The ThunderBlogs

The marketing relaunch of Olympic Village scheduled for Sept. 25 has been delayed until sometime next month, highlighting the rental and occupation problems that continue to plague the city’s former haven of international activity.

“If you’re looking for the lineup, it’s going to be a few months,” said Joseph Ciborowski, one of several painters wielding a brush to produce an upcoming BC Liquor Store at 138 Athletes Way. Standing atop a welded steel dock lift, he is among the few labourers still at work in a complex that was completed almost a year ago.

He is also one of the few people visible for blocks.

Across the street Creekside Community Recreation Centre, which opened Sept. 18, is the sole Village magnet.

Its interior smells of fresh plaster. The fitness centre exudes a rubbery odour of unused treadmills, not yet tainted by the sweat of community residents. This second-floor facility boasted a total of three exercisers, and overlooks an empty gym bisected by badminton nets hanging above a newly laid hardwood floor.

In the street below, freshly paved and litter-free, men unloaded a moving truck packed with cables and lighting equipment. Several days of shooting for the television show Fringe began the following day, and the fully constructed but virtually uninhabited site provided a perfect filming location.

Between May 15 and Sept. 1 only 26 Village housing deals had closed, said marketer Bob Rennie. In total, 254 of 727 market-rate suites have been sold, while just over half of the 120 rental units have tenants. A pending deal with BC Housing, a provincial crown agency, will eventually open the door to 252 non-market rate condos.

The Duplo-like buildings that contain these units, externally clad with panelled blocks of neon orange and fern green, invoke a certain PoMo-ism. Both the buildings and the movement have been accused of emptiness and estrangement from ordinary people. For Olympic Village, at least, these characterizations are, at the moment, difficult to deny.

A fledgling vegetable garden wrapping around a ground floor Athletes Way apartment proves some flora, as well as fauna, do live in the area. Indoors, the turquoise waters of a lap pool lay motionless as the tiles cladding its deck.

Tacked onto a former warehouse nearby, a rezoning application spelled out on yellow Bristol board the site’s future, and, inadvertently, the history of the area’s transition—“from: M-2 (Industrial) to: CD-1 (Comprehensive Development District).”

Now all it needs are the people.