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Found this in the CH's opinion section?
From Nanaimo nightmare to Halifax horror show?
By ALAN RUFFMAN
Fri, Dec 17 - 4:54 AM
It was not supposed to turn out this way.
The Vancouver Island Convention Centre (VICC) was supposed to revitalize downtown Nanaimo — the home of Nanaimo Bars — by attracting large conventions and the high spending of the numerous delegates.
In fact, it took several extra years to build, it went more than 100 per cent over budget, a number of attempts to win P3 partners failed, the promised next-door downtown hotel has never materialized, one of the unfilled commercial retail spaces has recently been rented to "The Great Canadian Dollar Store" and the centre has just decided to lease space to a rock church!
It was not a pretty story through to the grand opening on June 7, 2008. On the following Nov. 15, Gary Korpan, who had served as mayor for 15 years, lost his re-election bid with a dismal third-place finish and barely 16 per cent of the vote.
Concerned Nova Scotians, and that would include our MPs and our MLAs, I assume, can read of the Nanaimo misadventure with their VICC, a.k.a. the "Port of Nanaimo Centre," in a book, Nanaimo Between Past and Future, co-edited by former Dalhousie professor, Eric W. Ricker and Frances Christopherson. Prof. Ricker retired to his hometown of Nanaimo and became immersed in the public opposition to the project.
B.C.’s municipal act allows councils to hold, or citizens to force, a referendum on municipal spending issues. This was one that went to such a vote. The electorate voted to support a $32-million expenditure that was to include a new hotel that was to be built by a private developer. It all sounds quite familiar, doesn’t it? It was a poorly worded referendum that left the Nanaimo council with the power to vote for overruns that ultimately ran the cost up to over $72.5 million.
There were a couple of failed negotiations for a public-private partnership. In the end, Nanaimo was to get an 18-storey hotel next to the Port Nanaimo Centre that was to be built by two real estate developers, Millennium and Suro Development Company. Millennium has subsequently become infamous when the City of Vancouver had to take over the billion-dollar Olympic Athletes Village from the developer in 2009. In the years before this debacle, Millennium and Suro backed out of their Nanaimo hotel commitment. In mid-June of 2010, the city of Nanaimo filed a $3-million suit against the developers for the municipal costs in the failed scheme.
The Port of Nanaimo Centre has had problems in attracting the bookings needed to remove the centre’s dubbing by critics as "a white elephant that will cost the taxpayers of Nanaimo millions of dollars for years." The City of Nanaimo, which brands itself "The Harbour City," must cover all the annual losses in perpetuity — similar to the situation that Halifax and the province of Nova Scotia will find themselves in with the proposed $160-million underground complex they seem to be so set on for Halifax.
The "high-end" commercial retail spaces in the Port of Nanaimo Centre are now controlled by First Capital Realty, which bought them from the city for $3.78 million, as a company that would attract high-end retailers to downtown — a downtown that was dying as a result of a long string of council-sanctioned suburban developments well to the north of the Central Business District. First Capital has had trouble attracting tenants to the convention centre.
The big news item of last June 17 was that The Great Canadian Dollar store was to move from one space downtown into the "high-end" retail space at the VICC to complete a block of storefronts that include a coffee shop, an insurance company and an eyeglass centre.
First-time city councillor Jim Kipp was forced to put on a brave face and declare, "A dollar store is high-end considering the economic downturn we are coming out of. There was talk in the beginning that they didn’t want certain stores in there because they wanted a certain image, but I have no problems with a dollar store. I am happy to see there are businesses in there and the windows are not empty."
And that’s not all: The Nanaimo Daily News reported on Nov. 27 that the Nanaimo Athletic Commission has "endorsed mixed martial arts fights at the Vancouver Island Conference Centre in order to help stimulate bookings at the facility, which is supplemented by tax money to the tune of $1 million this year."
This, as well as news from early October that the Port of Nanaimo Centre has decided to lease space to a rock church, combined with all its other misadventures in the convention centre business since 2002 when the VICC was hatched, surely can but give second sober thought to Halifax and the province of Nova Scotia?
Or do we already have God on our side with a long-term ecclesiastical rental locked-in for our $160 million proposed underground bunker/dungeon that we will not even own after 25 years of lease payments and annual deficits? At least Nanaimo still owns its white elephant and it is above ground where the taxpayers can all see it!
Allan Ruffman lives in Ferguson’s Cove.
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