Douglas Coupland called Vancouver The City of Glass because of its forest of greenish-glass towers. I always imagined the glass towers were only about trying to maximize views and build modernist. As I discovered in doing this story, it’s really all about the money. Glass is cheap. But not for much longer. One, people don’t […]

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Council meeting with casino vote starts in two hours. This was my story today about why there’s not much incentive for council to approve a casino expansion that would triple the size of the current Edgewater. What I’m not sure of is how they will vote on the relocation from the current Plaza of Nations […]

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I remember one editor I had many potlatches ago, who said he just couldn’t believe there was no fraud or hijinks going on in Vancouver, with all the cranes around. Surely someone was paying someone off, he suggested. I said that I thought the whole system ran on a more instutionalized payoffs: developers who wanted […]

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It’s been a rough time in journalism the last decade (or three?). It’s also been one of the most exhilarating times, as you feel journalism re-inventing itself under your feet. Like many in this profession, I still wake up many mornings after 25 years, thinking, “Wow, people pay me to do this? How great is […]

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It looks like that to many with this post. http://www.citycaucus.com/2011/04/why-i-think-mike-klassen-should-run-for-vancouver-city-council#more

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This just out Revised bylaw for structures for political expression on public streets A proposed bylaw for permitting and regulating structures on city streets for political expression has been redrafted and will come before City Council on April 19. The bylaw includes a number of revisions to address concerns raised by the public and members […]

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This just in from the Rize people This Mount Pleasant site was previously identified by the city’s Mount Pleasant Community Plan (the result of three years of community consultation by the city with area residents) as one of two sites suitable for high rise and high density, partially due to its proximity to the busy […]

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My tweets yesterday conveyed the confusion many of us were feeling as we listened to the complex explanations of how Olympic village losses are defined in accounting terms by city manager Penny Ballem. I still can’t claim to understand all of it. One thing that was pretty clear was that there are two very different […]

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The story today in Gary Mason’s column, which I explore more in my story, is the real number for the losses at the Olympic village, why the assets from Millennium Development’s large real-estate empire didn’t cover that, and what the consequences are for us taxpayers. I have to add here that I feel personally misled […]

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Some confusion is still swirling around the news the city released Friday about the assets it has recovered from Millennium Developments, the loss it has said it is likely to declare, and more. There’s too much information to digest all at once, but here is the city’s PowerPoint and here are the highlights as I […]

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