Can't wait for user fees and taxes to escalate. But good work anyway.

This is great news for Prince George job well done people hats off and now it's time to roll up the sleeves and get to work GREAT

Congratulations to everyone involved - this is a very proud moment for the residents of Prince George. I for one am excited for all that will come with these games.

Incredible news for PG. Awesome!

GOOD ON US! I agree with realitycheck - this is great news for Prince George.

I never tire of hearing good news!!!!
WELL DONE PRINCE GEORGE!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm sick of this news. It will be a different story when the costs start to roll in.
Cheers

I can't even believe how happy and proud I am that we got this great opportunity! Yah for us! I KNOW that people all over the province (mostly in the southern areas and especially Kamloops and Kelowna) are in shock...we finally got something, we got thrown a mighty big bone!
And Retired, sorry to hear that you don't want bigger things for this city!

Good job to the team!

Can't wait to get some of the new facilities built at the cost of taxpayers across the country and the Province.

Thanks in advance to the taxpayers in Vancouver, Kelowna, Kamloops and all other cities in BC for putting in $50 to our $1.

Thanks to Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and the other lesser provinces :-) for doing likewise.

Love it when we get these gifts from others to improve our community.

Kamloops and Kelowna should not be in shock. As far as I understand, they have facilities we do not have, especially Kamloops. Part of the intent of the Federal Canada games program is to spread the money to improve facilities. We needed it more than the other two communities. So, once they figured we could do it, I am sure that was part of the selection criteria in addition to the community spirit.

Here comes the spending spree on the tax payers dime!

It all comes out of one pot.

You don't like living in a place that spends money from individuals on community property, events, etc?

Explore going to Quatar. The have no income tax, social security tax, VAT. They have only a small corporate tax.

They do not need taxes because they sell their oil to the rest of the world and can live of the oil money. Oil money is the money you and I pay to drive our cars.

You know, sort of like Alberta.

The me generation. Gimme .. gimme... gimme ... don't give a hoot about anyone but me ..... :-)

Awesome stuff PG! I'm more than happy that some of my contribution to the Provincial and Federal coffers will be coming home. This will be a great event for PG and the entire Region.

I think this is wonderful if we could affors it... at the sametime I wonder how deep into my pocket sht egovernment expects to dig, so that a few businesses can make a huge amount of money...shouldn't they be paying for this ...

Hey Campbell, time to start ordering God to make lots of snow...seems you think you are that high up...

And in other news, economic impact studies regarding sports tourism and mega events are bunk.

"There are theoretical reasons to believe that economic impact studies of large sporting events may overstate those events’ true impact. In addition, evidence suggests that in practice the ex ante estimates of economic benefits far exceed the ex post observed economic development of communities that host mega–sporting events or stadium construction. The best recommendation is simply for cities to view with extreme caution any economic impact estimates provided by sports franchises, sponsoring leagues, or event-organizing committees."

http://www.thesportjournal.org/article/upon-further-review-examination-sporting-event-economic-impact-studies

Enjoy paying more taxes, everyone.

Just when I thought that Global News would not even mention Prince George and the Games they squeezed in a 15 second short hurried comment just a couple of minutes before 6 p.m. No actual report, though. Not a video, not one picture! It's the 2015 Canada Winter Games...no kidding!

Are they so full of envy down there?

Make that a couple of minutes before 7 p.m., my mistake. They did have all kinds of time for other sports stories, though, like hockey greats opening restaurants which usually go belly-up in no time.

Yes this is a good thing.

Nice to see a level headed comment once in a while. Thanks Bohemian.

Insofar as spending in Prince George goes you people need to keep track of what goes on around this town. Money from the Feds, and Province in the last few years.

Airport Expansion $22 Million

River Road $3.5 Million

Twinning Simon Fraser Bridge and Highway 97 upgrade. $40 Million

Community Energy System $8 Million

Boundry Road $12 Million

Upgrades to Northwood Pulp and other Pulp Mills $212 Million (to be spent by 2012)

Proposed Wood Innovation Building $40 Million.

Not to forget that the (famous) University on the hill costs the Government $100 Million per year to run.

So we are looking at some pretty big expenditures. I suggest its time to quit whining that all the money is spent in Vancouver. This is not so and has never been so. Just another hill billy urban legend.

