The city of Vancouver and Olympic organizers are turning a contaminated strip of land into a massive residential community.

Tons of soil, tainted by years of heavy industrialization in the area, is being removed every day.

"It's the largest city-led development that's ever been undertaken in the city of Vancouver," project manager Jody Andrews told CTV Vancouver.

The 80-acre Vancouver Olympic Village is under construction in the city's southeast False Creek area. It will feature both low- and mid-rise homes for about 2,500 athletes and officials.

"It will have a very large European-scale plaza in the centre of the community, that will be the heart for athletes gathering and for social interaction," said Andrews.

The athletes will be within 12 kilometres from the Vancouver-area competition venues. And once the games are over, temporary structures built just for the athletes will be removed, and residents will take over.

"Almost immediately after the organizing committee has pulled out of the Olympic Village, the permanent residents will start to move in, and in fact many of them will have already bought their units," said Andrews.

Of the 1,100 condos built for the complex, 250 will be dedicated to social housing. The residential area will also have a new school, community centre and parks.

The area was the last tract of undeveloped waterfront land in the city. And developers are also working on False Creek itself, hoping to bring back marine life wiped out by industrialization.

"We're going to completely restore and rebuild the shoreline ... and that includes constructing and bringing back an inter-tidal marine habitat that used to typify False Creek, before the industrialists filled much of it."

Meanwhile, the city claims the entire project is self-financing -- a relief to tax payers worried about rising construction costs and the exact price of hosting the Olympic Games.

"We have a very solid revenue stream from the sale of our products, which are the market residential units, that offsets our construction costs," said Andrews.

Vancouver's Olympic organizing committee made a one-time $30 million contribution to the city for the residential area's development, to ensure it will house athletes during the Games.

Development of the False Creek area will continue until about 2020, at which time the city hopes up to 16,000 residents will be living in the community.

With a report by CTV's Mike Killeen in Vancouver