Casino Royale Reconnected....Mr. Turner Did Not Phone Alone

WhenIsAConferenceCall
NotVille

(Tues Apr 13, 2010: Please see Update at the Bottom of Thread)

It turns out, according to an interview he gave to the NaPo's Bruce Hutchinson recently, that the idea to call up the Minister Responsible for the Marshmallow, Mr. Kevin Krueger, was not actually Mr. T. Richard Turner's alone.

Instead, Mr. Turner first got together with his good friends from Paragon Gaming Inc. and they made a collective (hey! isn't that something socialists do?) decision to call up Mr. Krueger and tell him that, according to Mr. Krueger, but not quite according to Mr. Turner, it would be a 'deal breaker' for the Casino builders if the people of British Columbia didn't pony up and build them a $500 million (and climbing) retractable roof

He (Mr. Turner) raised the matter with his fellow directors at Paragon. "It was decided that I should call the minister responsible [for gambling in B.C., Kevin Krueger]. We decided it was my role, this time," Mr. Turner said yesterday.

Hmmmmm......

'this time'?

Does that mean that it happened before?

And if so, what was the role, or what were the roles, the previous times?

And who carried them out?

And when did they happen?

And who did they who carried out these roles call and/or meet with?

Perhaps Mr. Turner was referring to those 'meetings' that he set-up between the fine folks from Paragon and the guy charged with taking care of BC Place for the people of British Columbia, PavCo's CEO Mr. Warren Buckley?

Or was he referring to something else?

****

I do have to hand it to Mr. Hutchinson because, unlike the vast majority of the local Lotuslandian pro-Media types round here, he momentarily makes like Sean Holman and actually takes the timeline back to 2005/6 when he points out that Mr. Turner was the Campbell government-appointed chair of the BC Lottery Corporation shortly before he bought into the ailing Edgewater Casino with the fine folks from Paragon.

And Mr. Hutchinson even asked Mr. Turner about that too.....

....In 2006, ICBC chairman Turner joined the board of ParagonCanadaHoldingsULC, a division of Las Vegas-based Paragon Development Ltd. The company had just bought a failing casino in downtown Vancouver. Mr. Turner's "role," he said in his interview, was explaining to Paragon local perspectives and matters of community interest. He saw no conflict doing that while serving the province as ICBC chairman. No rules were broken, no code of conduct guidelines were crossed, he said. "I was not [made a Paragon director] to do government relations," he said yesterday.....


So, there's that word 'role' again.....

And how, exactly did Mr. Turner inform the folks from Vegas (ie. Paragon) about "local perspectives and matters of community interest" without explaining and/or relating matters of government, given that such matters were all important to fixing the failing casino?

After all, at that time, 2006, neither the City, nor the Province would allow for an expansion of the Edgewater to make it more profitable and, as we have already established, one of Paragon's specialties as casino turn-around artists is to "takeover and build".

However, there was one thing that Mr. Hutchinson missed, which is also based on the reporting of Mr. Holman.

And that is the fact that Mr. Turner was also involved with the fine folks from Vegas on a casino project in Alberta starting in 2003 at a time when Mr. Turner, as Chair of the BC Lotteries Corporation, essentially was THE lead government representative on all matters pertaining to the running gambling houses in this province.

*****

There is one more kicker in Mr. Hutchinson's NaPo piece that I did not know, or had missed, in all the previous reportage on this matter....

According to Mr. Hutchinson, it turns out that Mr. Turner and the fine folks from Vegas (ie. Paragon) and, presumably the fine, yet still shadowy, folks we can't quite see hiding behind a numbered company that were also involved in the purchase of the Edgewater in 2006 were actually 'invited' to bid on the massive Casino Industrial Complex in early 2009.

.....Early last year, Paragon was invited to bid on a new casino and hotel project proposal, to be built on Crown land next to provincially owned B.C. Place stadium. The province had determined its domed stadium needs a half-billion dollar retractable roof; lease payments and gambling revenues from an entertainment complex next door are to help cover the enormous cost

The casino plan was not made public until last month.....


So.

Who, exactly, did that inviting* I wonder?


_____
As promised, the post on how Smilin' Sammy Sullivan and his Merry Band of Sycophants 'ammended' the North False Creek Official Development Plan so that 'Area 10' (eg. the land surrounding BC Place Stadium) could become the site of a massive Casino Industrial Complex back in the Fall of 2008 is coming soon....Interesting the timing that, no?, given the 'invitation' mentioned directly above....And what have we heard from Sammy's former Spam-A-Lotteers on this matter?.....Still Crickets.....Although, of course, they are out their full court wurlitizering for Sammy's alleged slam dunk shot at the GG slot and they are outraged, like Michael Smyth apparently, about the prospect of backyard chicken coops in Lotusland...
*Sean Holman, in the comments, points out that despite the fact that Mr. Hutchinson actually used the word 'invited' it is possible that this could actually just mean that the fine folks from Paragon, which included Mr. Turner just may have taken the official call for proposals from PavCo as an indication of an 'invite'......I responded with a tongue-in-cheek rejoinder, but without further clarification (ie. how about if somebody were to ask the good Mr. Buckley?), it is a fair enough point.
Update, (Tues Apr 13, 2010): Regarding the "invite", it turns out that Mr. Hutchinson may have been referring to the second stage of the application process wherein the groups that originally responded to a request for proposals in a first stage were wittled down by PavCo....Sean Holman has a timeline up that includes the open and closing dates of each stage, which are all incredibly close together for such a complex and costly project here.

.