Plans unveiled for building all 2022 Olympic venues
Beijing’s construction regulatory body released overall plans and deadlines of all venues related to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics on Thursday, laying the foundation for Olympic projects to advance.
Although all winter sports action has ceased in Beijing, a construction site in the city’s northern Olympic Park is bustling with workers and machines building the National Speed Skating Oval, a new permanent venue among 52 construction projects needed in Beijing’s downtown and northwest Yanqing district for hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Sixteen of the 52 projects, including three new competition venues — the oval and the national Alpine skiing and sliding centers — have begun construction in the Beijing’s downtown and Yanqing, according to the plans released by Beijing Major Projects Construction Headquarters Office.
The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics will use 26 competition and noncompetition venues in Beijing’s downtown, Yanqing and co-host city Zhangjiakou, in Hebei province, supported by infrastructure such as logistics and transportation.
All newly built competition-related venues in Beijing’s two zones are scheduled to be finished by June 2020, while transformation of eight existing venues from the 2008 Summer Olympics to serve competition, ceremony and media functions in 2022 will be completed in 2021, according to the office.
“We are entering into the full construction phase from the general planning stage this year as we speed up building to push the major projects to take shape on schedule,” said Ding Jianming, deputy director of the office.
“The release of the general plan and deadline will provide us with a measuring stick to break down the projects, accelerate the progress and deliver on time.”
This year’s priorities — the main concrete and steel structures of the speed skating oval and a new shorttrack speed skating training center in the northwestern downtown area — will be finished by year’s end, officials said.
The earthwork of the Beijing Winter Olympic Village, construction of roads on the hills at the national Alpine skiing center and the cooling system beneath the tracks at the national sliding center for bobsled, skeleton and luge in Yanqing are expected to be complete before the same deadline.
All Beijing 2022 venues and facilities will be ready for testing events in the 2020-21 winter season, said Liu Yumin, an official from the planning and construction department of the Beijing 2022 organizing committee. Plans call for post-Olympics functions to be predesigned for all new permanent venues.