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News on Olympic village coming imminently

January 9th, 2009 · 2 Comments

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 that Fortress Investment (the lenders to Olympic village builders Millennium Developments) has asked the city for more security, i.e. loan guarantees, for the $750-million loan it has committed to Fortress.

No clues as to what they will say, but based on this interestingly timed leak, my guess is that the news conference will be pretty doom and gloom about how bad everything is.

Categories: Uncategorized

  • LP

    I read Miro’s piece this morning and wasn’t at all surprised it has come to this.

    The Olympic-sized noose around the city’s neck left the hammer/leverage in Fortress hands, and it was only a matter of time before these nice hedge fund managers in NY came- a-calling.

    (the leverage I am referring to is that this development MUST be completed versus normal developments that could fall apart without the infamous Olympic guarantees)

    Since any negotiation is very dependent on who has the hammer, the question is how do we get it back…if we can?

  • urb anwriter

    Well, I hope all those middle-class, west-side of town, ‘I support the Olympic bid’ individuals will be happy to pony up some extra cash. The odds of any Olympics ‘breaking even’ are far less than 50/50, and the people who estimated the prices are incompetent, or liars, or both. And the taxpayers get to pay the corporation, known as the Olympics, large sums of cash so it, and only it, makes a profit.

    The bail-out just gets bigger, and more broadly based, continuously.

    Hope you all have fun watching the games on tv, partly because you can’t get a ticket, partly because there will be so many no-go areas staffed by RCMP (the guys with the Tasers) and military personnel, than no unarmed human has a chance.