New Hotel Site Adjacent to Port of Nanaimo Centre

What's Wrong With This Picture?

While attending the open house at the newly opened Port of Nanaimo Centre I took a look at the site of the new hotel which is supposedly being built by Millenium-Suro as part of their agreement with the City of Nanaimo.

As you will recall this developer missed deadline after deadline in it's original bid to build a much larger hotel on this site. Under this new agreement with the City of Nanaimo the footings were to have been poured by May 31/08. Clearly that is not happening.

In the local News Bulletin Coun. Jeet Manhas is quoted as saying the city is satisfied with the progress being made and they are in touch with Millenium on a daily basis. Manhas says the delay is being caused by geotechnical engineering which is a fancy way of saying soil testing.

Manhas is further quoted as saying 'if soil tests check out, footings will be poured as soon as possbile. He went on to say " we are more concerned about the other end, the completion date, taking a little more time at the beginning to make sure everything is right is important to ensure it is completed on time".

Editors Comments: Soil testing is one of the first things to be done if you are planning on construction. So why would this testing not have been done ages ago? Further, due to the close proximity to the PNC what would make anyone think soil conditions would be much different a few feet away?
Question for Counc. Manhas and Council; when were the core samples taken and why have the results not been complete by now? Who is actually doing the testing and has it been confirmed?
The comment that 'if the soil tests check out' sounds major alarm bells and raises a whole host of red flags! If this soil is subject to the same remediation as the PNC center, what does that mean to the cost of construction and when in fact would the footings actually be poured?
This construction site does not contain anything more than some fencing, a few pieces of rented equipment and a very small hole in the ground.
For a project that was due to have footings poured seven days ago, this whole thing does not look very promising.
Is this the same company which has already received the deed for the properties on the old arena site?
I sincerely hope my concerns are unfounded, but right now this project has a very distinct ordour about it.