The next day, telephones started to ring.

"What events will be held at the University? How do we get tickets?"

"Will staff members come to work while the U is shut down?"

"Will the Olympics events be blacked out on local TV?

"What about traffic and parking?"

"Will U of U basketball games and gymnastics meets be able to continue?...where will our athletes stay?

"Will the Olympics pay for new and expanded University housing, and to enlarge Rice Stadium?"

Beyond such questions are numerous other issues most people might never consider: helicopter routes, a communications system, length of beds in the Village, sale of Olympic souvenirs, kosher food, media relations, office space, liability, air conditioning, the unexpected.

All the questions have answers. Or, rather, they will have answers. With the games still five years in the future, the University is engaged in a comprehensive planning process concerning its role. Yet to come are detailed financial and architectural plans and contracts with the Salt Lake Organizing Committee.

The University stands to gain a great deal: significant financial help with constructing facilities the school needs for the future, plus whatever prestige results from worldwide attention. For now, however, here are some basic axioms:

The University is not putting on the games or even operating the Athletes' Village. Security, food service, transportation, operation of the village, snow removal, religious services, entertainment, etc. are the responsibility of the SLOC and the IOC. The initial Letter of Understanding between SLOC and the U indicates that SLOC will take full charge of the facilities it uses two weeks prior to the games, which will run Feb. 9-24, 2002, and retain them for a week after the games.

The University will likely provide the housing, stadium, and physical plant workers, and cooperate on other functions such as security.

In the University's planning process, Tom Nycum, vice president for administrative services, is the administration's key player. He is assisted by an Olympic Oversight Committee, headed by John Francis, associate vice president for academic affairs and undergraduate studies. Composed of faculty, staff, and students, this committee will keep administrators informed of concerns that must be addressed to protect University interests.

Seven subcommittees will look at finance and legal matters; the village; arts, culture, and ceremonies; facilities and services; the academic calendar; research and employment; and community relations.

Further, U of U president Arthur Smith is a member of the SLOC Board of Directors. Nycum is the University's official representative to the SLOC, and is in regular communication with Dave Johnson, SLOC senior vice president for operations.

U of U officials are using as planning models the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada, and the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta. Nearly the entire campuses at the University of Calgary and at Georgia Institute of Technology (see accompanying story, page __) were used as primary Athletes' Villages. At the U of U, the Village will be a small portion of the total campus.

Primary considerations are that the University must not suffer financially, facilities must meet long-term U of U needs, and the well-being of students and employees must be protected. The Oversight Committee also developed a list of University objectives. The games should be used to create a spirit of community by involving University people, creating academic opportunities, fostering cultural exchanges, and positioning the campus as a resource that enhances the Olympic experience for everyone, the committee says.

For all concerned, the current version of the Olympic story is a mixture of the known and unknown.

What We Know

The campus will be the housing site for the athletes and their trainers, a total of 4,000 individuals. The University needs, and would ultimately have built, new residence halls with or without the Olympics. Read this slowly: the University is not going to use the Olympic Athletes' Village for student housing; rather, the Olympics are going to temporarily use University student housing as the Village. Within the University, it's not even called the Olympic Village; it's "student housing." As President Smith puts it, "The village must serve the athletes for five weeks, and the University for 35 or 40 years."

The Athletes' Village will be placed somewhere in the Fort Douglas area. The U will use land east of historic Officers' Circle along with the baseball diamond area, but needs 11 more acres from the U.S. Army to build the most desirable housing.

Opening and closing ceremonies will be held in Rice Stadium. To accommodate this need, the stadium will be enlarged to nearly 50,000 seats, again something the University would eventually do, even without the impetus of the Olympics.

No Olympic competition will be held at the University. The plan to place the speed- skating venue on campus has been abandoned in favor of a site in Kearns. Location of an ice sheet for hockey practice on Guardsman Way is a remote possibility.

The Paralympics, March 3-13, 2002, will not use the U for housing. The Paralympics follow the Olympic games and usually use the same housing as the Olympics, but the University cannot afford more than a four-week disruption of its academic calendar.

There is no reason to believe that any U of U faculty or staff member will lose income during the games. Wayne McCormack, professor of law and chair of the legal, finance, and liability subcommittee, says the Olympic Oversight Committee has recommended that the University commit to paying all staff and student employees, regardless of whether they can get to work during the Olympics. "In some cases, state and federal law will need to be accommodated to fulfill this commitment," he says.

