Vancouver unveils 2010 Olympic banners

VANCOUVER — Colourful banners featuring Olympic skaters, skiers and skeet-shooters and Paralympian curlers were hung from Vancouver lampposts along Cambie Street Wednesday as the city gets set to welcome visitors to the 2010 Winter Games.

And soon the 6,000 bilingual banners, which boast the motto “with glowing hearts” and 18 different sporting motifs, will be waving to residents and Olympic visitors in the downtown core and along major streets such as Granville and Hastings.

The city has spent about $650,000 to buy and install the banners, which mark “the start of preparations for the Games,” said Lesli Boldt, project manager of Host City communications.

The cost is significantly higher than the $70,000 spent on the summer banner program, which is partly funded by businesses. But Boldt said the Winter Olympics program involves 10 times as many banners as well as 1,100 sets of additional brackets to hang the signs on streets that don’t typically feature them.

The first batch of banners was hung along Cambie Street from King Edward to city hall and downtown. Others will be placed along the Olympic bus lanes, at Olympic Village and in LiveSite entertainment venues to mark the “gateway to the Games,” Boldt said.

“It’s a new year. The Olympics are going to be here in less than 40 days. It’s time to dress up the city,” she said. “You’re going to see the city transformed as we get ready for the Games.”

The banners, made in Barrie, Ont., are expected to help visitors find their way to and from Vancouver neighbourhoods and Olympic and Paralympic venues throughout the city.

And once they’re taken down at the end of March, following the end of the Paralympics, the banners will re-used and possibly sewn into schoolbags, Boldt said.

Vancouver reused the first round of 2010 Winter Games street banners with the Sew a Legacy project. Using funding from its Great Beginnings program, the city paid 20 inner-city residents to sew the banners – which celebrated Vancouver’s win of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic bid – into sports bags for students at 11 inner-city elementary schools.

ksinoski@vancouversun.com