attract tourists. It will, however, put in place some serious infrastructure. Bitch about it all you want, we're still going to stick transit and sports facility improvements down your throat.

Face the reality! I won't believe that there will be major improvements in transit across Toronto unless it is slated to be completed entirely by 2015.

 

[Mystic Point]

​

And for those hoping for more ' projects ' after the beloved games, perhaps Lotus Land points the way.

Athlete's village missing social housing aspect
ctvbc.ca
Posted Wednesday, November 4, 2009 9:30 PM ET


Media from around the world got their first look Wednesday at the 1.5 million square foot 2010 Vancouver Olympic athlete's village, as the city officially handed over the keys to Olympic organizers.

The rooms are spacious, and boast beautiful views of the water and downtown.

The buildings even have "green roofs" for gardening.

Vancouver Organizing Committee CEO John Furlong said he would "love to live here."

But there was something missing.

When Vancouver bid for the Olympics, it said the Olympic Village would be one of the Games' legacies and promised an equal mix of fair market, affordable and social housing after the Games.

Fast forward to today.

The social housing component is out the window.

There is still a plan to sell 252 affordable housing units after the Games - about 20 percent of the total number of suites.

But even that is uncertain.

"It's going to take more money to put affordability in there," Councillor Geoff Meggs told CTV News this week.

"Frankly, I'd be reluctant to see a big taxpayer funded project have nothing in there except for the very wealthy, but it's a financial question. We have to be responsible with taxpayer dollars as well."

The village went more than $100 million over budget. The city is trying to recoup those costs from the sales of Olympic Village suites.

Many who supported the Olympic bid because of the promise of non-market housing are upset.

"The social housing has to stay on site. They have to find a way to make that promise real," said homeless advocate Jim Green.

Mayor Gregor Robertson said Wednesday that the recession and "cost creep" forced the city to amend plans. A building boom during construction increased contractor fees and materials were more expensive than anticipated.

The mayor suggested that social housing can still be achieved -- by developing sites surrounding the village.

With reports from CTV British Columbia's Peter Grainger and Stephen Smart

 

[Mystic Point]

Of course, it doesn't follow the relatively strict rules of either haikus or reality.

This may or may not make money or attract tourists. It will, however, put in place some serious infrastructure. Bitch about it all you want, we're still going to stick transit and sports facility improvements down your throat.

There will be zero transit improvements. That's strictly against TTC and City policy. But they will put up stadiums and what have you.

 

[hbl33]

​

And for those hoping for more ' projects ' after the beloved games, perhaps Lotus Lands points the way.

Athlete's village missing social housing aspect
ctvbc.ca
Posted Wednesday, November 4, 2009 9:30 PM ET


Media from around the world got their first look Wednesday at the 1.5 million square foot 2010 Vancouver Olympic athlete's village, as the city officially handed over the keys to Olympic organizers.

The rooms are spacious, and boast beautiful views of the water and downtown.

The buildings even have "green roofs" for gardening.

Vancouver Organizing Committee CEO John Furlong said he would "love to live here."

But there was something missing.

When Vancouver bid for the Olympics, it said the Olympic Village would be one of the Games' legacies and promised an equal mix of fair market, affordable and social housing after the Games.

Fast forward to today.

The social housing component is out the window.

There is still a plan to sell 252 affordable housing units after the Games - about 20 percent of the total number of suites.

But even that is uncertain.

"It's going to take more money to put affordability in there," Councillor Geoff Meggs told CTV News this week.

"Frankly, I'd be reluctant to see a big taxpayer funded project have nothing in there except for the very wealthy, but it's a financial question. We have to be responsible with taxpayer dollars as well."

The village went more than $100 million over budget. The city is trying to recoup those costs from the sales of Olympic Village suites.

Many who supported the Olympic bid because of the promise of non-market housing are upset.

"The social housing has to stay on site. They have to find a way to make that promise real," said homeless advocate Jim Green.

Mayor Gregor Robertson said Wednesday that the recession and "cost creep" forced the city to amend plans. A building boom during construction increased contractor fees and materials were more expensive than anticipated.

The mayor suggested that social housing can still be achieved -- by developing sites surrounding the village.

With reports from CTV British Columbia's Peter Grainger and Stephen Smart

In North America, these benefits surrounding the "social housing" will only drive up the cost of resale; that won't be "social housing" anymore; it will become a flashback of 67' Expo in MTL.

 

[Mystic Point]

What happened in Montreal in 1967 with Expo? What was the plan and what was the outcome?​

 

[hbl33]

What happened in Montreal in 1967 with Expo? What was the plan and what was the outcome?​

I can't go too far about the plan; expos are something about bringing up newer innovation in design and such forth. In Montreal, various new designs by various architects from around the world (Buckminister Fuller for the round "dome", some Soviets for their own pavilions) but this Canadian architect Moshe Safdie built Habitat 67, which was something to be a prototype of affordable housing. What then it was supposed to be turned out to be other way; today, it is one of the most expensive residence in Montreal due to complicate design.