Insofar as the Vancouver media or any other media in Canada reporting news in Prince George. They dont report it, because it is only news to us. To the rest of the Country its nothing.

As I said before most ;people on this site couldnt tell you where the last winter games were held, or where the next one will be held, so if we dont give a s... where the last or the next games are held, why the hell would we expect people in other parts of the country to give a hoot about Prince George???

We are very small dot on a very big map.

Have a nice day.

Yes it's very true Prince George is very small and news here has to be big to get any attention. I had a dream last night about living here. It came down to yes living here is way better then living anywhere else in the country. See I grew up skipping across the county. Naw Dad wasn't in the Army. He wanted to be near his brothers. So with that we didn't settle until we moved back into Southern Ontario in 86. Me I ended up out here at 19 in 89 and have remained in B.C. Now that saying I like it up here. The only really missing is a good women that I get a long with and have the same values as me. At 40 I think I will stay here for the long haul. Having something like the Winter Games come here is a huge plus it makes good for people to travel up here and see how nice it is in P.G.

Hey Prince George....Good on ya !!
Anything positive that happens in PG is a bonus to the whole community.
Well done and hold your heads up high!!

Booo, hiss! Winter games wityhout snow??

I guess we could fly some in from the east.

I am pleased to see we were selected. We have the people to carry it off. We have already proven that in the past. Now we will see some improved facilities at the expense of the Feds and the Province contributing a good chunk of the financial burden.

Overall, the financial benefits should outweigh the costs in the end. We will enjoy seeing all of the upgrading to host this event. Employment will be necessary to bring this off. Jobs are what we need most. When people are working, they are happier. And they have money to spend. And that makes our community a vibrant one.

"They dont report it, because it is only news to us. To the rest of the Country its nothing"

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/amateur/story/2010/09/16/sp-canada-games-.html

http://tsn.ca/olympics/story/?id=334096

Took me about 5 seconds to find related stories on high volume national websites. Want to reconsider your statement there Palopu?

Wow - just when I thought I might get through a day without Palupud bringing up the airport expansion... Do you sleep at night or just sit curled up in a ball, rocking back and forth thinking about the airport?

Oh, congrats to the bid commitee! Way to go!

Just think, it would be great if Sandman had there hotel built in time for the games.

If anyone thinks PG should be in the big time news across Canada because we got awarded the 2015 Canada Winter Games just take a bit of a look at yourself and ask yourself, without looking it up on the internet:

1. When was the last time I was thinking about Halifax and its 2011 Canada Winter Games?

2. Who did Halifax beat out to get the 2011 Canada Winter Games?

3. Where were the 2007 Canada Winter Games?

4. Name 4 sports that are part of the Canada Winter Games which are not part of the Winter Olympics.

I really do not think that outside the three cities, the 2015 Canada Winter Games is on the radar screen of more than 1% of the population of the rest of BC and less for all of Canada, of course.

The Sandman has been open for a few weeks. Rooms are being occupied. Patron cars are parked in front. Restaurants may be open by Xmas 2011.

A mini Olympics adjusted down for our population? Debt to follow? I will wait. My taxes are still too low. Lotsa room for more.

It looks to me like a lot of the taxpayers in Vancouver are now second guessing their decision to have brought the Olympic Games to Vancouver.

The following is a recent editorial on the Vancouver Province web site:

"With Mayor Gregor Robertson now away in China heading up his 11-day green-tinted trade mission, Vancouverites must be feeling a sense of relief that our Asian trade issues are finally in capable hands.

We can only hope things go better in Beijing than what's been leaking out about the city-managed Olympic Village.

More than six months after the athletes moved out, The Province revealed yesterday that only a third of the condos have been sold, social housing and Vision Vancouver's controversial rental units for firefighters, cops and other essential workers won't be rented until November, and the mayor expects it may be two years before the project finally sells out.

But it could be longer before Vancouver taxpayers, now saddled by more than $1 billion in loan guarantees and land costs in the project, recoup their money.

Yesterday's interest-rate hike by the Bank of Canada, with more hikes expected, ongoing concerns by many buyers about the asking prices, the HST and proximity to social housing will continue to dampen sales.

