The City of Vancouver says there won’t be any Olympic-sized profits coming from the troubled Olympic Village in False Creek.
The project — once forecast to yield millions of dollars in profit — is instead mired in multimillion-dollar cost overruns, according to a consultant’s report released Tuesday.
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson said the best-case scenario is that the city will break even on its sizeable investment.
“If the market does bounce back, and it’s strong, and we are able to sell all these units in the next year or two, we could recoup our costs and break even on this project,” Robertson told a city hall news conference.
The original plan was for the Olympic Village to be completed for $950 million, including the high-priced False Creek land it sits on.
City manager Penny Ballem said Tuesday the total price tag is expected to balloon to almost $1.2 billion by 2013.
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Call me jaded, but IMHO, the Olympics are nothing but the most obscenely expensive photo-op money can buy. Having lived in Calgary during the 1988 winter games, my observation is that unless you own a piece of the hospitality industry, the Olympics are nothing but a gigantic pain in the butt… it’s nigh unto impossible to get into or out of your own city and almost as bad trying to get around within your city as well. And finally, after this two-week blowout, the local taxpayer is left to pick up the tab… for years to come.
American taxpayers, especially those residing in the state of Illinois and Chicago proper, don’t know how lucky they are that the Obamas failed in their bid to financially rape that state, that city and even their country in order to line the pockets of their old buddies, con men and thieves.