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Toronto 2024 Olympic Bid (Dead)

Hahaha, learning the lesson from Sochi and then giving it to Beijing would be oh so ironic. Got to say the Norwegians definitely got this one right.

AoD
 
Now that the doom and gloom over the Pan Am seem to be an overreaction, it seems a bid for the 2024 Olympics is back on the agenda. Let's think about how it will be similar/different to the 2008 bid, from a venues/infrastructure perspective:

waterfront_lrg.gif

From Gamesbid.com

The 2008 bid plan foresee 3 "zones" (Exhibition Place, Skydome Precinct, Portlands) for the venues, with the media village located in the now West Donlands/Canary Park and Atheletes' Village in the Portlands at the foot of Cherry Street, south of the Shipping Channel. Exhibition Place of course has since seen the BMO Place, now the Raptors training facility, Allstream Centre and X Hotel. Ontario Place is of course a site for redevelopment. With regards to the Portlands - the plans for East Bayfront and South Donlands are more or less complete, and the latter will involve significant public works that will likely be incompatiable with the original siteings. The Pinewood lands remain in play, and neither Sunlight/Unilever/First Gulf lands nor the Hearn was part of the original plans.

All 3 zones are linked up by some kind of high capacity transit system - with a new station at Cherry Street. This is broadly congruent with the current RER plans. DRL was not in the picture in the 2008 bid. The Spadina extension to York U, along with Phase I of Eglinton and Scarborough Subway extension should be completed/close to completion by 2024. QQE LRT remain on the books.

So, where would we fit all the pieces?
 
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AlvinofDiaspar said:
So, where would we fit all the pieces?
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I wonder if York University would be considered a fourth "zone" considering the substantial new investments in the area, such as the Canadian Tennis Centre, the York Pan Am Athletics Stadium, and the York subway line which *sigh* will hopefully be complete by 2024.

As well, there are a number of new Pan Am sites that could be used for the 2024 games, many of which are outside of the three proposed 2008 "zones." These include the Scarborough Aquatics Centre, the renovated Varsity Stadium, the Caledon Equestrian Park, Hamilton's Tim Horton's Field, Milton's National Cycling Centre and Markham's Pan Am Centre.
 
mjl08 said:
I wonder if York University would be considered a fourth "zone" considering the substantial new investments in the area, such as the Canadian Tennis Centre, the York Pan Am Athletics Stadium, and the York subway line which *sigh* will hopefully be complete by 2024.

As well, there are a number of new Pan Am sites that could be used for the 2024 games, many of which are outside of the three proposed 2008 "zones." These include the Scarborough Aquatics Centre, the renovated Varsity Stadium, the Caledon Equestrian Park, Hamilton's Tim Horton's Field, Milton's National Cycling Centre and Markham's Pan Am Centre.
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I am sure York will be one (I think it was considered to be a site in 2008), ditto all the new facilities in Markham and elsewhere. I am curious whether anything will be located in Downsview given the amount of space available. Perhaps the bid would move Oxford to redevelop the MTCC sooner since that's where the Broadcast Centre was supposed to be in the 08 bid, along with a few competitions. The twin towers in the current plans would of course serve as an excellent place to hoist an oversized Olympic logo in between.

AoD
 
Any Olympic bid will almost certainly involve significant re-use of existing Pan-Am venues. I imagine that would be a big selling point of the bid, in general. Places like the Aquatic Centre and the Velodrome will certainly be adapted as part of the bid. I would not support an Olympic Bid that involved construction of significant amounts of new venues.

The Pan-Am sites are rather dispersed, though, and I'm not sure if other past Olympics have been staged on a similar model. It would certainly make it more complicated.

Football would probably use BMO Field, Lamport Stadium (renovated), Tim Hortons Field in Hamilton, The Skydome, Landsdowne Stadium in Ottawa, and Saputo Stadium in Montreal.

I think the biggest question is where they would or could place the Athletes Village. This determines a lot.
 
wopchop said:
Any Olympic bid will almost certainly involve significant re-use of existing Pan-Am venues. I imagine that would be a big selling point of the bid, in general. Places like the Aquatic Centre and the Velodrome will certainly be adapted as part of the bid. I would not support an Olympic Bid that involved construction of significant amounts of new venues.

The Pan-Am sites are rather dispersed, though, and I'm not sure if other past Olympics have been staged on a similar model. It would certainly make it more complicated.

Football would probably use BMO Field, Lamport Stadium (renovated), Tim Hortons Field in Hamilton, The Skydome, Landsdowne Stadium in Ottawa, and Saputo Stadium in Montreal.

I think the biggest question is where they would or could place the Athletes Village. This determines a lot.
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I can imagine the only major venues being the Olympic Stadium and an Aquatic Centre that is close to the major venues - repurposing Hearn would fit the bill. The Olympic Village would be easy - plenty of land in the Portlands. I would actually get rid of Lamport Stadium lands and use the proceeds for something else instead.

The Hearn proposal by Behnisch Architekten:

http://behnisch.com/projects/426

AoD
 
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AlvinofDiaspar said:
I would actually get rid of Lamport Stadium lands and use the proceeds for something else instead.
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Right, but I think that you need 5 - 6 stadiums, not including the main stadium to host the final, to run the football tournament.

Repurposing the Hearn would be cool.

I agree that the Port Lands is the most likely place for an Athletes Village.
 
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re-using Pan Am venues is, off course, ideal.....but we may have a problem....unlike Rio (which was clearly hosting the PanAms as a stepping stone to an Olympic bid) we built venues which are more appropriately sized for Pan Ams.....

....loving the look of our aquatics venue but with a seating capacity of around 5k...it would be the smallest venue to host Olympic swimming since, what, Amsterdam (1928)

....hearing great things about the Milton Veledrome....but, again, at +/- 2k in capacity would be very, very, small by recent Olympic standards ...even back in the days of Montreal the capacity was higher.

I like the venues we built for Pan Ams (have issue that we built some temp venues while ignoring available existing facilities)....but most of them would be little more than training/practice venues in the Olympic world. Nice stadiums like the York University stadium would have not purpose at the Olympics.
 
wopchop said:
Right, but I think that you need 5 - 6 stadiums, not including the main stadium to host the final, to run the football tournament.
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Precisely why football is often used by games organizers to spread the spirit of the games across the host nation as opposed to being centred in one city. My first olympic event that I attended was a football match in 1976...4 years before I ever set foot in Montreal.....the last Olympic event I attended was a women's football match in Glasgow in 2012.

No need to build multiple football stadiums in one city.....and even if you did, I doubt Lamport would be at all suitable.
 
LOL. The Olympics are not going to re-use more than a few minor Pan Am sites. The Olympics are a real-estate scam, so what'll happen is, whole neighbourhoods will be scraped away, and Ontario Place and the Exhibition buildings will be demolished, all for new Olympic sites. And that's just for starters. We'll be lucky to keep Rouge Park intact.

But since it looks like we're getting the Olympics, carry on practicing denial and rationalization. It'll come in handy.
 
.. Agenda 2020 is changing things. The Tokyo plan is now way more spread out to help reduce costs compared to the original bid. Although I do suspect the portland's will be the main focus of a 2024 bid, I just wonder about the main stadium. I know the original stadium was to become what is now BMO field essentially and a new stadium for the Argos. I wonder how on board the Argo's would be with a similiar plan and if Toronto could really support a 3rd stadium.
 
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