It all shows why city officials -- playing Monopoly with other people's money -- should be barred from exposing taxpayers to these kinds of developments."

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Editorial+Olympic+Village+mess+refuses+away/3498690/story.html

Bohemian, your bias is showing. Why? Because I think you typically read your reference material. Seems that have not done so this time, or you were not objective enough to also include this passage:

“First, the studies often ignore the substitution effect. To the extent that attendees at a sporting event spend their money on that event instead of on other activities in the LOCAL economy, the sporting event simply results in reallocation of expenditures in the economy, rather than in real net increases in economic activity”

That is a valid reason if one looks at the “local” situation with internal spenders. For a national sporting event, such as a Grey Cup, a SuperBowl, and so on, which brings in a significant sized group of spectators from out of town, that is not as much the case. In fact, when one looks at the Canada Games, especially the Winter Games, the audience is not the key factor, the 3,500+ competitors and officials, as well as a small contingency of media, are the bulk of the people coming from out of town and generating hotel rooms, food services, transportation, etc. The substitution effect is considerably less of a factor. So that argument is out the window win this case.

“Next, the studies usually ignore the crowd out effect. Many large sporting events are staged in communities that are already popular destinations for tourists. If hotels and restaurants in a host city normally tend to be at or near capacity during the period in which a competition takes place, that contest may simply supplant, not supplement, the regular tourist economy.”

Again, not the case here. This is not a popular destination for tourists. On tap of that, for the few we do get, the February window is probably the lowest for tourists, even if one takes regional conventions into consideration. Knowing the 2015 window, the 2 or so years of lead time for regional conventions can easily be accommodated by convention planners. So that argument does not apply in this case.

“Third, the studies may fail to address whether money spent at a sporting event stays within the local economy. Much of the money spent by out-of-town visitors pays for hotel rooms, rental cars, and restaurants. To the extent that hotels, car rental agencies, and restaurants are national chains, their profits associated with a sporting event do not further the welfare of the local citizens, but rather accrue to stockholders around the country.”

Absolutely no argument on the profits side. “Profits”, however, are a very low component of hotel operations. The highest single spending component on hotels is payroll which is all local spending. The next would be supplies as well as paying off capital investment half of which would have gone into primarily local labour in most cases. The larger the city and the more diversified the economy of a city, the more local such normally non-local expenditures become.

“Similarly, revenue from ticket sales is often paid to a league or to a sport’s ruling body instead of local organizers.”

To the best of my information, the Canada Games Organization is funded by the Federal Government. I believe are considered as income to the event. Any money the local event makes goes to paying off debts incurred and profits stay in the community for a legacy of the Games. I believe most, if not all, have had a “substantial” legacy in the 6 figure range.

“Fourth, sporting events’ non-economic costs—traffic congestion, vandalism, environmental degradation, disruption of residents' lifestyle, and so on—are rarely reported (Lee, 2001).”

This is not a rowdy World Cup, Grey Cup, Stanley Cup or Super Bowl crowd we are dealing with. We are also not dealing with 120,000 spectators trying to get out of the CN Centre, the Coliseum or the Civic Centre. We have had some of these events before. I am sure that Canada at the Park on a nice sunny day is more disruption to the Millar subdivision than this event will ever be.

“Finally, since economic impact studies are often used by sports boosters to justify public expenditures on sports infrastructure, the ultimate question for anyone reading such studies is whether analysis conducted by agents with a vested interest in the research outcome can ever be considered an objective examination of events’ true economic impacts.”

No argument on that from me. EVERY piece of writing has to be examined carefully, including such posts as Bohemian’s as we can tell, ad well as posts by Palopu, Gus, and many others. Examine them carefully, see whether they make sense, see whether they are objective and make up your own mind. BUT do not make up you mind on poorly gathered information. YOUR biases will come though loud and clear just as those of the sports organizations.

Again, from my point of view, knowing Bohemian’s capabilities to be objective in such a matter, he was not very careful in this case, or he was disingenuous.

that is too long

"It looks to me like a lot of the taxpayers in Vancouver are now second guessing their decision to have brought the Olympic Games to Vancouver."

