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From the Olympics Toward Tomorrow

Shinano Mainichi

Future use of Athlete's Village troublesome

Builders and others promise to purchase dwellings after the Games

The grand total of all account balances comes to 552 million yen. Those affiliated with the Association call it a "down payment." Most of the residential apartment units at the Athlete's Village will be sold after the Olympics in the autumn of 1998. Construction bid winners have promised to buy 100 of those units. The "down payment," which figures out to 6 million yen per unit, was collected from Association member companies, and is to be used as one part of the total capital needed to make the purchase.

The Olympic Athlete's Village at the peak of construction, which will be home to the more than 3000 people here from many nations around the world. Unfortunately, it is also a symbol of Olympic "corpulence."

During the Olympics, 3000 athletes and officials will stay at the Athlete's Village. Nagano City and the Nagano Prefecture Public Housing Authority is overseeing construction of 1032 residential apartment units in twenty-three buildings ranging in size from four to fourteen floors. During the Olympic period, they will be lent to NAOC.

Competitive bidding opened for the project in September 1995. Bid winners for the building construction phase were largely 12 joint-ventures comprised mostly of two Association-affiliated companies each. It is a very large-scale project, with the building cost alone climbing to 16.35 billion yen.

In April 1993, little more than two years previous, the Association communicated its intentions to the city to purchase approximately 100 real estate-marketable units.

The purchase offer was made before decisions regarding the Athlete's Village post-Olympic use were finalized.

"The Athlete's Village is one link in Nagano City's suburban residential development scheme. The units will be used as housing for municipal dwellings, private individuals, and corporations." Blueprints presented at the June 1991 Olympic bid to the IOC in Birmingham, England, painted such a picture. However, it was then simply "a plan for 1000 units" to house 3000 athletes and officials. Post-Olympic uses were not yet part of the picture.

Corporate administrator Nobuo Miyazawa (age 62), who was then the City's Construction Section Director, asked local private enterprises to purchase units for themselves at prices ranging from 28 to 30 million yen. However, since Nagano won its bid in 1991, the local economy has seen a continually downward trend. Miyazawa says, "There were no guarantors when it came time to finalize those details."

A Nagano City employee who looked for countermeasures to the problem disclosed the fact that "post-Olympic uses had to be finalized in order to persuade the Ministry of Construction to grant a subsidy." Miyazawa noted, "We desperately requested the government to help, even as far as collecting names of civil service workers who showed interest in moving in after the Olympics." At the end of it all there still remained 100 units unaccounted for.

On the other side, local construction companies, sensing an impending crisis imposed by the advances of major national general contractors in the area, requested that work on the Athlete's village be provided to local firms. The city was able to agree on contract terms when local contractors made a purchase offer of the remaining 100 units.

"The 'down payment' is to show that we are not simply just talking," the Association administration said upon winning the construction bid. They then organized the "Athlete's Village Construction Promotional Headquarters," and divvied up post-Olympic units for purchase according to how much work each company received from the contract. The successful bid price for building construction work alone came to 180 million yen per unit. Public works costs per unit is approximately 150 million yen. By the summer of 1996, the Association had collected funds to purchase 92 units.

But now, with one year left until the Games, bid-winning companies are showing concern. "Even if we buy those units we may not be able to sell them."

One company was allotted four units for purchase by the Association. However, they have yet to pay the down payment. This company has only a small number of employees and does not anticipate using the apartments for company housing. The city as of yet has not announced the unit sale prices. This company states, "If they price them above 30 million there's no way they'll sell anything, not in that location." It is said that some companies are considering not going through with their purchase offers, fearing that they would be "throwing away 6 million yen." There is some possibility that part of that "down payment" recorded in the deposit-box bound account books may be up in air.

Post-Olympic use of almost half of the Athlete's Village apartments (490 units) will be as living quarters for City, Prefecture, and National civil servant residents. The remaining 318 available units are to become city-managed apartments. Plans for sale to private enterprises consist of the following: 24 units to Hachijuni Bank and not more than 100 units to Chubu Electric Power Co. (which will be building a substation in the area) for use as a non-married employee dormitory.

Nagano, a provincial city of less than 400,000, in facing the sheer "corpulence" of the Olympics, is scrambling to put in order the large scale project "New Town." After the Olympics these plans will give birth to a street half-built for a swelling government.

With one year left until the Games begin, new venues and new roads continue to be completed in Nagano City and other Olympic sites. Olympic development, which could be said to take up "twenty years worth of public investment," has rapidly provided new social capital and prepared the foundations of a new city. Will that provide for us a future lifestyle of delight and abundance? Are the plans being drawn to build that kind of a city? Focusing on Nagano City, we will take a further look into these issues in the coming articles.

No part of the article, photographs, or illustrations presented here may be printed or used without permission.

Copyright 1999 The Shinano Mainichi Shimbun