That’s the word from PavCo CEO Warren Buckley, as he spelled out for me exactly how the $563-million renos are being financed for BC Place. My story is just one small effort to isolate some of the actual facts in the pile-up of information and misinformation debris that has been accumulating around this project.

There are still so many other pieces to sort out, which even the public hearings aren’t helping with that much as various speakers come with their version of reality.

Staff are trying to clarify on the 1001 questions as they arise. This memo got sent out recently. as part of that effort.

Things we still don’t know:

– What are the number of problem gamblers in the province? (We know the likelihood, but not the actual caseload so far.)

– Will Paragon really just pack up its bags and go if it doesn’t get an expansion? Paragon announced that, contrary to what an earlier media report said, Paragon can’t extend its lease at the Plaza of Nations past 2013. That makes you think they’ll close. But others say it’s hard to imagine that they will give up a lucrative casino licence that is managing to make them money at its current size.

– What is the real likely revenue for a larger casino and how much of that is actually new revenue, as opposed to current levels of gambling just resorting them?

– How long would it take to bring in that $100 million a year from new international visitors that Paragon talks about?

and, last but not least,

– How did this whole deal come about? That’s what baffles most of us. When I talked to Warren Buckley today, he wasn’t able to recall exactly when he learned that Paragon wanted to triple the size of its casino. Everyone had known since 2006 that Paragon was going to have to move the Edgewater. Both the city and landlord had made it clear it needed to move by 2013.

I saw the casino placed next to BC Place on an architect’s plan for the area in May 2008, when the premier announced the Vancouver Art Gallery would move to the area. But I didn’t think much about it. It seemed like it was just the casino I knew, but moved across the street.

Mr. Buckley thinks that he didn’t really have a sense of Paragon’s much larger plans until the request for expressions of interest came in, although Paragon had obviously been expressing an interest in moving for some time before that. But he had been out of the country working elsewhere just prior to that, so I’m not sure he’s the best person to nail this one for me.

Maybe we’ll find out in the next 100 hours of public hearings.

The 125th birthday is approaching and people are planning all kinds of commemorative events. Ive been asked to be on a radio program to talk about a person I think has made a major contribution to shaping the city.

I have some ideas of my own but would love to hear yours while I’m making my own choice. Remember, no time limit, doesn’t have to be a person still living  — anyone back to the dawn of time would be good.

Watching the non-stop news on Japan and thinking of the earthquake in Christchurch, you have to wonder what exactly would happen in Vancouver if there were a similar earthquake.

The tsunami rolling through the Sendai airport made me wonder about our airport. The stories of buildings pancaking in Christchurch made me think about how buildings in Vancouver might do.

Do we have the kinds of protections in place that Japan does, as outlined in this NYT story?

Another round of speakers Tuesday night, ably tweeted by several at the meeting. Earlier in the day, I spoke with the president of the casino workers’ union and others about the wave of opposition that has emerged. Story here.

As well, just to try to sort out some of the past, I am appending here key council reports and media stories that tell us how we got here. To sum up briefly:

– Council holds a public hearing on the rezoning of the whole area in October 28, weeks before the election. The original report, read closely, does allow for a major casino. But no one pays attention at the time because all attention is focused on how the area is being upzoned to help pay for the roof. Speakers are more concerned about the roof, the lack of community amenties in exchange for the extra density, and a sense that everything is being pushed through quickly.

– In March 2010, right after the Olympics, the premier announces a grand new entertainment centre at BC Place with a casino — the first that anyone hears of plans for a grand new destination project.

[Read more →]

Christy Clark has touched a lot of people’s lives, from her time as a student at Burnaby South to her junior-politico days as head of the Young Libs at Simon Fraser University, and from MLA to talk-show host.

I’m working on a long-term profile of our premier-designate. I’ve talked to a lot of the usual (and some unusual) suspects already. But I’m trolling for more, to get a complete picture of her. Please get in touch at francesbulaATgmail.com if you knew her in any of her incarnations or if you have an interesting story to tell about even a one-time meeting with her. (Email, don’t post on the blog, please.)

For those panting to comment, what do you think her potential impact on B.C. cities might be? Housing, environment, transportation, crime, schools — they’re all things Clark has taken positions on.

Looking at the record during her time as a politician and talk-show host, what are your predictions about what might be her top agenda items and her positions on any of them.

No cheap slagging, please. The Grade 9 lunchroom is closed.

Trees make city streets beautiful. They also make a mess. All over this city, they provoke annoyance (dripping sap, falling chestnuts that dent cars, branches that come loose in high winds, leaves, leaves, leaves) and heartfelt love.

The question for park staff, who manage the city’s 137,000 trees and growing (3,300 new ones planted every year; 1,100 removed), is when the former outweighs the latter. An intense scuffle has broken out in a Commercial Drive neighbourhood over their assessment that seven blocks worth of elm trees are problematic.

Park staff are proposing to remove 30 out of the 135 trees, which has prompted basically a neighbourhood uprising.

It should cause all of us to pause and think about the trees on our own streets. I know that in my neighbourhood, one tree came down in the big windstorm of 2006. Last year, a large branch fell off the tree in front of my house and crushed the car in front of my van. (I was wishing it had actually hit my van, so I could just get the insurance money and move on to another vehicle that has working locks, rear window-wiper, fan, etc., but that’s another story.)

