President Leonel Fernández announced yesterday that the Santo Domingo 2003 Pan American Games Olympic Village will be built on the grounds of the Santo Domingo Cyberpark, along the Las Americas Expressway. He also announced that the additional sports facilities needed for the Pan Am Games will go up on grounds that are adjacent to the V Centenario Racetrack. Hoy newspaper reports that the Dominican government has discarded the 31,000 square meter lot diagonally across from the Juan Pablo Duarte Olympic Center, site of most of the Pan Am Games competitions. The new site has significant advantages over the old site: 10 minutes away from Las Americas International Airport, port of entry for those coming for the Games. 15 minutes away from the Boca Chica site of sailing and other water sports events. The site is connected to Santo Domingo by a modern expressway, thus athletes staying at the Las Americas village could be transported to the Juan Pablo Duarte Olympic Center in about 15 minutes. Furthermore, the extensive area will permit much more comfortable sports and lodging complex. The village will take nine months less to build and will cost less as the project to build 23-floor luxury towers has been replaced by the plan to build modest housing and low-rise apartments. President Leonel Fernández announced that construction of the village will start 1 August. The Santo Domingo Cyberpark has been one of the projects most promoted by President Fernández himself. It features the construction of an institute of technology as well as high tech industrial plants. The government thus agrees with engineers and architects that had argued that the previously chosen site across from the Juan Pablo Duarte Olympic Center, was not a good option for the village. The construction of the village had been opposed on grounds that the proposed deluxe towers would not find buyers due to difficulties for parking, view of slum areas from the northern side, and the general urban chaos the 700 apartments would bring to the area. The government said that the village will have Spanish financing, and that it will be built by OHL of Spain, that reportedly built the Barcelona Olympics village. At the same time, the government announced the Olympic Village will be complemented by the construction, less than seven minutes away from the new village site, in an area near the V Centenario Race Track (Km. 14) of sports facilities that are needed for the 2003 Games. This relieves the congestioning of city streets during the Games and prevents the saturating the Juan Pablo Duarte Olympic Center. The lot near the racetrack is large enough to permit the construction of facilities for 14 sports, including karate, tae kwon do, badminton, tennis, skeet, shooting, ping pong, horseback riding and other competitions. These facilities will go up with Venezuelan funding. Hoy newspaper reports a company called Pompeya, S.A. paid RD$370 million to Corde, the Dominican State enterprise holding company that owned the lot, for the purchase of the 31,000 square meter lot on John F. Kennedy Avenue. The Banco Popular Dominicano, whose headquarters are across from the lot, financed the operation. The Listin Diario reports that its sources indicate that Carrefour, the French-Martinique company that recently opened a giant supermarket at Km. 9 of Duarte Highway, will build a second mega supermarket on the lot. Eduardo Selman of Corde said that the purchase had not been made public because the government wanted to communicate the decision first to the Pan American Sports Organization authorities. President Leonel Fernández himself called Mario Vasquez Raña of ODEPA yesterday to communicate the decision and give him an update of government efforts for the games. The decision will be formally presented to the 42 member nations of ODEPA during the assembly scheduled for 23 May in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
