Quietly yet inevitably, the City of Vancouver has approached the province and feds to bail it out of the $1 billion Olympic Village funding scandal, in which developers of the village foolishly got on the hook for a $750-million loan from a Wall Street hedge fund. The loan has gone sour, the project is already $125-million over budget and debt servicing costs have hit $35 million per year. Meantime, the resale value of the units is crashing, meaning taxpayers would likely recover a fraction of the original value of the project. No wonder, then, that some are drawing comparisons to the 1976 funding debacle in Montreal. It’s one thing for an Olympic Games to be in the red after the party’s over. But before a single skater puts blade to ice?
FILED UNDER: Vancouver 2010
