First step when a political uproar hits: Check the websites. In the case of the Olympic Village, two key players are Millennium Development and Fortress Investment Group. One says too little by saying too much. The other says too much by saying too little.
Go to Millennium, and you get high-calorie eye-candy, complete with a sound track. In the left-hand sidebar, click on Millennium Water Belvedere (“Belvedere” means “pretty to look at”).
Now click on “Legacy” in the links strip at the bottom, and you find promises of a “green Utopia ... a showcase of master planning.”
Surf around the other links, and you’ll see why it will cost $850 million to finish this place. It looks like The Shire in the 21st century, complete with a hobbit kayaking down False Creek.
Now go to Fortress Investment Group LLC, who stopped lending to Millennium a few months ago. The less they tell you, the more you learn.
You can find out who’s on the board of directors, and you can download the 2007 annual report, but you won’t find anything about lending to Millennium, or the anxiety currently felt by the hobbits out in Vancouver.
You can learn, however, that Fortress didn’t pay a dividend in the last quarter of 2008, and that at the end of trading on January 12, its share price was US$1.56, down 69 cents (30 percent).
Go to the Vancouver city website, and you’ll at least find some documentation on what’s going on, including the 2002 Bid Book, the Host City Contract, and the details about how Millennium was selected to develop the Olympic Village.
But the folks lending and spending the money for the Olympic Village say very little...and too much.
Crawford Kilian is a contributing editor of The Tyee.
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PeteL
3 years ago
Thanks for the Tour
Roll - up. Roll - up for the mystery tour.
How can we ever trust our Liberal friends again. how can we trust those folks over at the divided up NPA ever again.
I'm truly sickened by this mess. That these folks have no idea what is a public trust. That these folks also know neither my family or I will be able to attend even a single Olympic event because we have to maintain ourselves in the most expensive city in Canada.
No, these games were never for the people, they were for the likes of Gordon Campbell and Larry Campbell and all their big shot developer friends.
The closest I will get to the Olypics will be Olympia Pizza if they haven't been bankrupted by 2010.
NPA, you are truly FIRED. Former Mayor Owen, go soak your head. Gordon Campbell and Liberal mob. You are next. Thank god for spring time.
thu
3 years ago
How can you trust any of them?
It wasn't just NPA councillors behind the various decisions. Vision and COPE councillors voted right along with many of the decisions, including voting for the Olympics to come to Vancouver in the first place.
This is a pointless political Witch Hunt. Vision's and COPE's fingerprints are also all over this deal over the past 3 councils, so, that's why you are only getting selective information in what is being touted as "open" and "transparent," which it certainly is not. Why the secret meetings with press and un-named government officials in the basement of City Hall?
It all has a whiff of dirty partisan politics, and this is no time for that during a global economic crisis that is now hurting our city.
Otis Krayola
3 years ago
Geez, Pete
Over at Frances Bula's they're calling what you're engaging in Political Posturing.
We knew from the outset that we would be soaked. And we're just now getting a glimpse of how bad the soaking's going to be. But we mustn't complain because A.) we might Scotch The Deal and B.)it's Political Posturing.
As if.
Hands up, everyone who thinks the NPA/Libs wouldn't be front and centre if things were going swimmingly.
But RAV, the Trade and Convention Centre HUNDREDS of millions overruns, the Games' security bill (sure to cost a billion or so)... and now this.
Boy, it sure looks like the private sector knows how to do business. Problem is, it's the public that gets hosed. And we're not supposed to complain about the clowns who got us into this mess - that'd be Political Posturing.
Rod Smelser
3 years ago
SOMEONE MENTIONED THE RAV LINE!
"But RAV, the Trade and Convention Centre HUNDREDS of millions overruns, the Games' security bill (sure to cost a billion or so)... and now this"
The RAV line is the one I have been waiting for, Otis. My hope is that it will be the final straw, that once that pregnant male announces his expectant condition the move will be on to amalgamate the entire GVRD.