BC Place: The 'Selling' Of The Magic Carpet Ride...

AllTheCodswallopThatFit
HundredsAndHundredsOfMillionsAgoVille


Way back in 2009, in the days when the docile Lotuslandian proMedia could be spun every which way but loose by the weakest of weasel-worded watercarrying,  Mess'rs David Pratt and Tom Mayenknect, then both of 'TEAM1040 Radio', suddenly started babbling and scare-mongering about how, if they were elected that May, the NDP would kill the BC Place Roof Renovations. 

Well.

At the time I was incensed by the already unbelievably ridiculous price-tag for that bloody roof.

And, worse, I smelled an 'oh woe is us, how else can we pay for it without a condo-land jack' snow-job coming.

Little did I know that what was really just over the horizon was much, much worse...

Which was an insider-brokered 'deal-breaker' of a Casino-Industrial-Complex that would have turned the Northside of False Creek into a PavCo-promoted, Smilin' Sammy Sullivan-assisted, Vegas money-driven,  'Pottersville-On-Speedballs' if it hadn't later been killed by a citizen's revolt that Vision Vancouver actually paid attention to later on down the road.

But...

Back to that price-tag that was being wurlitzered by the watercarriers in the pre-provincial election daze of 2009...

At that time we were being told it was a cool three hundred and sixty-five million dollars.

Of course, since then it has turned into something between five and six hundred million, give or take the cost of that super-secret deal/not deal debacle with Telus for the naming rights.

Or some such thing.

****

Anyway.

At the time I couldn't believe that we had been sold a bill of goods for a bit of carpet and cable that would cost more than a third of a billion dollars when we were constantly being told, post-2008 economic meltdown/pre-2009 election/pre HST-swindle, that we didn't have any money to pay for real programs that actually matter.

And I was even more furious when I learned that Toronto had just built an ENTIRE soccer stadium for $72 million.

And I said as much to my 30 or 40 readers at the time.

But here's the real thing....

It turns out, as Ian Reid recently learned by FOI, and Bob Mackin noted yesterday in 'Business In Vancouver' that the original 2008 roof/refurbishing pitch from PavCo's David Podmore to the then City of Vancouver manager (and 'Man of Many Hats and Turnstiles' protege) Judy Rogers was for a measly hundred million.

Which means that the thing went from an expensive, but maybe not completely unreasonable 100 mill in 2008 to an unbelievable, and completely unsustainable 365 mill in just one year.

Which can wonder which was conceived of first....

The Roof or The Casino?

More on that later.



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If you want to check out a sampling from our litany of posts over the years on this subject, hit....This.
What has changed between 2009 and now for the watercarriers and those who wurtlitzer their worthless codswallop in the proMedia without fear of consequence?....Well, as Norm Farrell made abundantly clear the other day, there is now the possibility of real bloggodomic pushback against those who wurlitzer without fact-checking that is backed by an ever growing Lotuslandian readership...And yes, the folks who cross between the two realms, folks like Bob Mackin and, now, Laila Yuile (yay!),  really are able to hold the feet of the insulated and Guccied to the fire...
And what is the good Ms. Rogers up to these days?....Well, it would appear that the former City Manager, who worked very closely with one of our province's finest of the fine former public servants, Mr. Kenneth Dobell in her former capacity, is now part of the great 'legacy' of the mountains of public largesse that continue to flow down the Condo-King Highway....For the turnstiles, indeed...


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