Furthermore, given the multitude of different agendas and self-interests, which key Olympic stakeholders such as the Province and real estate and corporate sector leaders, wanted to address in the bid book, it was critically important for the City to have an understanding and assert what was important for its long-term interests. Urban sustainability was among Vancouver’s top priorities (Rogers, personal communication, February 15, 2012). The City had been committed to the sustainability vision and had had a strong voice about it at the negotiating table before the bid went in (Rogers, personal communication, February 15, 2012). 4.2.7 Leveraging Partnerships with Olympic Planning Stakeholders The City built and leveraged partnerships with higher levels of government and other Olympic stakeholders such as VANOC to achieve its sustainability objectives. Partnerships with The Province and the Government of Canada were important from the point of view of strengthening the City’s negotiating position with VANOC and the IOC, improving its financial standing and expanding the range of policy, regulatory and legal tools to shape the Olympic sustainable infrastructure and venue legacies (Wilson, personal communication, February 20, 2012). Furthermore, since staging the Olympics involves many other stakeholder groups pursuing their own divergent interests and agendas and ultimately influencing the outcomes of the Olympics, building partnerships was important for the City from the point of view of keeping the 7-year Olympic planning process within a desired frame and steering it towards desired legacies, while not letting undesirable outcomes to materialize. In this regard, the City maintains: Creating effective, productive relationships with the partners and stakeholders involved in the Games is one of the most important keys to the City delivering on its commitments, and benefitting to the greatest possible extent from the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games. (The City of Vancouver, 2006) The City successfully used partnerships to enhance their bargaining power in the negotiation of legacies with other Olympic stakeholders. For example, Vancouver worked closely and built alliances with the resort municipality of Whistler and Richmond to strengthen their negotiation position at the table with VANOC (Godfrey, personal communication, February 17, 2012). In Godfrey’s (2012) words, VANOC couldn’t “divide and conquer” with all the three municipalities demanding a fair treatment in terms of the planning process and the legacies. The Multiparty Agreement25 illustrates the City’s aptitude in building and leveraging , among other things, relationships with other Olympic stakeholders to secure the Olympic 25 The Multiparty Agreement (2002) is the agreement signed by key partners involved in Vancouver’s bid to host the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, namely the Government of Canada, the Province of B.C., the City of Vancouver, the Resort Municipality of Whistler, the Canadian Olympic Committee, the Canadian Paralympic Committee and the Vancouver 2010 Bid Corporation. The Agreement established how each signatory would contribute to a successful Games and delineated the roles and responsibilities of each party, as well as working relationships and contractual arrangements between them. In the history of the Olympic Games, it was the first accord of its kind to be concluded as part of a Games bid prior to a Games being awarded to a host city.
58