Power Utility a Profitable Legacy of 2010 Olympics

A heat-from-sewage facility built in Vancouver's 2010 Olympic Village is working so well that city officials are able to charge customers less for power and still take in a profit.

In what city engineers said is a happy and surprising discovery, the cost of operating the facility has dropped by 40 per cent while recovery from heat generated from sewage pipes has risen.

As a result, the utility, which provides heat to all of the Olympic Village as well as surrounding commercial and residential buildings, has already met its target of being price-competitive with BC Hydro, Brian Crowe, an assistant city engineer, told city council Thursday.

Next March Hydro will raise electricity rates across the province to about $87 per kilowatt hour. But the city's utility, which services about 1,600 homes and businesses, is able to offer a price of $84 per kilowatt hour and still make a reasonable profit for the city, Crowe said.

Olympic Village's heat-from-sewage utility a monetary success
The Vancouver Sun
December 2, 2010

Mixed Use Coming to London's East End via Ikea

Swedish furniture corporation Ikea is building a 1,500-unit mixed use development near the Olympic village in London's East End.

it is here, at Sugar House Lane in Stratford, that Inter Ikea, the investment and construction arm of the Swedish furniture giant, has bought a 13-acre site. Within the next few years, Inter Ikea will have built a mixed-use development consisting of office and retail space as well as lots of Ikea housing – some 1,500 units or so – and it has already started working on a master plan for the site.

Peter Andrews, the chief executive of the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation (LTGDC) , says that he fully expects it to become "a Covent Garden in the East End". A retail, housing and leisure hub abutting the Olympic Park, this Ikea village will be one of the things making the new East End a place in which people will be proud to live, as well as a tourist destination to die for.

Home Swede home: A new 'village' on the 2012 Olympics site is to be designed by Ikea
The Independent
July 30, 2010

With Eyes on Woprld Cup, London U-Turns on Temporary Olympic Stadium

Officials in London are backtracking on a much-touted plan to build the city's 2012 Olympic Stadium as a semi-temporary structure, and are now considering a plan to make the stadium a permanent fixture. The move is part of an effort to help England secure World Cup hosting duties in either 2018 or 2022.

The move signals a drastic u-turn on the original legacy plan for the Olympics, which envisaged the stadium as a semi-temporary venue which would be converted into a smaller, 25,000-capacity sports school and athletic ground in ‘legacy mode’.

According to the Evening Standard, [legacy chief Baroness] Ford said she was convinced the ‘beautiful’ stadium could pay its way as an all-year ‘visitor attraction’ and become part of London’s ‘iconic offer’.

As a result, stadium designers Populous - formerly HOK Sport - could be asked to rework the scheme which is already well under construction.

The original plan for post-Olympics adaptive reuse had received critical acclaim, as many other Olympic hosts have struggled to make use of Olympic structures after the event is over. The new move to make the stadium permanent could make major waves in London's legacy plan, which had envisioned the Olympic campus becoming a mixed use residential and parks district after the games.

Stadium faces redesign in drastic London Olympic rethink
The Arhcitects' Journal
June 29, 2009