Final budget to hold at $883.2 million, boss says
Frank Luba
Province
A supervisor discusses progress on the Vancouver Convention Centre expansion, which is due for completion in March for $883.2 million, up from the original budget of $495 million. Photograph by : Jason Payne
Vancouver‘s over-budget convention centre still looks like a dirty construction site, but project boss David Podmore says it’s 95-per-cent complete and will be finished on time by March 15.
“It will be completed on time,” vowed Podmore, who was brought in to oversee the project last year.
He said the tab to complete the building will remain at $883.2 million. The original budget in 2004 when construction began was $495 million.
“We will complete within that budget,” Podmore said yesterday during a tour of the centre.
Some 159 events are booked at the 500,000-square-foot facility, 54 of which could not have been held in the existing convention centre.
The facility will be the media centre for the 2010 Olympics.
Tourism Minister Bill Bennett refused to say whether he would have gone ahead with the costly and controversial project in 2004.
“I wasn’t even in politics then,” he said.
But Bennett is a big booster now.
“Every year this facility is not open is costing the province about $100 million in economic activity,” he said.
“The people who argue that we should not have built this, the people who argue we should have just stayed with a smaller facility, are people who don’t understand the difference between an investment and a straight cost.
“If you want to see a straight cost, ladies and gentleman, you should go up the shoreline here.
“There’s three boats up there that are wrapped in cellophane. That’s not an investment.”
The boats are the infamous Fast Cats, the ferries built by the NDP government for $454 million and sold by their successors, the Liberals, for $19.4 million. The ferries were supposed to cost $210 million.
“This, I say to you, is an excellent investment for the taxpayers of B.C.”
NDP tourism critic Rob Fleming doubts the government’s claim that no more money will be spent on the convention centre.
“I’d be more inclined to believe that if it hadn’t been said on six separate occasions,” said Fleming.
“The hopeless bleeding on this project may be finally coming to an end, but the project is drowning in a sea of red ink.
“It holds the distinction of being the biggest cost over-run in B.C.’s history. The taxpayers better hope this is the final price tag.”
The legislature’s public accounts committee, which is chaired by Fleming, will hold a public hearing on Wednesday at which Podmore will answer questions about the project.
© Copyright (c) The Province
