Summer Games Spur Barcelona’s Overdue Face Lift : Olympics: The changes include luxury housing units, beautified shoreline, a new marina and yacht basin, and overhauled utilities.

The old factories, rail line and dirty beaches that were Barcelona’s seafront four years ago have been replaced by an Olympic Village that will be luxury housing when the 1992 Summer Games are over.

It is an example of how Spain’s second-largest city, which once ignored its ugly shoreline, already has profited from winning the bid for the Games.

“Barcelona no longer lives with its back to the Mediterranean,” said Pedro Palacios, press director of the Olympic organizing committee.

“We’ve opened Barcelona to the sea and turned a dilapidated area into one of the most spectacular urban zones in Europe,” said Mayor Pasqual Maragall. “Barcelona is 2,000 years old, so its face and spirit won’t change completely . . . but infrastructure has taken a giant step.”

Two 44-story towers at the Poble Nou (New Town) development form a triumphal arch over the new marina and yacht basin. One is the Ritz Carlton Hotel, the other an insurance company office building.

National, regional and local investment in public works and infrastructure total $5 billion, said Jose Maria Vila, director of resources for the committee.

That does not include $1 billion the state telephone monopoly is spending on a satellite telecommunications system, which will include more than 1,500 miles of fiber-optic cable.

Other improvements are a new sewage and water treatment system, new streets, parks and roads and a ring road around the city to link the four main areas where Olympic activities will take place.

The Olympic village occupies 160 acres of reclaimed land and is equipped with the latest urban technology, including a suction-tube system made in Sweden that removes garbage directly from buildings.

Mayor Maragall calls the renewal project the most important for Barcelona since the late 19th Century, when the engineer Ildefons Cerda knocked down its medieval walls and created the modern Eixample district.

He said all public works will be completed before July 25, 1992, when the Games begin.

Most of the 43 sports venues are scheduled for completion this year, including a 9,500-seat pavilion for basketball in Badalona, Barcelona’s neighbor to the north.

“We’re very optimistic about completion, although we’re sure someone, somewhere, will still be hammering in a nail when the Games start,” Maragall said.

Most of the major projects are finished, including renovation of the Montjuic Stadium, built in 1929, and the new $90-million Sant Jordi Sports Pavilion, which seats 12,500 and will become a municipal auditorium after the Games.

The mayor and Vila, who oversees the building program, said all major Olympic facilities will revert to public ownership, emphasizing the idea that the Games are intended to benefit Barcelona residents as much as the athletes and Olympic movement.

Problems remain. Five-star hotels are scarce because Maragall and Olympic organizers tried to avoid overbuilding, so 11 ocean liners will dock in the port and provide accommodations for 6,500 corporate sponsors and their guests.

Another concern is terrorism, and the organizers are working with international intelligence agencies to prevent it, Maragall said. The Spanish government plans to spend $360 million for police, air and sea protection.

The 2,012 privately built housing units in the Olympic Village are priced at an average of 25 million pesetas, about $250,000. Nova Icaria, the builder, says more than half have been sold.

Vila said the committee’s budget exceeds $1.3 billion and should be covered by fees from television, sponsorship and commercial licensing.

For the first time in the history of the Games, the organizing committee will pay for the athletes’ accommodations at the Olympic Village.

Other Olympic firsts at Barcelona include 10,000 competitors, 25 official and three exhibition sports, record income from television rights and marketing and an estimated global television audience of 3.5 billion viewers for the opening ceremony.