Does that mean all of those chestnut trees should perhaps be removed? Or do we value them so much that we’re willing to pay a little more to have the park arborists monitor them carefully and prune them more often than elsewhere? Different people will add up the pluses and minuses differently.

But for sure, the people on East Sixth have made it clear that their math shows the existing trees come out solidly in the plus column.

Because I’m a dutiful person (that Catholic training sticks, even after all else has faded away), I briefly read through a big chunk of the city’s just-posted in-camera reports from June 2008 to May 2010 to spare all of you the pain of having to do so.

They’re being posted, by the way, as a result of an investigation into how the Olympic village documents got leaked to the media pre-2008 election and subsequent recommendations on improving practices for in-camera, i.e. not public, meetings of council. Those meetings are typically held to discuss hirings, firings, sensitive financial and real-estate issues, and the like.

I’m sure if I spent more time and had more zest for hatchet jobs, I could find something that I could make sound damning. But mostly what I found was small, interesting bits of info that only I and 53 other civic junkies in the city care about.

The really interesting stuff comes in verbal reports (September 08, city manager Judy Rogers and finance guy Ken Bayne brief council on financial matters — I’ll bet! as the Olympic village financing was starting to go down) where we get no details.

Or, in September 09, council received an administrative report on the Seafield apartments — the building whose renters the mayor championed during the election campaign and which has been the subject of numerous battles with renters disputing rent increases and evictions — that is still so sensitive it can’t be released.

Lots of discussions of the leasehold fracas in False Creek and another interesting, no-details verbal report on “legal issues” surrounding the density bank — that collection of imaginary square feet that the city allowed owners of heritage properties to own and sell off to developers wanting extra density, as a way of preserving heritage.

Otherwise, a lot of stuff about people being appointed to committees and advisory boards, some of which I didn’t even know existed.

And these fun and interesting little tidbits

– The city agreed to pay $4 million a year in October 2008  for the lease on the Crossroads building that the engineering department moved into, leaving half of city hall empty.

– It costs $60,000 to do a headhunter search for senior staff

– The city is the landlord to an awful lot of people I didn’t know about: architect Bing Thom’s business, Tremblay Motors under the Granville Bridge, Kal-Tire on Main, the House of God, and much more. But you can’t see what rent they pay. That’s blanked out.

– The city spent $670,000 to acquire land on Knight Street that would allow it to construct a left-hand-turn bay

– The prices paid for land for social housing is in here.

But please do go through yourselves and post your comments on bits that I don’t have the background to spot as signs of nefariousness. One querulous note from me: It would be good if they were in a searchable format. As it is, if you want to see if there’s a reference to a particular topic or person, you have to click on all 100-plus reports. It’s the 21st century?

B.C. Lottery got hit with a whack of bad publicity last year, some of because of reports that they had been fined close to $700,000 for reporting irregularities by FINTRAC, the Canadian agency that monitors suspicious or cash transactions in financial institutions, casinos, real estate and more. (No, suspicious and cash aren’t the same.)

As part of the counter-offensive this week, Lottery Corp. president Michael Graydon said that fine was for, essentially, problems with filing in ways that the FINTRAC computer would accept.

Here’s a link to the actual appeal the corporation has filed in federal court. FINTRAC spokesman Peter Lamey said the agency can’t say anything more about the case until a decision is make, so we don’t know what their counter-argument is at this point.

The longer the debate about a casino expansion goes on, the more we learn.

What I learned today was something about how gamblers with lots of money get their money to casinos. Until a year ago, they could only bring cash — a problem if you’re coming across the border, where the limit is $10,000.

For the last year and a bit, the B.C. Lottery Corporation has run a pilot program that was described to me this way in an email from the Solicitor General’s ministry, which regulates gaming.

“In December 2009, a pilot project of Patron Gaming Fund accounts began with casinos in the Lower Mainland. These accounts enable a patron to deposit funds, withdraw them at a gaming facility for play, then re-deposit funds, either for further play later or return to their source account.

The accounts are for patrons who typically gamble at VIP table games frequently, providing them with a higher level of security in handling large sums of money. For these accounts, electronic funds transfers can only go to and from chartered Canadian banks.

Now the lottery corporation wants to go one step further, by allowing direct wire transfers into casinos from select banks. I’m told that’s important to the Paragon plan to generate $100 million in business from international gamblers as part of its overall projections for the expanded Vancouver casino. Even the current system, under the pilot project, is considered cumbersome for people who play at casinos around the world.

Of course, that raises the spectre of money laundering for some. Though, as others point out in my story in tomorrow’s paper, everything to do with money in any form contains a potential for money-laundering.

The trick, I suspect, with the proposed new idea of direct money transfers will be to be very, very careful about which overseas banks will be allowed to be on the list of those who clients can wire money.

Thanks to a poster (Michael B) for this information, sure to be of interest to many.

The long-awaited community meeting regarding the proposed development @ Kingsway and Broadway is finally happening.

Here is the info:

Sunday March 20th 2011. 12noon to 4:30pm at the Native Education College, 285 East 5th Avenue. Door open at 11:30 for viewing of the proposal.

RSVP to: Nancy Wormald 604.873.7388, [email protected].

I’ve genuinely enjoyed the discourse regarding this project on this site, and sincerely hope that all those who are opposed to the scale of the development will attend the meeting and share their objections.