A $42-million centre promoting the Olympic movement closed its doors to the public Wednesday in downtown Toronto.
The Olympic Spirit complex, which opened less than two years ago, featured interactive displays and exhibits where visitors could test their skills at sport simulators and learn more about the Games through film and interaction with former Olympic athletes.
Olympic Spirit officials complained Wednesday of not getting enough assistance from Vancouver Olympic organizers, whom they claim were expected to help market the facility.
The Olympic Spirit complex opened in August 2004 in downtown Toronto.
(Canadian Press)
"VANOC ignored us, and I wish there was a more polite, less inflammatory way of saying it," said Jay Whiteside, president and chief executive officer of Olympic Spirit.
The marketing of Olympic Spirit was originally supposed to be a joint effort between the International Olympic Committee and the former Canadian Olympic Association, now called the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC).
But when Vancouver won the bid to host the 2010 Winter Games, the renamed COC folded its marketing wing into VANOC.
That's where things appeared to breakdown.
VANOC and Olympic Spirit officials weren't able to agree on how financially responsible Vancouver organizers were for helping promote the Toronto-based complex.
Renée Smith-Valade, VANOC's vice-president of communications, told the Globe and Mail on Wednesday that VANOC wanted to see the facility succeed and shared corporate contacts with Olympic Spirit, but that financially bailing out the centre "was well beyond our mandate."
The Olympic Spirit project was undertaken in 2001 in the wake of Toronto's failed bid for the 2008 Summer Games.
The first Olympic Spirit centre opened in Munich in 1999. The Toronto centre was located in the heart of the city's downtown, at Yonge and Dundas streets.
With files from the Canadian Press