Vancouver could end up paying for the Olympics 30 years later.
KENT SPENCER
Province
The Olympic athletes village on the south side of False Creek in Vancouver, being developed by Millennium Properties, has cost-overruns of $125 million. – GERRY KAHRMANN – THE PROVINCE
Vancouver’s billion-dollar athletes village has the makings of a Montreal-style Olympic blunder, says the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
“Vancouver could end up like Montreal, paying for the Olympics 30 years later,” the federation’s B.C. director, Maureen Bader, said yesterday. “The Olympics have reached a stage where they’re unaffordable.”
Montreal only recently paid the final instalment on its billiondollar-plus Olympic Stadium, which was built in 1976 for the Summer Olympics and dubbed the Big Owe.
Bader said Vancouver bureaucrats and politicians who supported the deal have shown they “had no idea what they were doing.”
“Obviously, they had a lack of understanding of what they were signing. It was done in secret. There was no scrutiny, no transparency and no accountability.”
Bader said the $875-million construction costs, which Vancouver has guaranteed, are almost as much as the city spends annually for everything it needs. The rest of the project’s billion-dollar cost is the value of the city’s land.
Because the loans are so large, paying off the debt couldn’t be done in one year but would have to be done over a period of many years, she said.
In 2007, the city spent a total of $1.135 billion, according to its most recent financial statement; $533 million was collected in annual property taxes.
Bader noted that budgetary woes from the athletes village are in addition to calls from city staff for a 2009 property-tax hike of 13 per cent.
City council will hold a special meeting at 2 p.m. today to present a public-information update on the village by new city manager Penny Ballem.
Mayor Gregor Robertson said Friday the city is “on the hook” for all of the billion-dollar project.
“We now know why the previous city government didn’t want to talk about the deal they’d made. The arrangements were not in the public’s interest,” he said.
Robertson said “our elected leaders” promised in 2006 there would be “no risk to the taxpayers.”
But, he said, in 2007, the previous council voted to provide a “completion guarantee” that effectively made the city responsible for development.
Sometime last summer, Wall Street lender Fortress Investment Group decided its loan to developer Millennium Properties was “out of balance” because of a $125-million cost overrun.
The costs had spiralled from $750 million to $875 million, more than $1,400 for every man, woman and child in Vancouver.
Vancouver resident Clayton Burns wondered why the costs are only emerging now.
“I would like to see an audit of the Olympic village,” Burns said.
Colin Hansen, provincial minister responsible for the Olympics, was not available yesterday.