All I can assume, is that whenever there is a new major event with the introduction of new housing (whether affordable or public housing), they become one of the most expensive residences in the city after the event passes away. An antithesis of affordable social housing.

 

[nfitz]

..., yet, our sidewalks will be filled with homeless people and every street post will be plastered with posters and junk.
How great will that look?

I've seen far worse in cities holding much bigger events than the Pan-Am games. Shame that some affordable housing isn't part of this project though ...

... wait, it is.

 

[nfitz]

What happened in Montreal in 1967 with Expo? What was the plan and what was the outcome?

You mean Habitat? You have to be rich to heat one of those units in the winter ...

 

[Second_in_pie]

@ niftz: That is a F**KING HUGE picture
Just have to mention that

But I think that the required projects will be finished reasonably well. But the feds will be down to the wire again, and will say that they've done their share for the next 20 years. The Province will be exhausted, but will probably try to keep the GGH in the big picture where it belongs (at the forefront,) but it'll have to do everything alone. No more funding for the GGH, if not all of Southern Ontario. When we bid for the 2020 Olympics, the province will be the only one to provide funding, since the feds most certainly won't want to spend that much money on the hated city of Toronto again.

I think I might hate this city. I mean, it's a great city. The most diverse place on Earth, some of the lowest crime rates in any big city, high standards of living, and a general happiness.
But the way we look at ourselves has got to change. We've seriously got this inferiority complex towards ourselves. "Oh, we could never have that." Even hosting the Olympics! We think that we can't handle it, even though the GTA alone will shortly be approaching the 4th largest city in North America.
And the rest of the country isn't helping either. Not only has Toronto got to be one of the most domestically hated cities in the world, but nothing's changing. Our population and economic growth could put us in a more hated situation, and our governments will still do nothing for the city.
The region has so much more potential that we're trapping inside, trying to get rid of it as though it's a bad thing. I could say similar stuff for the rest of Canada, and that we're an undiscovered gem that the government could be doing so much more for, but it really shows in Toronto. Hopefully the Pan Am games won't show the real, real ugly side of this, but I get a feeling that it will. If it doesn't though, it'll be nice to get some new facilities *somewhere* in the GGH.

 

[Marko]

The PanAms are should be bigger to any host city than the Winter Olympics.There are more athletes involved and events where higher attendance is likely.

Winnipeg has done it on the cheap, but a city like Toronto would be a far more appealing place to travel to an I would imagine would fare far better from a visitors and paid attendance standpoint.

I think thy are grossly under estimating the soccer facility requirements. Take any two countries and there could be 20,000 locals alone who would attend, let alone visitors - remember large crowds at the U20 tournament from Costa Rica, etc...? It makes sense that Hamilton is getting the largest of the new stadiums as there is an actual use for it afterward (CFL),but what is a 10,000+ seat stadium gong to be used for in Burlington after the games? There is no local university to play football and no prospect of any professional sports teams using it... It would make more sense to put it at York...or Guelph... or hell - Mississauga - and let it be used as the basis for a CFL or USL expansion team (maybe both).

I fully agree that if we're throwing infrastructure money around nowadays already, that it should be for tangible things that will continue to be used, and not the useless sidewalk that was paved the full length of our road - on the opposite side of all the businesses and bus stops (though that's another debate).

I question the need for these events to always include low income housing. The housing will be built on prime lakeview property, just east of a very trendy area and should be sold for the highest profit - with the provision that a sizable portion of that money be used to develop far more low-income housing with more bang for the buck (being built on less prime land, not needing to show off, etc...)

 

[Mystic Point]

You mean Habitat? You have to be rich to heat one of those units in the winter ...

That's hilarious.

I was in Montreal a couple years ago for the first time. When I saw that Habitat, I thought it was a housing project. It was so ugly. It looks like the designer must have been smoking meth or something.

My Montreal friend informed me it was a prestige building and home to the elite. I had to laugh.

Apparently some hippy architect actually got paid for making this eye sore. It's so ugly it should be moved brick by brick to Toronto. It would fit in here better. It would look at home by the Robart's Turkey Library.

Montreal is a beautiful town. " How did they let this beast go up? " I asked my friend.

He reminded me, it was made in the 1960's and in those days " you could get away with murder. "

 

[Mystic Point]

That is a damn big picture. Lols.

 

[jn_12]

Simply because Vancouver has decided to renege on its promise of social housing, doesn't mean it will happen to us. As I've said before, just because something happens in one place at one time doesn't mean it will happen elsewhere at another time.

Mystic, apart from the post where you brought up the housing issue from Vancouver all you have done is troll (not just this section, but the forum all together). Most of it is unfounded drivel and hyperbole not worth reading nor wasting your own time on. Please come back when you have something of substance to say. It's really getting tiring.

 

[GenerationW]

The least valid point in TO business man's festering syntactic swamp of misconceptions is that Toronto is a poorly run business. Toronto is not a business. It's a city with a democratic government.

Everything is a business when it's that big.

 

[GenerationW]

... and the big question for me is whether any of this will mean more subways????

No way. The Yonge extension (unwanted by the TTC) is now in further jeopardy as the argument will be that funds should be allocated to projects more related to the games.