On the eve of the Winter Olympics' opening ceremonies, the waterfront condo complex in Vancouver that is housing more than 2,700 Olympic athletes and team officials is winning almost universal praise from its guests. The suites are, to borrow a favorite snowboarding phrase, sweet, with marble-top counters in the shiny new kitchens. Each unit has a living-room area — a far cry from the dormlike conditions of Villages past. And the views are nothing short of breathtaking. Many apartments look out onto an inlet and the silver downtown skyline, with snowcapped mountains as a backdrop. "It's blown us away, to be honest," says U.S. speedskater Chad Hedrick, who won gold, silver and bronze medals at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, and is a medal contender this year. "They really went big on this. It's a million-dollar view, for sure."
Paid for, thank you very much, by the taxpayers of Vancouver. More than any other project in recent Olympic history, the $1 billion residential complex represents the risks that urban governments face when trying to host one of the world's biggest parties. The city planned to invest about $47 million in the project back in 2006. However, cost overruns and the recession forced Vancouver to step in and bail out the private developers who were charged with financing the project. The city avoided the humiliation of welcoming the world with a half-built Olympic Village, but at a great price: in early 2009, new Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson declared that taxpayers were "on the hook" for the $1 billion project. "What ended up happening was that the city became a bank for private-sector development," says Mark Cutler, director of Olympic Village Development for the Vancouver Organizing Committee, the body that is operating the complex during the Games.
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Video: Tour of Vancouver's Olympic Village