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Which bid city is your preference to host the 2015 Pan American Games?

TORONTO 2015 - Pan American Games - Venues

74K views 179 replies 70 participants last post by  Akai 
#1 · (Edited)
3 cities are bidding to host the 2015 Pan American Games: Bogota, Lima, and Toronto. The Pan American (Pan Am) Games is a multi-sport competition, held every four years, for athletes from the 43 nations in America.

The Pan Am Games is governed by the Pan American Sports Organization (PASO), with members of the National Olympic Committees of 43 nations. The successful candidate for the 2015 Pan American Games will be announced by the PASO in Guadalajara, Mexico during the Fall of 2009.

Which bid city is your preference to host in 2015?


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/13/Flag_of_PASO.svg/450px-Flag_of_PASO.svg.png

The 43 Participating Nations in America

Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Aruba
Bahamas, Barbados, Belize
Bermuda, Bolivia, Brazil
British Virgin Islands, Canada, Cayman Islands
Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica
Cuba, Curaçao, Dominica
Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador
Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana
Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica
Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama
Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico
Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Sint Maarten, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago
United States, United States Virgin Islands, Uruguay
Venezuela
 
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#129 ·
Ivor Wynne is a dump, but it's still a far better place to watch football than most other stadia in Canada. The sight lines at Ivor Wynne are as good as it gets. I'd rather have a good view than nice amenities.
 
#132 ·
I've been a long time reader of this amazing forum, and this is my first post! :)

I too have wondered about that new Pan American Stadium being too small, and the renderings seem to represent a stadium of about 45,000 minimum.

Why don't they just build the entire thing, both sides with 2 decks, for the Pan Am Games? There is PLENTY of time. Does it make too much sense?

For a city of 5 million, this Toronto bid seems really under scaled.
 
#133 · (Edited)
Welcome to SSC! I'm glad someone else agrees. The render isn't representative and it seems strange that they don't just build the 30,000 seater. 15,000 is far too small for a Pan American Games athletics stadium. Hamilton could fill that all by itself, then there's the rest of the Golden Horseshoe: over 8 million people in total.
 
#134 ·
The seating capacity would be 15K for the Pan Ams, and then expanded to 30K afterwards? Usually main stadiums for a multi-sport event would be reduced and not increased. Why couldn't they build a 30K capacity stadium and it can remain at that capacity even after the Pan Ams?
 
#136 · (Edited)
That was my first reaction when I saw the athletics stadium proposed. It's been branded a Toronto games, but it's really a Golden Horseshoe Games. The games are being spread out throughout the region with only some of the events planned for Toronto.

The opening and closing ceremonies will be in Toronto, but not in the athletics stadium. They will take place at Skydome (Rogers Centre), a Canadian football/baseball stadium. The athletics stadium won't be in Toronto, but the City of Hamilton, Canada's 9th largest city.

I understand why it's being built there, but it's rather misleading to call these a Toronto Games.
 
#138 ·
Someone at SSP is suggesting that the stadium holds 27,000 without the end zone seats, and 42,000 with them. If that's accurate, it all makes far more sense.





 
#140 ·
The race to build a Pan Am Games village has begun
20 November 2009
The Globe and Mail

With the recent announcement that Toronto will host the 2015 Pan American Games, the ongoing transformation of Hogtown's lakeside wastelands into living urban fabric may have gotten a serious kick in the right direction. Or maybe not. A great deal remains to be seen. I'll set out my apprehensions in a moment. But here are the facts.

Staging the event will require a secure central location where 8,500 athletes and officials from across the Pan American world can live comfortably, train, practise and relax for the duration of the games. The winning bid included a scheme, drafted by the Toronto firm regionalArchitects, for a new, purpose-built village to house this large group of people. (The designers estimate that the Pan Am village will house a population three times the size of the crowd of competitors expected to turn out for Vancouver's 2010 Olympics.) This mixed-use development will go up in the now-vacant West Don Lands, one of the parcels overseen by Waterfront Toronto, the crown corporation charged with turning former industrial properties into livable pieces of city.

Crafted by regionalArchitects' John van Nostrand and Drew Sinclair, the village plan is interesting in its attempt to offer workable solutions, in a single architectural package, to two different problems. The first is the housing of athletes and staff for the short time of the games, and the second is the long-term provision of dwellings for Torontonians.

The village scheme features buildings of two general types. One is temporary, and will cost about $50-million. The large common dining hall (a tented structure), the welcome centre and other components useful only during the games will be demolished after their conclusion. A 50-metre swimming pool will be relocated elsewhere in the Golden Horseshoe after the event, and a swatch of playing fields and practice areas located south of the east-west railway corridor, which bounds the site on one side, will be returned to Waterfront Toronto for future development as a residential neighbourhood.

