Whistler, a place known for pristine snow, is going green as it prepares for life after the 2010 Winter Olympics.

During a series of open houses this past week, town officials are unveiling Whistler’s comprehensive sustainability plan, which envisions the resort 16 years from now.

‘‘The Olympics and the Paralympics are a four- to five- week event, so we’re planning for 2020,’’ said Mike Vance, the Resort Municipality of Whistler’s general manager of community initiatives. ‘‘It becomes a guide for how we deal with the Olympics.’’ After getting comments from residents and other stakeholders, municipal planners will begin to implement the plan in the fall.

‘‘The goal is that we’ll have the components of a stronger working plan,’’ said Vance, who is also involved in planning Whistler’s athletes’ village.

Shelley Arnusch, for Business Edge
The Pan Pacific Whistler Village Centre is just one of the projects Mike Vance, left, and Mike Kirkegaard are overseeing.

The new Whistler will emerge over five-, 10- and 15-year intervals.

‘‘We don’t want to bite off more than we can chew until we’re being realistic,’’ said Vance, explaining the need for short-term as well as long-term planning.

Based on a natural-step framework adopted two years ago, the plan uses a process known as backcasting to help Whistler and its 10,000 residents move forward. If the plan is adopted, Whistler will use renewable energy sources, eliminate the use of chemical fertilizers and deploy ecologically certified building materials.

Affordable housing is a key component of the plan, in addition to such other services as transportation, since the resort aims to keep 75 per cent of its workforce in Whistler, which is located 120 kilometres north of Vancouver.

Vance said municipal officials are concerned that the community is moving toward a housing crisis.

‘‘Unless we keep our workforce here and house them, Whistler resort will decline, because we need our employees to run it,’’ said Vance.

According to the comprehensive sustainability plan document, Whistler now accommodates 73 per cent of its workforce while the rest commute from the nearby communities of Squamish and Pemberton.

But, at estimated leakage rates, Whistler would only be able to accommodate 46 per cent of its employees by 2020.

Over the past decade, the average price of a single-family home has tripled. Whistlerites who do not own homes pay an average of $1,000, or 30 per cent of their income, per month on rent. However, residents of the Greater Vancouver Regional District spend 26 per cent of their monthly income on rent.

As a result, young families tend to leave Whistler, while aging residents lack amenities.

Shelley Arnusch, for Business Edge
Whistler Village’s Westbrook Hotel is one of the resort’s popular attractions for tourists.

In 2000, Whistler had 9,000 dwellings of diverse housing types, including multi-family townhouses and duplexes, single-family dwellings, apartments and secondary suites.

Between 1996 and 2001, the number of secondary suites declined 16 per cent while multi-family housing jumped eight per cent, apartments rose four per cent and single-family homes increased five per cent.

Possible solutions include zoning changes that set aside a certain percentage of rezoned land for employee housing and allow multiple suites and small-lot sub- divisions; financial incentives; converting under-utilized tourist accommodations into affordable housing; higher-density housing; and lower taxes.

But planners also want to prevent urban sprawl and overgrowth.

As a result, residents have rejected a proposal to build the Olympic athletes’ village in the Callaghan Valley. If all goes as outlined, the athletes’ village will be built in the Lower Cheakamus neighbourhood and become a permanent fixture.

But escalating housing and business prices make Whistler unaffordable for many people, the sustainability plan document notes.

‘‘I’d say there’s a fairly negative attitude to new- market housing,’’ said Vance. ‘‘There is a perception that we have enough hotel rooms. We have enough commercial (buildings). We are obtaining new facilities through the Olympic Games.’’ Whistler attracts two million visitors per year, but the cap on the number of beds allowed in the municipality is 55,500, including resident housing.

Last year, the municipality introduced a village construction management strategy. It specifies a set of initiatives that are currently being implemented and applies to all development projects in Whistler Village, the resort’s core.

Mike Kirkegaard, a senior planner with the municipality, said the construction management strategy aims to ensure that visitors have the highest-quality experience while investment continues.

The resort, which depends largely on tourists from the U.S., is recovering following declines in travel due to SARS, mad-cow disease, 9/11, the once-high U.S. exchange rate and changes in people’s travel habits.

‘‘We have to continue to offer new experiences,’’ said Kirkegaard.

But the emphasis is on upgrading existing properties rather than constructing new ones.

The village area, where vacationers go to eat, drink, shop, party and sleep after hitting the slopes, is Whistler’s core.

The Pan Pacific II, Four Seasons Hotel and Four Seasons employee residence are slated to receive $300 million worth of new buildings at their locations, said Kirkegaard. Six other buildings will also get $83 million worth of reinvestment, and the municipality is putting a total of $1 million into Village Square and Mountain Square.

To avoid having tourists look at unsightly scaffolding, the municipality has required builders to place large photos of prominent Whistler residents on the sides of construction projects. For example, the Crystal Lodge features a large photo of former World Cup skier Rob Boyd, who was recently named a coach of Canada’s national downhill team.

Kirkegaard said the images are designed to prevent the village from looking like a construction zone – and tell the story of Whistler.

‘‘It all adds to the appeal,’’ said Kirkegaard.