You can read news stories with complete paragraphs in other media if you want. (My pal Rod Mickleburgh was covering for the Globe today, and pretty much everyone else was there in force.)
Here’s my take on what was new and interesting, beyond the basic news that the city is gearing up to go and borrow [...]

[Read more →]

Okay, now we have Penny Ballem locked in a room with Fortress trying to come to a deal on the financing.
Next, the mayor and Penny have to figure out who is going to take Jody’s place.
As I wrote for the Globe, the deputy city manager’s role in dealing with development projects is critical.
For the [...]

[Read more →]

My pal Jeff Lee over at the Sun had an interesting story in Friday’s Vancouver Sun with details about the in-camera meeting back in June 2007 where the Non-Partisan Association majority voted in favour of the $193-million loan guarantee and completion guarantee for Fortress, so that Millennium could get its financing for the Olympic village.
Jeff [...]

[Read more →]

Oh, I couldn’t resist.
A few more bits and pieces.
1.The story travelling around city hall currently is that the memo from city manager Judy Rogers that laid out the original plan to provide guarantees ($193-million loan guarantee and completion guarantee) for Millennium’s Fortress loan started off with the line: “This is a good-news story.”
I have no [...]

[Read more →]

Thanks to all the previous posters for their thoughtful and extremely detailed analysis of the economics of this project. I think we have pretty much all agreed here that we don’t have enough specifics to be able to truly understand what is going on financially with the project in terms of construction costs or the [...]

[Read more →]

If everyone could just PLEASE REMAIN CALM.
As unpopular as this might be to say right now, I’d just like to warn everyone that there’s nothing more dangerous or potentially uninformative as a media pack in full pursuit of a crisis. Everyone scrambles to find a detail that’s worse than what the last guy/gal just reported. [...]

[Read more →]

Just back from the wild scene at city hall, with all of us rabid Olympic-following media types herded into a sub-basement to get a briefing on the Olympic village from a “senior government official” we’re not allowed to name. (Not sure what the penalty is if we do — have to go help with the [...]

[Read more →]

The city of Vancouver has called a “technical briefing” for media on the Olympic village for 2 p.m., followed by a statement from Mayor Gregor Robertson at 3:30 p.m.
This hastily organized conference is apparently in response to Miro Cernetig’s anonymously sourced story in The Vancouver Sun today, where the key piece of new information is [...]

[Read more →]

Not a lot to report except that, like everyone else, the city is watching the news closely to see what happens with Fortress, the lender that is financing Millennium Developments for its construction of the Olympic athletes village. Here’s my story in Thursday’s Globe.

[Read more →]

While the focus so far this week has been on Millennium Developments and its current problems with cost overruns and financing, there’s another story in this city about what’s happening with development generally.
As many people told me over the last two days, it’s been disastrous the last few weeks since the financial crisis started. Open [...]

[Read more →]