Hillcrest Centre

The Hillcrest Centre is a community centre with ice hockey and curling rinks, and an aquatics facility, located at Hillcrest Park in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Construction started in March 2007; it hosted the 2009 World Junior Curling Championships prior to the Olympics. During the 2010 Olympics, it was named the Vancouver Olympic/Paralympic Centre and had a capacity of 6,000 people to host curling at the 2010 Winter Olympics; for the 2010 Paralympics, it hosted the Wheelchair Curling event.DesignSustainability FeaturesThe Centre was built to qualify for the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Scale (LEED) Gold certification; for example, the Centre's refrigeration plant is designed to heat other areas of the building and the adjacent aquatic centre through the utilization of what is otherwise waste heat from cooling the ice surface. Surrounding ground water will also be collected for use in the facility's toilets.Smart site selection is key to maintaining the Centre's green footprint; the new facility replaces a much older community complex, with the new curling complex being built on what was a gravel parking lot. Federal (CEAA) environmental assessment review process was also applied to the selection of the site. Trees that were affected during the construction of the venue were moved to other areas of the park, and any land created from the demolition of the old community centre will be turned into community green space during post-Games conversion.