The exact site of the Athletes' Village depends on whether the University can acquire additional land from the Army in time. Smith personally visited Secretary of the Army Togo West and asked for 11 acres adjoining Research Park. Without this land, the Village can still be built, but it would be compressed into high-rise buildings that are less desirable for the University's long-term use.

The academic calendar for 2002 hasn't been specified. The Academic Senate is working on how to configure classes after the University converts from a quarter to a semester system in fall 1998. Meanwhile, the Calendar Subcommittee of the Olympic Oversight Committee has developed three primary calendar alternatives. These include variations of starting winter semester and then suspending classes during the games, waiting to start after the games, or attempting to go ahead with school despite the Olympics. The matter is far from settled. At the most, any closure will be more like a quarter/semester break, not a total shutdown.

Where to relocate student residents is yet to be determined. If classes are not held, many may return home, or there may be a means of placing students with Salt Lake families during the games. In any case, the resident students will understand what is required before they move in for fall semester 2001.

Light rail service to campus hinges on funding. The Wasatch Front Regional Council is studying an alternative that would connect the Salt Lake International Airport and a north-south light rail line with the U in time for the Olympics. Federal funding would be essential. Once on campus, University planners envision the system providing service around the south side, with hubs along the way. They especially favor a transportation hub in the Health Sciences Center area that would integrate the use of rail, buses, shuttles, and autos.

Status of the Health, Physical Education, and Recreation complex, headquarters of the College of Health, will depend on how tight security becomes. Part of HPER will be turned into a recreation/entertainment center for the athletes. However, since individual offices and laboratories will not be used, Francis is confident a way will be found for faculty and staff who work in the building to receive credentials allowing access during the games. In any case, the College of Health is the only academic organization that will have to deal with sharing its facilities with the Olympics.

What else we don't know: Expect the unexpected.

The Village

The U's Long Range Development Plan calls for creation of a residential zone for students in the Fort Douglas area "that is central enough to be convenient yet peripheral enough to provide a quiet, human-scale environment for housing." The residential zone will combine new housing with renovations of existing dwellings in the historic zone of Fort Douglas. 2002 will be the first time Olympic athletes will all be housed together.

"We could get by with very little land for the Athletes' Village if we built it as a 120-story building," jokes Smith. Realistically, if the University has to use only land it currently owns, the residential complex will have to be a cluster of perhaps 10 to 12 buildings, each 12 stories tall. Much preferred for permanent housing would be buildings of five stories or less, to create the kind of living-learning environment the University wants, Smith says.

During 1991 through 1996, the University gradually took possession of 51 acres of Fort Douglas. This was mostly the residential area, a historic district. To be used, the dwellings must be remodeled without destroying their original architecture. This would make them suitable for small living-learning centers, but unsuitable for primary student housing or the Olympic Village. Hence the request for 11 more acres.

Either way, the new student housing will displace the U of U baseball diamond. A three-way land trade is in the works so that U.S. Forest Service offices on Guardsman Way could move to new facilities, freeing the site for a baseball field that would serve the U and the city alike.

Planners are also working on a land bridge over Wasatch Drive to link the new student housing with lower campus and HPER facilities. Again, this would be designed to serve the University generally, not just the Olympics.

Last February, the University completed a Housing Master Plan that takes into account the unusual characteristics of U of U students. It concludes that existing residence halls should be replaced. The SLOC concurs that existing halls do not meet Olympic specifications, and will help with $28 million in Olympic funds, but the total project will cost at least $80-$90 million.

Fortunately, housing needs of students and of Olympic athletes are compatible, says Dan Adams, director of Residential Living. IOC guidelines call for apartments of eight residents in four bedrooms sharing a common living area, kitchen, and bathroom, apartment style—pretty much the same kind of accommodations a recent survey showed that students favor.

The Olympic Village must accommodate 4,000-4,500 people in a mix of housing styles of suites and apartments. After the games, U students in single occupancy in the same rooms comes to 2,469 beds, a considerable increase over the 1,277 now in the Residence Halls. Apartments will be designed for use either by single students or families.

The University would like to begin using the new housing at least a year prior to the Olympics. It's still uncertain whether the existing Ballif, Van Cott, and Austin halls will be used for non-village housing during the Olympics. If not, they'll be used for other purposes and eventually be replaced with academic buildings.

