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The Vancouver Olympic Village is in receivership.
Debt-plagued developer Millennium ceded control Wednesday to Ernst and Young in the latest chapter of the Southeast False Creek saga.
"This is going to take years to work through," Mayor Gregor Robertson admitted in a hastily called city hall news conference. “We won’t know probably for a few more years what impact there will be on taxpayers.”
The city petitioned B.C. Supreme Court Wednesday to appoint Ernst and Young. Millennium owed $740 million but could not find common ground with city hall on a loan repayment formula or a new marketing plan to jumpstart slow sales of luxury condominiums.
Court filings show Millennium's lawyer emailed the city Aug. 9 to say the company couldn't afford a $200 million payment due Aug. 31. Extension talks failed, but Millennium paid $192 million by the deadline. The city claimed Sept. 3 that Millennium defaulted. On Sept. 9 the city declared Millennium owed the full $560,839,389.04 balance plus $107,080.69 daily interest.
Lawyer Mitchell Gropper, acting for the city, said the two parties unsuccessfully negotiated Oct. 18 to Nov. 5.
“The city then worked very, very hard on two tracks, one is are we going to go to court or are we going to negotiate a settlement,” Gropper said. “Fortunately we were able to arrive at a settlement.”
Millennium partners Shahram Malekyazdi and Peter Malek were not at the news conference and Ballem did not say whether they were invited. She said they signed a non-disclosure agreement about the receivership settlement.
“There were tough business decisions made,” said the project’s marketer Bob Renine. “Millennium delivered probably the world’s greatest Olympic Village but it got caught in the world economy.
“Now we can pay attention to maximizing revenue and stabilizing this asset.”