While many players and members of the Vancouver community may have banded together to lobby and make their plays for the waterfront casino project that had been proposed over a year ago, the long debate is over and the efforts wasted. According to Tuesday’s CTV News story, Vancouver will not be getting the provinces newest or largest casino and Mayor Gregor Robertson has asked moratorium on “any or all applications to expand current gaming.”
Well known “November Niner” and Edgewater representative Matthew Jarvis was amongst those advocates participating in the week long debates and also one of the man expressing their disappointment in the unanimous city council vote down of the controversial project.
When talks first began, one of the biggest selling points was that money generated from the venture would have offset the over $560 million in roof replacement and repair costs to BC Place, which would have been the casinos new neighbor. While the necessary repair costs where said to be unmanageable without a solid plan like the Edgewater expansion would have provided, the $510 million dollar provincial loan needed, will now be repaid in other ways, though the answers as to how was just to in-depth and complicated to be given at the time.
It maybe only fitting that this new chapter of players vs politicians was written just days after online Poker’s “Black Friday”.
Absolutely ridiculous – big mistake, what a bunch of idiots. Our government is such a contradiction…