People usually assume that facilities such as dining halls and recreations centers constructed for the Village will be permanent fixtures. Actually, the Atlanta Olympics made extensive use of temporary structures that were removed after the games. "The Village is like a little city-state," says John Francis. "At Atlanta, Georgia Tech had amenities like laser-tag, a dance pavilion, a dining hall and kitchen, and an Internet center all in temporary structures. These are regarded as necessary to the Village, but we may well use temporary facilities too."

Also on a temporary basis, SLOC is likely to turn HPER into a recreation and entertainment center. The parking lots southeast of HPER will likely be within the fenced area.

Extensive security is required, but the image of double fences with guard dogs in between is a exaggerated. At Atlanta, specifications called for a tall, single fence, electrified at the top, with 10 feet of open space surrounding the fence in all directions.

The SLOC will pay only about $8 million of the $50 million needed to expand and modernize Rice Stadium. University administrators are going ahead with planning the project, confident that the necessary combination of athletics' funding and private donations will be forthcoming.

After the 1997 football season, the stadium's west side will be dismantled and built anew, with a modern press box, enclosed suites, and scholarship box seating (Continuum, Fall 1996). This will increase the seating capacity from about 32,000 to 40,000.

After the 1998 season, the east side will be replaced with grandstand seating. Refurbishing of the north end zone general-admission area was previously planned as a final phase, but now planners would like to do it along with either the west or east side projects, says Rick Johansen, staff architect in campus design and construction.

When complete, the stadium will have nearly 46,500 seats. Addition of bleacher seating on the field will increase the total to 50,000 for the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies.

As the games near, attention will turn to creating ways to involve the campus community in the opportunities afforded by hosting the games. Francis says the nature of these involvements will take shape as accords are drawn up.

In the Letter of Understanding, the SLOC "agrees to use its best efforts to locate on the University campus folklore, musical, artistic, and other cultural events related to the games to the extent requested and desired by the University."

"The Village is the key," says Robert Olpin, dean of the College of Fine Arts. "It is a festival, and we should be a part of it." He would like to see cultural events and other offerings attract visitors to the campus.

Carolyn Morrow, chair of the Department of Languages and Literature and an advisory committee member, sees a major opportunity for students. "We can certify translators in 16 spoken languages and American sign language, not only during the Olympics, but for the many site visits by delegations from other countries that will happen between now and then," she says.

The bulk of employment opportunities for students will be as guides and service workers, says Keith Henschen, professor of exercise and sport science who has attended numerous Olympics. "If the SLOC is to make any use of the scientific facilities or expertise of the University, this is yet to be worked out in the form of individual contracts," he says.

Small groups of academic and physical-plant officials from the U visited Atlanta and Calgary, sites where a university campus was the primary Olympic Village. Lessons they learned are: (1) Communicate with Olympic organizers and with your own people; (2) enter into detailed commitments well in advance; (3) test everything — power line capacity, sewer capacity, etc.; (4) protect the school's long-term interests against things done just for the Olympics; (5) communicate some more.

The trip to Calgary persuaded the U of U delegates that the Olympics are doable, and that the school can benefit by gaining new facilities and public exposure, says Randy Turpin, assistant vice president for facilities management. "We also learned that the Olympic games are a big happening, much bigger than the NCAA basketball Final Four we did in 1979," says Turpin. "It is like nothing in our experience."

The most telling visit to Atlanta was by Pieter van der Have, director of plant operations, who went after the games and spent time with his counterparts rather than promoters. During the games, "it was easy to get caught up in festive atmosphere," Vanderhave says. "In Georgia, the Board of Regents wrote the contracts, but we have learned we should deal directly with service contractors, ideally with a performance bond or escrow account."

Professor Henschen adds that the impact on the University campus of hosting the games will be more profound than people expect.

The U of U is heeding the admonition that communication is all-important.

In addition to the U administration's connections with the SLOC, the Olympic Oversight Committee has begun a series of monthly forums on campus. The Olympics and its effect on Fort Douglas and University traffic/parking are a regular topic at monthly meetings held by the Facilities Planning Department for the public. Major promotion of the 2002 games will not begin until after the 1998 Winter Olympics at Nagano, Japan.

Like expectant parents, members of the University community know that, ready or not, delivery will take place in February 2002. It's exciting, but no amount of reading What to Expect When You're Expecting will fully prepare us for what is about to happen.

Terry Newfarmer BS'66 BS'69 BS'72 is a writer in the Office of University Communications and editor of FYI..., a faculty-staff newsletter.