Great makeover of Gangneung Olympic Park
A bird’s eye view of the Gangneung Ice Arena where figure skating and short track speed skating events will take place. / Korea Times file
Landfill transformed into Olympic venue
By Lee Suh-yoon
The new Gangneung Olympic Park underwent a great makeover before its current chic look was ready for the forthcoming Winter Olympic Games.
This is the venue for figure skating, speed skating, short track speed skating and ice hockey events.
But the state-of-the-art facilities and glittering ice rinks were hard to imagine just a few years ago.
The site used to be a landfill. Between 1987 and 2000, 847,000 tons of trash from all across Gangneung had been dumped in the valley nearby. Even after it was shut down, the smell kept bothering local residents for many years.
It was later covered with soil and had since been used as an archery field.
The area underwent a massive transformation starting early 2014 when the Gangneung city government purchased the fields surrounding the landfill from private landowners to prepare a 406,472- square-meter site.
Construction of the Olympic Park was completed last year, a year before the Olympics.
Under the slogan of a sustainable Olympics, a large swath of green space was created for the stadiums. Three hundred pine trees removed from the construction site were replanted in the park to minimize environmental damage.
Gangneung Olympic Park will partly run on renewable energy. The roof of the Ice Arena, which will host figure skating and short track events, is covered with solar panels. It also has a thermal energy generation system. The Gangneung Oval, housing the speed skating rink, is built to recycle rainwater.
The new hockey center--designed in the shape of a puck--sits directly over the closed landfill. Like other new stadiums, it was certified with the Green Standard for Energy and Environmental Design label.
Transforming a once-abandoned landfill into a state-of-the-art Olympic venue has not been easy. Extra design considerations were needed to stabilize the building foundations and effectively channel landfill-originated gas away from the building.
“We performed an environmental impact assessment of the closed landfill before construction and are still conducting regular environmental checkups to ensure a safe Olympics.” said Kim Eung-soo, an ice rink facility management team leader with the Gangwon Province government.
According to a PyeongChang Winter Olympics and Paralympics sustainability report published in 2017, the park will be reused as a community sports center for residents once the Olympics is over.