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Olympic village developers to review construction

June 29th, 2009 · 25 Comments

This just in from the PR company working with Millennium Developments.
Millennium Water Construction Quality
Vancouver, BC – The Millennium Water consultant group and the general contractors are in the process of evaluating the current commentary regarding the quality of construction on the Olympic and Paralympic Village Project which has to-date been, in the consultant team’s opinion, [...]

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Olympic village hit with another negative wave

June 28th, 2009 · 32 Comments

The Olympic village just can’t catch a break. The project that everyone thought would be a showpiece for the has turned into the construction project that everyone loves to report bad news on.
The latest is this story in the Province, with complaints about the building practices going on. It’s not unheard of on major projects [...]

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Reports on secret Olympic-village decisions now up on website

June 19th, 2009 · 5 Comments

The city has just posted four reports related to past decisions on Southeast False Creek and the Olympic village. I wasn’t able to spot much new that hasn’t already been reported at some length. Two of the reports were on Jeff Lee’s blog last fall.
But I welcome comments from those who have a finer eye [...]

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Olympic village bills keep piling up for city of Vancouver

June 16th, 2009 · 33 Comments

Sorry, I’m a bit behind on posting this, but here’s the story Rod Mickleburgh and I had in the Globe today on the mounting bills for Southeast False Creek. This comes from city manager Penny Ballem’s report that came out late Monday, where she tried to round up the total costs for all the city [...]

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City and Millennium quietly dicker over interest rate on loan

May 19th, 2009 · 6 Comments

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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Reaction on VPD decision that it won’t lay charges in Olympic village leak

May 12th, 2009 · 12 Comments

Peter Ladner and Suzanne Anton are not impressed. That’s the politest way of putting their reaction to the news from the VPD this morning that no charges can be laid in the case of the missing Olympic village documents.
Ladner can’t believe the police need people to agree to polygraph tests in order to complete an [...]

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No charges in purloined Olympic village document case

May 12th, 2009 · 9 Comments

Police announced this morning that they won’t be laying any charges in connection with the Olympic village documents that went missing last fall. They say it’s partly because some councillors declined to take a polygraphy test.
As far as I can determine, that includes all the Vision councillors at the time — Raymond Louie, Tim Stevenson, [...]

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Tracking the warning emails on Olympic village

April 28th, 2009 · 6 Comments

The wheels of Freedom of Information grind slowly, slowly, but I finally got an answer last week to two questions: What record was there of meetings attended by the city’s chief financial officer, Estelle Lo, related to the Olympic Village? And what emails did she send to city hall staffers or councillors about the village?
According [...]

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Latest snapshot of Olympic village finances

April 19th, 2009 · 4 Comments

Last year, the city’s financial statements came out and no one paid attention to the paragraph buried deep inside saying that the city had provided a loan guarantee of $190 million for the private developers of the Olympic village. Even councillors didn’t notice it.
It’s quite a different picture this year, where the statements detail many [...]

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A visit with the two brothers building the Olympic village

March 29th, 2009 · 4 Comments

Here’s my latest column in Vancouver magazine, where I got to spend some time with Peter and Shahram Malek of Millennium Developments — the developers at ground zero in the current financial/housing/Olympics twister. Everyone in town has been playing backseat driver to these two and speculation continues to be rampant about the end cost of [...]

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