David Edmunds can remember the fear. It was the early 1980s and he was the lead architect on Calgary's Olympic Oval. The facility was being built for the 1988 Winter Games on the campus of the University of Calgary.
"The big issue for the university was that (officials) were terrified it was going to become a white elephant," recalls Edmunds, now a senior partner with GEC Architecture, which was then known as Graham McCourt. "In fact, they had three or four backup plans to turn it into a fieldhouse or turn it into a football training facility (or) a tennis facility."
Not only did the Oval turn out to be a huge international speed-skating success story, staging the Olympics, World Cups, world championships and training sessions for teams from all over the globe, but locals loved it, too. Twenty years later, the Oval buzzes with activity seven days a week and now Calgary's Olympic facilities are undergoing a round of renovations and upgrades.
The experience shed light on what people and companies involved in building Vancouver Olympic 2010 venues might expect.
One thing is certain: Vancouver-based firms are now feeling the fear that their Calgary counterparts experienced two decades ago.
"The reality is, there's just an inordinate amount of pressure ... to do what we need to do in order to get this thing completed," says Roger Bayley, principal of Merrick Architecture, who is serving as design manager on the athletes' village site. "Everybody is coming to the plate to make all this happen. It's an enormous challenge."
The athletes' village will boast 850 market housing units, 250 non-market housing units controlled by the City of Vancouver, and 110 rental units controlled by Vancouver-based Millennium Projects. An Urban Fare grocery store and Shopper's Drug Mart outlet will also be part of the site.
If GEC's experience with the '88 Games is any indication, the future looks bright for Merrick, which also designed the Callaghan Valley Nordic Centre's day lodge, competition building and maintenance facility near Whistler.
The 1988 Olympic jobs helped GEC land contracts for the Canada Olympic Park expansion, Calgary's Telus Convention Centre expansion and the University of Minnesota's Mariucci Arena and many others.
"The Olympics is responsible for creating these opportunities," says Edmunds. "The '90s was a pretty tough time in construction in Alberta. We managed to retain some of the skillsets (from the Olympic experience) and hung on. (Since) the year 2000, when things started to turn around, we have experienced tremendous growth."
If the company had not landed the Olympic gigs, it probably would have had to change its business model, he adds.
Instead, it has been able to focus on large-span, one-of-a-kind, spectator and assembly facilities.
Edmunds says the Olympics also created a new corporate culture in Calgary, as companies gained experience and expertise in developing large structures. He points to Steve Hale, founder of Kelowna-based Septra Projects, as an example of a builder who has leverage off the Calgary Games.
In addition to spearheading Calgary's bobsleigh and luge track, Hale, formerly with the UMA Group of Companies, built similar tracks in Lillehammer and Lake Placid. In one of his latest works, he is co-ordinating construction of the Rise golf course and housing project near Vernon.
Merrick's Bayley believes a new corporate culture is also emerging in Vancouver, which will lead to expanded use of sustainable-building components. Sections of the Athletes Village will receive gold and platinum LEED-certification status. "There's been a lot of innovation that we haven't seen before," says Bayley.
Edmunds latched on with GEC while the Saddledome was under construction and the Oval was still in the planning stages. He was appointed project architect on the Oval. "I spent at least five years on the building - and every aspect of it.
"It was pretty important in developing a level of experience and a level of confidence in being able to tackle a large project and projects that are one of a kind. We had to invent the speedskating oval from scratch. Nobody had done one before. It's not like doing an apartment building or an office building where you've got a huge amount of precedent. In that sense, it gave the practice - not only me - a lot of confidence that they could tackle this type of building."
Many B.C. facilities that will be used for the Game will not necessarily be used as sports venues afterwards. But Calgary is different, Edmunds adds.
"Calgary has maintained the training facilities after their Games in '88, and now we're going through quite an exercise in updating and enhancing the facilities here. Calgary will remain a centre of winter-sports excellence."
He adds his company would have liked to have been more involved in the Vancouver Games, "but there were a lot of local architects involved there and some international groups."
GEC was interested in doing Vancouver's speedskating oval, which will require $2 million worth of roof improvements. It was part of a team that looked at building an oval on the campus of Simon Fraser University on top of Burnaby Mountain, but organizers opted for Richmond instead and the group's bid was unsuccessful.
"Had it gone there, it probably would have been a university-oriented facility, like the Calgary facility is, and we might have been more competitive in that situation," he says. "But who knows? The reality of architecture is that you don't win every project."
(Monte Stewart can be reached at monte@businessedge.ca)