The other construction in the West Don Lands – the main focus of the estimated $1-billion in public financing to be poured into the site – is to be permanent. The mid-rise apartment blocks and townhouses, stretched along an extension of Front Street East that will end at the new Don River Park, will shelter the athletes and staff during the games. Afterwards, Mr. Sinclair said in an interview, the bunks in the buildings will be converted into apartments priced across the “spectrum of affordable housing.” After the athletes have moved on, there will be room for about 4,000 permanent residents.

I appreciate the ambition that went into the plan prepared for the Pan Am Games committee. I like the team's renderings of what their Pan Am village might look like, with raking, saucy rooflines and colourful facades.

My hesitation about this scheme comes partly from the fact that, at the present time, nobody knows what the village will look like. Mr. van Nostrand and Mr. Sinclair only prepared a proposal that helped Toronto's pitch to win; they will not be in charge of the execution of the village.

“Individual parcels will be let out to different developers and providers of affordable housing, with their own architects and planners,” Mr. van Nostrand said. These architects will probably not create something truly awful, since Waterfront Toronto will be guiding the design process according to rules that have been painstakingly worked out over the past several years. (Waterfront Toronto's guidelines regarding height, size of footprint, building envelope and other technical matters were honoured in regionalArchitects' plan, Mr. van Nostrand said.)

But those rules were meant to be implemented over decades – not in a scant five years. What's to prevent haste from making a mess of things? In the rush to have everything in the village ready for 2015, design quality could be sacrificed on the altar of expediency. With the pressure of time on them, the yet-to-be-named architects and builders will surely be tempted to trim the construction budgets to the minimum, eliminating refinements that should be part and parcel of every new development on the waterfront.

The West Don Lands territory is an immense asset and opportunity that must not be squandered by quick-build developers interested only in reaping a windfall off the $1-billion public investment in the Pan Am village.

In the run-up to the Pan American Games, Toronto has been given something new to worry about: a possible hitch in Waterfront Toronto's efforts to bring urban vitality to the water, which have seemed so promising until now.
 
#147 ·
Ottawa should ask Toronto if it can host some Pan Am Games events, Coun. says
11 January 2010
The Canadian Press

OTTAWA _ A city councillor wants to see if Ottawa can get a piece of Toronto's action during the Pan American Games in 2015.

Gloucester-South Nepean Coun. Steve Desroches plans to bring a motion to the next corporate services and economic development committee asking the City of Ottawa to ask Toronto about opportunities to host events in the nation's capital.

``I think it's important to start these decisions as soon as possible,'' Desroches said Monday.

Ottawa would receive economic benefits from the games and youths would be inspired by the athletes, Desroches said. At the same time, athletes coming from all over the Americas could get a taste of Canada's capital region, he noted.

Desroches has engaged Ottawa Senators president Cyril Leeder in the discussion, in addition to the city's economic development department and Ottawa Tourism.

The Pan American Sport Organization in November announced that Toronto and the Golden Horseshoe region will host the 2015 games. The games attract athletes from 42 countries in North America, South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

The Toronto organizing committee is expecting the games will attract 250,000 visitors to the provincial capital for two weeks in July 2015.

Like the Olympics, the Pan American games are held every four years and the sporting events are similar. The 2011 games will be in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Desroches said when Ottawa hosted the 2009 world junior hockey championships, there were pre-competition games outside the city. Exhibition games and practices were played throughout Ontario, including games in the Greater Toronto Area.

Expanding the games outside the Toronto area would help enhance Canada's experience with the spectacle, he said.

Desroches said Ottawa could host exhibition games or offer practice facilities to athletes.
 
#148 ·
Ottawa is way too far away. That's a good 5 hours on the freeway!
 
#149 ·
Province vows airport rail link by 2015 Games
13 March 2010
The Toronto Star

Ontario Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne is vowing to have the much-delayed train link between Pearson International Airport and downtown Toronto running in time for the 2015 Pan Am Games.

Wynne made the pledge after Mayor David Miller told a Pan Am panel Friday he had no faith the province and Ottawa would manage to build "a tiny 1.3-kilometre spur" track connecting the Georgetown GO line and Pearson in time for the event.

Wynne later told the Star the line as it exists wouldn't be able to handle airport-downtown traffic, but a major upgrade, cost-shared by the province and Ottawa, will see trains rolling by July 2015.

"We're working very hard and we're committed to delivering this for the 2015 Pan Am Games," Wynne said.
 
#150 ·
One can only hope they can get their act together and get this accomplished.
 
#155 ·
Nope why spend money on tourists or travellers......They have money spend it on taxis.

Very few cities in Canada can claim rail transit connects to airports. Vancouver has, Montreal might? Or may be working on connections.

Australia doesn't do so well for rail connections either. Perth? Melbourne? Brisbane? Adelaide? Sydney, might have?
 
#157 ·
Is it OK to have corporate sponsors on venue names during the Pan American Games? Because two of the 215 PAG venues (SkyDome and Air canada Centre) have corporate sponsors in their current names.
 
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