There are reports that the athletes’ village, which would accommodate 8,500 for the Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games, will be built on Toronto’s West Don Lands near the redeveloped Distillery District.
The West Don Lands is a 32-hectare area and is almost entirely owned by the province of Ontario. It has been slated for redevelopment since the mid-1990s
If successful, the city of Toronto will see development of the Canadian Sports Institute and a $170 million aquatics and athletes facility at the University of Toronto’s (U of T) Scarborough campus.
Once the Games are over the village will reportedly be turned into 2,000 housing units with most of them affordable housing.
The cost of the village and what it will look like will be presented at a press conference Sunday. Its cost is separate from the $1.4-billion Games budget.
The project will leave a legacy of parks, homes, and a new neighbourhood on what is a contaminated brownfield site, reports the Toronto Sun.
The newspaper quotes a source saying, “(the bid committee) looked at all the possibilities…looked at it very closely. The challenge with it was that no university has the capacity required. Nobody has the number of residence and dorm rooms to house 8,500 athletes and team officials.
“We did the math with all the universities, with York, with U. of T., with McMaster – nobody could do it. Not even close. The maximum we got to was between 4,500 and 5,000 rooms”.
The bid committee will soon release its bid book which lists all the venues and event schedules.
