I think it’s been hard for many of us to deal with the ongoing turmoil at city hall over the Olympic village. It’s so not Vancouver. Everything is so not Vancouver: the crashed housing market, the serial drama being played out with one leaked bit of information after another, the ongoing stories about how one […]

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Sources in city hall tell me that Olympic project manager Jody Andrews tendered his resignation today, effective immediately, after several weeks of being stripped of responsibilities and pretty much ordered not to talk to the public/media about the village. The relatively young 40-something Andrews, who has worked at the city for 18 years, was put […]

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City councillors have just received a message from city manager Penny Ballem that Jody Andrews, the young deputy city manager in charge of Southeast False Creek development, has resigned. There has been rumbling for the last couple of days that he would be fired so it’s very unclear how voluntary this resignation is. A bit […]

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One of the things I find many people are forgetting (or were never aware of) in the current hoopla over the Olympic village is that Vancouver has a decades-old tradition of being a real-estate developer. It’s one of the biggest land-owners in the city and its real-estate department, under the leadership of people like Bruce […]

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My learned friend Geoff Meggs commented today in the Globe and Mail that the city’s credit rating has never been downgraded before due to council actions. Actually, I was reminded by someone with a better memory than mine that that’s not true. The credit rating was downgraded in 2003, when Geoff was then assistant to […]

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I haven’t bothered posting the last couple of days on the Olympic village because there is now such a raging torrent of media coverage that I decided to stand on the riverbank letting it flow by, while I think about what’s going on. I’m sure many of you are in the same state, as we’ve […]

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I’ll be off-site and on the phone and doing other things, so I’d welcome guest posts from anyone who attends the witch trial, oops, special council meeting this afternoon on the Olympic village.

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I have to say, it sounds nuts over at city hall today. There’s an in-camera meeting on right now and apparently Mayor Gregor is going to make a statement/announcement right after that. It could be just my imagination, but every time I talk to someone over there, they sound exactly like those CNN reporters covering […]

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Got this note from a reader, “Andrew,” with some interesting observations on the financing side of the Olympic village. More info to ponder. After reading different articles over the past couple of days I phoned a friend of mine in who works at an executive level in Canadian Real Estate finance to ask him a […]

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As people post their comments, it reminds to add other little bits and pieces of information that I know. 1. Michael Geller wondered how much the city’s standards for environmental design added to the project. General manager Hank Jasper told me, when I had my tour of this site this week, that his estimate was […]

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