Richmond offices to house Olympic security



Security forces for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics have found a home in Richmond, a massive vacant office complex the RCMP has leased for them at a cost of $1.4 million a year.

The building will be used as the operations base for the security unit known as the Vancouver Integrated Security Unit (VISU), which is made up of the RCMP, Vancouver and West Vancouver Police, Department of National Defence and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

The unit controls everything from overall security planning for the Olympics to accreditation checks to monitoring potential threats.

RCMP Staff Sgt. John Ward, spokesman for the unit, said officials had hoped to house its offices in the Vancouver Organizing Committee's seven-storey facility in east Vancouver, but there wasn't enough suitable space.

"It's unfortunate," Ward said. "We would like to have been with them."

Ward said they needed more office and logistical space, and confirmed that the RCMP has leased space in Richmond, and "we are hoping to be there in next few months."

Public Works and Government Services Canada found the space and arranged the lease of a 10,000-square-metre building on No. 5 Road. The lease will run from April 2007 through Aug. 30, 2010.

The building, which was once home to an engineering unit of cellphone giant Motorola, is just under half the size of Vanoc's headquarters, the former Glenayre Electronics building on Boundary Road in Vancouver.

Ward and the security unit routinely refuse to talk about the details of its operations or security issues, but he said the building will be used for operations.

"It is office space and logistics," he said. "It's difficult to discuss that without getting into security arrangements. At this particular point, it certainly will be the operations base."

The security unit, overseen by the RCMP and run by Chief Supt. Bob Harriman, was set up by the governments providing security for the Olympics.

Ed Franklin, senior leasing officer with Public Works Canada in Vancouver, said finding the space was no easy task in Greater Vancouver, where office vacancy stands at a five-year low of 7.8 per cent. That was the same problem Vanoc encountered until it convinced the City of Vancouver to buy the Glenayre building for $24 million as an investment.

Franklin first started shopping for suitable space on behalf of the RCMP about two years ago and tried to carve out an office location from within the government's inventory before putting out a public tender in October.

Franklin said the RCMP requirements were fairly simple: a large block of preferably free-standing office space with secure parking within Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey or Richmond to use through August 2010.

However, the old Motorola building "had a lot of the additional [amenities] that would have been required to accommodate the client department already existing."

Those included a 625-kilovolt backup generator, gated parking lot, extensive wiring for computers and communications and furniture for 400 office workstations.

Buying a generator could have cost in the range of $750,000, Franklin said.

"Those are substantial cost-savings to the Crown," he added.

At $1.4 million, the rent works out to just under $13 a square foot, which is about the average net asking rent for Richmond, according to figures recently released by commercial realtor CB Richard Ellis.

The security unit offices will be the farthest south of all Olympics-related facilities. However, the building is located just off Steveston Highway and near the interchange with Highway 99, giving officers easy access to Vancouver International Airport, the new Richmond speed-skating oval and points north.

And while it is remote from Vanoc's headquarters, Guy Lodge, Vanoc's vice-president of service and overlay, said the two agencies will still work closely together.

"Our relationship with VISU is important, and while we were unable to offer enough space for them to fully co-locate here, with a combination of technology and a dedicated liaison person here [at Vanoc headquarters] we anticipate that our strong relationship with VISU will continue."

As part of that relationship, Vanoc hired Francesco Norante, the former head of security for the Turin 2006 Winter Games as director of security liaison.

The federal and provincial governments are jointly contributing $175 million for security and say that is adequate. Critics in Canada and the U.S. have questioned whether that is enough, noting that security costs at recent Canadian events such as the G-8 summit at Kananaskis, Alta., were nearly that much for a much shorter period.
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