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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Thanks to all the previous posters for their thoughtful and extremely detailed analysis of the economics of this project. I think we have pretty much all agreed here that we don’t have enough specifics to be able to truly understand what is going on financially with the project in terms of construction costs or the [...]

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My last post elicited a few comments, including this interesting one from Michael Geller about the condo projects that haven’t properly cleared their sidewalks et al. (See below my intro comments.) Since the snow is now coming down even more heavily (I can’t believe it, actually), I thought I’d just continue with the snow postings. [...]

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Don’t ask me why, but I’m spending my leisure time these days reading Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone,” (yes, I know, several years late) a thoughtful and heavily documented analysis of the decline of civic engagement in American society since the 1950s. As we’ve become a more individualistic society, Putnam argues, our participation in political parties [...]

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Just got home at 3 a.m. because I’m a quitter, leaving many Visionistas behind me either dancing up a storm or analyzing the intricacies of the Olympic athletes’ village project, down at the Shark Club. (Yes, that’s where this bunch of alleged lefties repaired to after dancing til midnight at the Hotel Vancouver.) I’m not [...]

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While controversy over the city’s $100-million loan is raging in the media/blogosphere, the campaign is still winding along on the lower levels for many people. And, at those lower levels, one of the more fun moments of the past week was the Last Candidate Standing event organized Friday night by Vancouver Public Space Network and [...]

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This election has to be setting records for wild and wacky things the candidates are willing to try in order to generate noticeably scarce media coverage of the civic election. David Cadman’s YouTube “Vote Beard” video (posted earlier on this blog) is probably the prize-winner so far. David says that the viral success of this [...]

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Some days, all you can do is watch the river of news go by and observe the patterns you see. And, from the riverbank, it looks like the campaign is entering its final stage, where people solidify their opinions and any nasty stuff one party has on the other gets leaked out. The story of [...]

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Sharper eyes than mine have noted that in the Vancouver Sun survey of council candidates, two of the seven Non-Partisan Association candidates who answered the question said they did not support shifting more of the business share of tax to residential. Michael Geller, a development consultant and expert on how real-estate economics work, is not [...]

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Hey, we’re not the only ones. While people here are wringing their hands over Vancouver’s problems with the Olympic village construction (developer Millennium Developments is facing significant cost overruns and the city, which is legally required to make sure the village is ready on time, is facing some pressure to provide a guarantee for the [...]

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