It was cyclone season at city hall this afternoon, after the city called a briefing and unloaded a giant heap of steaming financial information on us about what’s going on with the private developer that built the Olympic village, plus more. I just finished writing my Globe story for tomorrow, which will have interesting details about what the city is doing that weren’t in the news conference.
But here are the highlights:
– Millennium only paid $192 million out of the $200 million it was supposed to pay on Aug. 31.(Another $5 million came in by Sept. 20) Because of that, the city is demanding that it pay the other $561 million it owes right now or prove that it has a plan to make future payments on time.
– It is moving to register charges on Millennium assets
– It does not want Millennium to have a fire sale of the 480 condos.
– Millennium owes the city a total of $730 million, including what it owes for the land
– It’s currently costing Millennium $4.4 million a month for loan payments and $400,000 in strata fees
On the brighter side:
– 60 per cent of Millennium’s 119 rental condos are rented
BTW, if you want a feel for the mood at city hall this week, here’s one comment I heard in the hallway from a city staffer talking about going after Milllennium’s assets to get back the city’s loan money: “And if we have to, we’ll drive the moving trucks to the house, pack up the rugs and pictures ourselves and sell them on craigslist.”