And what leads you to the following conclusion:

1. That the decision to bail out the Olympic Village in this fashion relates to the entire Olympic Games.

2. That this was a bad decision rather than to keep paying the original lenders/developers the money owed them based on the agreement in place. (perhaps you do not recall that small detail, which the editorial so conveniently forgot to mention)

3. That an editorial in a newspaper speaks for the voters and taxpayers in the community.

I am waiting for your response Charles. Take ownership of you statement and justify it.

Hood Rich. Make another suggestion of how to get a point across to people who are reading challenged.

I can keep it short.

Bohemnian did not do his homework or he was insincere.

Does that work for you? :-)

From Sam Sullivan

"In my 15 years at Vancouver City Hall I have witnessed the Property Endowment Fund (PEF) make about $1.5 billion in real estate profits for Vancouverites. The PEF is the envy of cities from around the world, and it has created financial security for our city that you, me and the rest of the citizens of Vancouver will continue to benefit from.

"What have you heard about this fund over the past 15 years? Probably nothing. No headlines. No press releases. An investment that has been extremely well-managed by our civil service, quietly accumulating hundreds of millions of dollars of value on behalf of the citizens of Vancouver is just not an item that will make the front page. But it's a great success story."

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2009/01/30/Sullivan

THOSE are the things the editors of a newspaper that needs controversies to survive in the readership battle will not print.

So, yes, the City of Vancouver plays "monopoly" with taxpayers money and they have been dong quite well.

What better investment than a City that is successful on the national and international scene investing in its own future? If you cannot believe in yourself, how good are you? Might as well give up!

Gus:

I didn't expect every point had to be relevant, just some major ones. I just linked, it was up to the reader, as you said, to examine the information.

However, I think you misread/misunderstood the substitution effect. The context for that one is professional sports and home teams. LA Lakers may claim $x in economic activity, but that ignores the substitution effect that the LA resident may go to a ballet instead. So the substitution effect is even MORE relevant in our case since there is no massive influx of attendees. Much of the economic activity for our games would have been created somewhere else anyway.

Also, not mentioned, and I'd be interested in learning, is what is the opportunity cost of massive volunteer efforts event like this require? (People taking time off work to volunteer for example.)

My point with "Much of the money spent by out-of-town visitors pays for hotel rooms, rental cars, and restaurants" would be that whatever economic benefits of the Games are, they go to very few winners, and you yourself point out that the less an economy is diversified, the more this is so. We are sold the Games as if everyone is a winner, but this is simply not the case.

You are correct that not everything in that study applies to our situation, but that doesn't mean I didn't do my homework, nor does it mean I was disingenuous.

I pointed to some information that would shed a different light on our assessment of the situation.

In conclusion, 1) there is likely far less economic impact than suggested because of the substitution effect, where people would have spent entertainment and other dollars elsewhere instead of attending the games (we're already spending all the money we make, and then some, so without a massive influx of people, where can the impact come from?) and 2) the benefits are not evenly distributed though we pretend they are. There will be a few winners that make a lot of money because of the nature of their business, but most businesses won't feel a thing, except possibly a decrease if they're a competitor of the games (substitution).

Gus:

Being an event producer, I know a little something about the substitution effect.

There was a "dark" time, about 10 years ago, when every event producer and promoter, be it arts, culture or sports, had to carefully select days for their event, and work extra, extra hard to get an audience, and many couldn't.

Why?

Because 6,000 people were attending Cougars Games, 36 times a season. For a time, a Cougars Game was the place to see and be seen.

That is much less the case now, and 3,500 people for each of those 36 games, are doing something else with their entertainment dollar.

Entertainment spending is much more distributed than it was 10 years ago, and for small events that just need 50 or 70 people to "work," there is so much more that works now - stuff at ArtSpace and Nancy O's, for example.

I can tell you now that no one will be booking the Playhouse or Vanier Hall during the Games if they can help it. If the Timberwolves or Cougars or Spruce Kings are scheduled to play at home while the Games are on, they'll have far lower than average attendance. They'll likely have lower attendance following the Games anyway as people adjust to the money they spent during the Games. And as you suggest, I suspect people will be avoiding booking conventions and trade shows.

Economic impact assessments for the Canada Games identifies only economic activity which would not occur in the absence of the event. In other words, it measures or predicts economic stimuli brought into the local system, not what is regenerated from inside the existing community.

