Bob Mackin
The Creative Energy plant near B.C. Place and the Georgia Viaduct (Google)
Ian Gillespie, the titan of tall towers in downtown Vancouver, met June 13 with Deputy Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Grant Main.
Gillespie, whose Westbank Developments built the Telus Gardens, Living Shangri-La and Fairmont Pacific Rim, hired ex-B.C. Pavilion Corporation CEO Dana Hayden to lobby the government earlier this year to sell him land east of B.C. Place Stadium.
Gillespie’s Creative Energy owns the natural gas-fired steam plant next to the stadium. On Sept. 26, the B.C. Utilities Commission turned down his bid for Creative’s city hall-granted district energy monopoly in Chinatown and Northeast False Creek. The regulator disagreed with the Vision Vancouver majority city council.
Transportation and Infrastructure is the ministry responsible for both B.C. Place and the adjacent Georgia Viaduct.
Vision wants to demolish both the Georgia Viaduct and Dunsmuir Viaduct, which is part of the provincial Highway 99A route.
So what did the developer and the mandarin discuss?
A Freedom of Information request for notes from the meeting turned up a single, heavily censored page that mysteriously reads: Ian Gillespie, Ministry of Environment, Biomass is.
TRA-2016-63630 by BobMackin on Scribd
