B.C. Team Wins Callaghan Valley Design Competition
Publish Date: May 2005
A British Columbia-based design team has successfully bid to design the new Callaghan Valley Nordic Centre for the 2010 Winter Games. The facility will be the site of cross-country skiing, ski jumping, biathlon and Nordic combined competitions.
The team, lead by Sandwell Engineering of Vancouver, includes Ecosign of Whistler, CJP Architects, Paul Merrick Architects, Thornley BKG Consultants, Ward Consulting, and Keen Engineering. Together, they will create a master plan for the valley which shows where the various elements will be located - the day lodge, roads, jumps and trails. Next, they'll take that master plan and create engineering documents that will go out to construction contractors. Though it's a huge responsibility, Ecosign President Paul Mathews is ready for the challenge of leading development of the Master Plan. “In the (past) 30 years a local firm has grown up and gotten world-wide experience,” said Mathews.
Ecosign, has years of experience working on high-performance winter-sports venues. The designed Canada Olympic Park in Calgary, site of the 1988 Olympic ski jumping and sliding centre, and has worked on world-class Nordic skiing facilities in both Austria and Spain. The company also played a role in the design of the Nordic skiing and biathlon facilities at Soldier Hollow, used for the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.
As a result of its past projects, Ecosign officials have strong contacts with those in international sport federations and have built a level of trust with those officials. “This is going to be a tremendous benefit to the Whistler community,” said Mathews. “We've done master planning for Whistler Blackcomb since 1975 but we've never done a Nordic Centre such as this one. It's going to be a real benefit for the Whistler Valley, I think.”
Construction on the Nordic Centre, is scheduled to begin next spring. With an initial cost-estimate of $102 million, the Nordic Centre is the most expensive new venue associated with the Winter Games.
The facilities are scheduled to be finished by 2007, which will allow two years for events before the Games.
The Nordic Centre facility has to meet the exacting specifications of international sport federations like the Federation International de Ski (FIS) and the International Biathlon Union (IBU). At the same time, it also must accommodate both recreational and competitive athletes, meet the needs and desires of the Resort Municipality of Whistler, First Nations, the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District and the Province of British Columbia in terms of its design and function.
“That's the big challenge. There are so many stakeholders on this,” said project director Peter Lutzman, who served as general manager of design and construction for the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria. “It's a challenge to try to cater to both high-performance and recreational users and to community needs, so it's very much a balancing act to try and come up with a detailed design.”
The Nordic Centre project is to include three stadiums for Nordic skiing, ski jumping and biathlon, each accommodating up to 12,000 spectators. The Nordic Centre is to include between 50 and 100 kilometres of trails, while both 90- and 120-metre ski jumps are required. The biathlon facility is to include a shooting range that meets IBU specifications.
Lutzman said that over the next three months, the partners are responsible for completing a Project Definition Report evaluating the feasibility of the project described in the Bid Book. VANOC must then approve the report - which is to include a segment on whether the $102 million budget is realistic - before the detailed design phase may begin, Lutzman said. “Right now we're in sponge mode,” he said. “We're accumulating all the information that VANOC has accumulated over the last three to four years. Overall, the Bid Book is pretty much intact in terms of what's planned there”.
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