One of the legacies of former premier Gordon Campbell was his watchful eye over the City of Vancouver, once his turf as mayor.
He never lost his love for the city, or his zest for new ideas on how to take it to the next level. He has been known to ask his friends, “When will I be able to stop being mayor of Vancouver?”– a reference to his paternalistic frustration with elected mayors who weren’t as keen off the mark with his latest new idea.
But as happens with leaders at the end of long periods of power, the exciting new ideas started getting more expensive and impulsive, the openness to consultation dwindled to nothing and the thrill of can-do power dominated dangerously.
That same get-it-done fiscally reckless trajectory has come to characterize BC Pavilion Corp. (PavCo), the Crown corporation that was Campbell’s lever over the city’s tourism, convention and sport (BC Place) infrastructure.
The city has to be grateful for the massive provincial spending on infrastructure by PavCo under Campbell: a new convention centre, a new float plane terminal, a new temporary stadium at Empire Field and now a new roof on a refurbished BC Place Stadium. But, echoing Campbell, PavCo has overstepped its ambition and is now drowning in cost overruns hatched in backroom deals and downloaded onto unwilling third parties.
Last week, the Vancouver Commercial Seaplane Owners Association asked for a B.C. ombudsperson’s review of PavCo’s cost overruns that the seaplane owners’ customers are expected to cover with a crippling $24 surcharge on every passenger (see “Plane dealing on Vancouver’s waterfront” – issue 1111; February 8-14). That’s after PavCo turned down the float plane operators’ offer to build a non-profit terminal themselves, only to see the contract given to a private operator who now demands they cover costs that went 100% over budget.
The same build-now, pay-later, damn-the-public mentality dominates the proposed Paragon Gaming entertainment gambling centre at BC Place Stadium.
Paragon, BC Lottery Corp., PavCo (and the city?) hatched a plan for two football fields of Edgewater Casino space featuring 1,500 electronic slot machines before they thought to ask the citizens of Vancouver if they wanted to remake their stadium as a casino annex financed on the backs of problem gamblers.
This project, too, was wildly over budget. It started at $365 million, jumped to $458 million after the 2009 election, then topped out at $577 million (including the $14 million temporary stadium).
PavCo chairman David Podmore is dangling offers of a 180% increase in city revenue if the Paragon project goes ahead, but promises around casinos are hard to believe. When Vancouver city council approved slots at Edgewater’s Plaza of Nations casino in 2004, arts groups were promised they would get more money, Planet Bingo was promised a new home and the city was promised $10 million to $12 million in new revenue.
None of that happened. Arts and charities are getting less money now from gambling than they did in 1995, Planet Bingo is still being promised a new home and the city has been getting $6.3 million in revenue since Edgewater came out of bankruptcy.
All this is a follow-on to PavCo’s biggest, wildest overrun, the new convention centre, which started as a $495 million project and ended up costing more than $883 million.
It’s time for some house cleaning at PavCo.
Premier Christy Clark is promising us a “families first” province. Let’s hope that doesn’t mean turning the keys to BC Place over to the family of Paragon Gaming executive Diana Bennett, whose cousin Scott Menke is Paragon’s CEO and whose late father bought Circus Circus Las Vegas and turned it into a “family destination.”
At least let the citizens decide, not PavCo.