A recent city report (and subsequent media stories) made it sound like the financing was all settled for the Olympic village, after a lot of confusion for a while. But buried in the report was a line indicating that one important part hasn’t been settled — the interest rate that Millennium will pay on the [...]

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The Globe’s Gary Mason has a story today about the city getting close to coming to a deal with Fortress, the lender on the Olympic village project, to take over the financing.
It’s not a completely done deal yet, of course, since Fortress’s syndicate partners have to agree to this too and the city still needs [...]

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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 [...]

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Sources in city hall tell me that Olympic project manager Jody Andrews tendered his resignation today, effective immediately, after several weeks of being stripped of responsibilities and pretty much ordered not to talk to the public/media about the village.
The relatively young 40-something Andrews, who has worked at the city for 18 years, was put in [...]

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Should be lots of fun today, with a public council meeting scheduled for 2 at city hall on the Olympic village. I’m sure Suzanne Anton is practicing her punches right now, with coaches on all sides. If I’m not mistaken, it will be available to watch on the city’s website, so all of you who [...]

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As people post their comments, it reminds to add other little bits and pieces of information that I know.
1. Michael Geller wondered how much the city’s standards for environmental design added to the project. General manager Hank Jasper told me, when I had my tour of this site this week, that his estimate was about [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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I got a chance this week to go around the Olympic village site under construction — quite a hike, by the way. It’s hard to understand how big a project this is until you actually walk around it. You can read my Globe story on that tour here.
It also has a very interesting feel to [...]

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