Smart Site Selection

Smart Site Selection — Cluster and consolidate venues, and reuse and modify existing facilities and sites to minimize potential impacts on biodiversity and habitat. Where possible, build on brown sites, not green ones.

Besides protecting biodiversity and habitat, smart site selection also reduces travel time for athletes, officials and spectators, and lowers construction and temporary Games-time installation costs. Because of smart site selection, six out of 10 competition venues use existing facilities with some modifications. The remaining four venues, plus the two athlete villages, involve the construction of new facilities on previously used sites.

Cost-saving decisions last year regarding the location and size of ice rinks for ice hockey (an Olympic Games event) led to eliminating the construction of a separate venue at Whistler for ice sledge hockey (a Paralympic Games event) and the renovation of a venue in Vancouver. These decisions also reduced the size of our venue development program, with other related reductions in the environmental impact of our construction and energy footprints. Ice sledge hockey will now be held at the UBC Winter Sports Centre, and General Motors Place in Vancouver will remain an NHL-sized ice surface rather than being expanded to accommodate a larger Olympic-sized ice surface.

VANOC has strived to avoid venue development in or near areas that are protected or have high biodiversity value. For those venues situated in or near such areas, such as some of our mountain venues, environmentally sensitive construction and management strategies and practices are in place to ensure effects are minimized. Nearly six square kilometres of land across 11 venues are located within or near protected areas or areas of high biodiversity value.

See Venues and Villages: Environmental Assessment, Development Plans and Legacies.