Convention Centre springs a leak
Posted April 28, 2009 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: BC Liberals, Economy
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The biggest costing failure of the government of the past four years has been the downtown Vancouver convention centre – the original budget was $495 million (mysteriously like the projected 2009 BC Budget deficit!), while the actuals have come around $880 million.
The government was probably breathing a sigh of relief when it finally opened to the public in early April – even though the project was massively over budget, it was a done deal, and would be out of the public spotlight during election time.
Unfortunately during a convention of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, a water main leak sprung and the centre had to be evacuated. According to the Province:
Convention-centre general manager Ken Cretney said the damage was limited to water damage and he doesn’t expect costs to be excessive.
“There’s no injuries or permanent damage, just a lot of cleanup,” he said.
Cretney said the leak was not due to shoddy construction. “It can happen anywhere, anytime, new or old buildings.”
Whether “it can happen anywhere, anytime, new or old” could be true. Or it could be not. In terms of public optics, however, the easy inference to make was that there might be something wrong with the construction.
I truly hope this was a one-off incident, but the timing of this has just been very unfortunate for the BC Liberal government, since it was anticipated that the budgetary failure of the Vancouver convention centre would have been a footnote of this campaign.