Quote:
Originally Posted by Temperance
I hear you. I found the car museum (an the brewseum) both to be strange elements of the DevCore proposal. There are a lot of things I would rather see in that spot. The collection does sound quite valuable, aside from the bizarre fabrications of Demers. I suppose you could view it as tax-payer funded shelter but you could also view it as a valuable donation (not unlike other donations of artifacts). Of course these cars are being loaned rather than donated. If Demers ever removed his cars we would be left with a white elephant.
Irregardless of all this I am still happy with all the public space and public activities contained in the Devcore proposal. It will be interesting to see where the NCC falls on these proposals.
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Demers almost certainly can't find a buyer to fence the cars he's passing off as the originals. In many cases, according to La Presse, he's valuing the vehicles at a 1000% markup from the actual value.
Seriously, read the La Presse article acottawa posted. This is really his only play. He's tried unloading his white elephant collection of forgeries on every single small town in Quebec that'll listen. He's like the monorail guy from the Simpsons. ("I've sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook and by gum it put them on the map!")
To sum up: he wants to unload them but he can't sell them, even to people like the Sultan of Brunei who have more money than brains. His only option is to loan them for 35 years to any city short-sighted enough to display the cars. So for 35 years, he saves the carrying cost of the collection and then at the end of the 35 loan, he gets to negotiate a sweetheart deal for the continued display or sale of the entire collection to whichever city was foolish enough to accept the offer. Once the city builds the car museum on prime land, the city is pretty much screwed from a negotiating perspective when the 35 year window closes.
Heck, Quebec City's mayor even urged other cities thinking about hosting this collection to "think twice" about it.
Also, for what it's worth, "irregardless" isn't a word in the English language. I think you're probably thinking of "irrespective" or "regardless".
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