A knowledgeable analysis of the Olympic village problems by developer Rob Macdonald in the Sun on the weekend. Although Rob doesn’t make it totally clear in the story, the original delay he’s talking about in the story was during the Larry Campbell administration. If you can cast your mind back that far, you’ll recall that [...]

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There is social housing all over the city, but most people don’t realize it. Coal Harbour, the nice section of Kitsilano next to Jericho Beach, north False Creek, the West End, south Granville — there are unobtrusive apartment buildings everywhere. For a long time, that’s gone unquestioned. But in the past week, the issue has [...]

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Development consultant, ex-planner for Simon Fraser’s UniverCity, and candidate for the NPA in the last election, Michael Geller is front and centre these days talking about the Olympic Village here and on his blog. Michael’s latest analysis, posted on his blog and emailed to many of us (including city manager Penny Ballem) with more details [...]

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There are many, I am sure, who feel about the Olympic village the way they do about trying to sell the house after a divorce. Just anyone take it off our hands, please, at any price, so we don’t have to deal with this any more. Dream on, my friends. The village’s problems may be [...]

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It was a lovely day on the deck of the Parcel 2 building at the Olympic village today.  The media were there getting shots of the city from the 12th floor on a beautiful, sunny day, and of the village itself, as workers raked dirt on the ground or crawled around outside decks doing finishing [...]

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It was a field day for media today in trying to report once again on the very complicated Olympic village project. You could tell people were a little overwhelmed by the material today, as city manager Penny Ballem gave an update on the project and presented the KPMG audient results that had been ordered last [...]

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I’m just analyzing the information this myself, but here is the city information that came out this morning with details on where the Olympic village is at, what interest rates have been negotiated with the Olympic-village developers, and what the audit report has to say. City ended up giving Millennium Developments a bit of a [...]

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I apologize that it’s taken me so long to put this up, but here, at last, are the campaign finance disclosures that mayoral candidates Raymond Louie and Allan DeGenova filed with Vision Vancouver. (My late-night struggles with blog technology are finally paying off.) They aren’t available at the city clerk’s office because the city clerk [...]

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Vancouver has spent we don’t know how much money to get lawyer Richard Peck to come up with recommendations for how the city can avoid future leaks of embarrassing documents. One of his main recommendations was that Vancouver hire a full- or part-time integrity commissioner. But it didn’t sound to me yesterday as though Vision [...]

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Okay, he put it in more lawyerly language than that, but essentially that’s what Richard Peck said about Vancouver’s “code of conduct,” its definition of “confidentiality” and its whole process for reporting on misconduct at the city. It’s in his eight-page report due out tomorrow on what to do about the city’s in-camera meetings, in [...]

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