This "science" is evolving and communities are becoming more sophisticated in their ability to be discerning about what is being suggested. As with everything else humans do, it is not perfect.

The analysis done for Halifax 2011, back in 2006 will give you a good idea of what is included.
http://www.avesta.ns.ca/assets/pdfs_ppts/AV.pdf

Such analyses are, of course, modeled, rather than real. However, as you can tell by reading the analysis, it is based on polled information from the 2003 event.

The key thing we are looking for is what the ECONOMIC impact on the COMMUNITY will be, not on what the impact will be on potential competitors to the same dollars.

Essentially, if I were to follow your logic, we should never hold ANY event in Prince George, no conventions, no concerts at the CN Centre, no hockey, no provincial, national or international baseball tournament, no provincial arts festival ... nada, niente, nichts, nothing!!!!

Even, as you say, if attendance was free, it would remove volunteers from the mix of volunteer time available for local events.

Yes, apart from the event/festival business, the sports elite typically eat up much more of a community's tax dollars than the arts elite. Choose your sports elitism vice - Soccer throughout the world, Football, Baseball, Basketball, Ice Hockey, Olympics and the municipal and state/provincial subsidies dwarf those for the arts, all based on economic impact analysis. ALL based on adding internal spectator ticket sales because without it, they will show marginal community gains at the best and actual losses at the worst.

From you original quotation the opinion you link to speaks of "mega–sporting events or stadium construction". Those are two very distinct issues. Canada Winter Games and the ingestion of the CN Centre into this community are VERY different.

Again, by making it look as if they are the same, it appears to me that the author, and you for quoting that section, do not understand that.

If you did, and you were objective about it, you should have stated that for the readers here.

Read page 20 of the link to portions of the book "Sports in the City" about the inclusion of local spectators and the notion that should not be done.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=3PTas9LVRpwC&pg=PA309&lpg=PA309&dq=sport+in+the+city+gratton&source=bl&ots=zJXZIyYNXJ&sig=LUOTYZStgvAovk_ZjEFP0dw07Ws&hl=en&ei=MkaWTO-fLo_UtQPAlYjlCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Finally, here is the final outcome of the PEI Canada Summer Games, a $3.3 million legacy to spend for their efforts. I do not expect anywhere near that for PG - it is a smaller winter games and it is not in a tourism part of the province. I suspect Kamloops and Kelowna would have done better than that with people extending their stay to go skiing in the Thompson/Okanagan area.

http://www.canadagames.ca/Content/NewsHome.asp?mnu=5&ItemID=75709

Psst ..... a bit of a hint Bohemian.

If you want to latch onto some event producing dollars, book some space for 2015 now, or maybe you have already done so, to put on the type of event that out of towners with a varied background who are here for two reasons - support the games and visit BC or this part of BC and participate in local food, culture and scenery (the three most popular activities of visitors around the world).

The risk of being in business; the hazard of not recognizing opportunities.

"And as you suggest, I suspect people will be avoiding booking conventions and trade shows"

Of course they will be avoiding that. That is a given. I expect those spaces to be booked at that time.

You are forgetting the 4th dimension, time. A physical space is finite. Unless it is on wheels, in a tent, etc., it cannot be relocated too easily. But very few physical spaces are booked at all times. Depending on space popularity and windows of opportunity that organizations restrict themselves to, other spaces or other times are not out of the question, especially when we are talking just over 4 years into the future.

I do not know what the program is supposed to be for that event. As with all such programs, however, they include an arts/culture component. Hopefully that goes beyond the opening and closing ceremonies.

If I were putting such an event together to showcase our community, I would make sure that there are cultural events to go to, restaurants to go to, northern scenery sight to go to, etc. I would have well rounded activity choices and event clusters packaged into a single price program, as well as promotional programs for dignitaries, you know, the elites of the sports world ... :-)

And to do that I would engage the Judys and the Bonnies, and the TNWs and the PGSOs, and the Choirs to create possibly some original programming or at the least an appropriate selection of programming, and other parts of the arts community for creating special crafted gift items and mementos that are not made in China but in PG or the Northern half of BC - with some from the rest of BC as well since these are also the Canada Games in BC.

If they have not done that yet, or are not intending to do that, then I will support you personally 100% is in making sure that it happens even as an afterthought.