Quote:
Originally Posted by bomberjet
So is Chipman really the bad man he's been portrayed to be? Let me summarize the series of events and tell me where I am wrong in this. Please.
-Longboat secures the 1 year option on developing the MPI lots. This has now dragged on for a couple years. Maybe something nefarious there.
-Longboat is in talks with MLL about locating their head office (and maybe has secured such a lease?) at SoPo or TN Square. Nothing wrong with that.
-Convention Centre expansion requires a hotel as part of the project. Okay.
-Deloitte is courting MLL to locate at their development, with StuartOlson, as part of the convention centre hotel. Okay.
-CV maybe strings Deloitte along keeping their options open. Ultimately tells them MLL is locating at SoPo. Is there something wrong with that? The convention centre things requires a hotel. Not an office, residential, hotel complex. Doesn't seem MLL should have ever been part of anything with the Convention Centre.
-Is it a bit iffy that Chipman has been on the board of CV, who is directly involved with all of this downtown development stuff. Well yeah, but do you know exactly what's been talked about. Maybe that's why Chipman isn't involved anymore with CV. To eliminate this conflict of interest?
I'm impartial, just trying to weed through all of this.
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Deloitte is the consulting firm brought in to assess potential space for MLCC. In order to avoid the appearance of what everybody already knows to be true, the province goes and brings in a consultant to given the impression that an independent analysis was done and it turns out SoPo is the best alternative. Of course. It's made even easier when the list of potential new builds in the downtown is down to one.
Secondly, Mark Chipman sat on that board for a long time. It's more telling that he's not on it now than it being some coincidence or a good man trying to avoid a conflict of interest. The shit was about to hit the fan and he ran for cover. In the meantime, he's used CV as his personal land assembly piggy-bank wherein he uses your money to overpay for things he's going to ultimately give himself at a discount. And then when that transaction is done, he's going to use your DRGP money to underwrite the downside risk of the development. You're a very generous, unassuming individual, obviously.
And again, we don't know for certain what's happening with the option on the Carlton site because counter to their legal and ethical requirements to divulge their dealings to council and the public, Centreventure just didn't. The Convention Centre, as part of their funding agreements with the different levels of government, was supposed to have a hotel attached to it. This was told to be the only way to make the whole project work. Leaving aside the merits of that argument, the money flowing was conditional upon that caveat. The Calrton Inn site was then purchased and the new hotel had to go there. It had to. But it was also convenient that the hotel was a flood evacuee problem and had to go. This obviously ran counter to the best interests of Chipman who had just secured a site 100' away. Stuart Olson's (unsigned and unenforceable) contract originally included a $16MM holdback in the event they couldn't find another hotel partner to replace the one they had originally had. They sent Colliers out to find them another one. CV then told Colliers that they were to cease & desist from marketing the property even though Stuart Olson was already ostensibly under contract to build a hotel there and needed a partner.
As a result, CV called Stuart Olson to the table and said, look, don't worry about it, give us $3.75MM instead of the $16MM you owe us and you're off the hook for the hotel. It now turns out that they had unknowingly negotiated that settlement on behalf of the taxpayers at three separate levels with a signed option from True North already in hand. In other words, they stymied Stuart Olson's ability to develop the lot, signed an option with somebody whose interests lie solely in
not developing the site , and then let Stuart Olson walk paying less then 25% of their penalty which will no doubt be made up in the form of fictitious change orders on the Convention Centre.
Mark Chipman and his family are the biggest welfare fraudsters in our city. They brought a hockey team here so the fawning praise never ceases, but they are actively working against the best interests of the public purse and they've done it with total impunity.
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