The multibillion dollar branding experiment in Vancouver is not being met with much enthusiasm by many of the people that actually have to live there. The world is treated with gorgeous scenery and two weeks of Canada porn, while the residents are left with high unemployment and homeless rates, violent drug gang turf wars and a olympic size pile of debt.
Could Olympics Undo the Global Economy? While the tab for the Vancouver games will not be fully known until long after the world departs, the city has already seen it’s credit rating downgraded when it was forced to step in and bankroll the $1.2 billion Olympic Village, now $250 million over budget.
Other cost overruns such as security and delivering snow by helicopter to Cypress Mountain will add to the hangover. Creditors threatening to foreclose on the Whistler Blackcomb Olympic ski venue in the middle of the games further demonstrates how far the world has shifted since the hey day of bottomless budgets.
Vancouver’s Olympic Bet The province’s unemployment hovers just above 8 percent—slightly below Canada’s 8.3 percent rate. Vancouver’s unemployment rate is just below 8 percent, but double that of January 2008. A year ago, Canadian credit-rating agency DBRS downgraded Vancouver’s debt rating after the city was forced to buy out a U.S. hedge fund financing the Olympic Village. Columnist for The Vancouver Sun Vaughn Palmer forecasts the Games will cost the City $8 billion, far higher than the $1.42 billion price tag announced by Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC). Demonstrators, angered by city spending on the Games, demanded housing for Vancouver’s homeless as the Olympics got underway. Coverage of organized crime has also cast a shadow over Olympic celebrations in the lead-up to the Games. Canadian authorities say Mexico’s crackdown has slowed drug flows north to Vancouver, cutting into drug-gangs’ profit margins and sparking violent turf wars.
Olympics Protest in Vancouver: SLIDESHOW Protestors lined the streets in Vancouver today, disrupting the path of the Olympic torch and forcing it to reroute.
Commentary | Olympics The Olympics have blown a $6-billion hole in the public purse, but Gateway is set to blow an even bigger hole in B.C.’s finances. The proposed South Fraser freeway alone could take $2 billion away from transit, energy efficiency, housing, education, health care, arts funding, and other public priorities. Only minor preparatory work has been done on this unnecessary and environmentally disastrous project; it is not a done deal. Many freeway projects have been stopped after construction started—all it takes is public opposition and a financial crunch. The Georgia Viaduct was originally planned as a four-mile long freeway through Chinatown and East Vancouver, but public opposition and a budget squeeze left only an orphaned section now potentially slated for demolition.
Vancouver’s pre-Olympics woes just part of putting on the games: experts The biggest issue, perhaps, has been the ballooning operating budget, currently sitting at an estimated $1.76-billion, plus another $900-million for 15,000 security personnel. Those costs could rise based on any number of factors that could play out over the two-week Games, with some expecting a final tab of $6 billion.
Critics say that money could be better spend on social issues, including money for Vancouver’s homeless — many living in the city’s drug-plagued Downtown Eastside — or the province’s native populations and recession-hit industries, such as fishing and forestry, and question whether the costs incurred to put on the Olympic Games are worth it. (Montreal, for example, took 30 years to pay off the debt it accrued during the 1976 Games.)
Protesters set up tent city in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Hundreds of homeless and poverty protesters using the Olympic spotlight to their advantage flooded into a large vacant lot in the 100-block West Hastings Street on Monday and erected a tent city.
Maybe Marc Goldman has a better plan for Branding Buffalo: for ten years forget about what the rest of the word thinks of Buffalo and focus on making things work for the residents of this area. Happy residents are the best brand of all. The Buffalopundit blogs a lot on this theme.
