Prime Minister Stephen Harper brought us “shovel-ready” projects. Now, Vancouver city manager Penny Ballem is aiming to have the Olympic Village “Athlete Ready” in time for the 2010 Winter Games.

To help do this, Ballem told council today (October 6) the city will fork over a $250,000 bonus for every “parcel” completed on time at the athletes village site. According to the PowerPoint presentation she delivered to a meeting of council’s standing committee on transportation and traffic, there will also be a $1 million bonus if all parcels are “delivered to the City by their respective applicable deadlines”.

After checking with real-estate services director Michael Flanagan, Mayor Gregor Robertson’s assistant Kevin Quinlan confirmed to the Straight that Millennium Development Corp., the developer of the site, will pocket the bonuses for each of the eight parcels involving real estate if they are delivered on time.

Affordable housing components are “generally on schedule”, Ballem stated. Parcel 2, which contains the two buildings at the southwest corner of the development, was completed by October 1, one month ahead of schedule.

Meanwhile, the date for the completion of the civic centre has been pushed back from July 31 to November 1. The old Domtar Salt heritage building on West 1st Avenue is scheduled for completion October 31.

The current projected “market ready” construction budget for the Olympic Village is $873 million, according to Ballem’s presentation.

Ballem’s PowerPoint presentation coincided with today’s release of the long-awaited public report by KPMG, which provided an update on the Olympic Village development and its completion dates.

“There seems to be a degree of consensus around the cost to complete Millennium Water and the City Project,” the KPMG report states. “Unfortunately, less clear is the timing and quantum of revenues that will ultimately be generated from the sale of Millennium Water. This will likely have the largest potential unknown impact on the City’s financial exposure in this matter and while currently available estimates might suggest at this time a relatively neutral outcome for the City, the current state of the real estate market makes forecasting the City’s financial exposure with any degree of precision extremely difficult.”

However, the theme emanating today from Robertson was, “We’re on track.”

“Most importantly, we’re getting on a solid footing with a great project, all the information is being presented, we’re being transparent, and obviously the city will have to manage this project very carefully in the years to come to ensure that we do gain back what was invested by taxpayers to keep this project on track,” Robertson stated in a press scrum outside council chambers during the meeting.

In chambers, prior to council’s 10-0 unanimous vote to adopt the report for information, Robertson thanked Ballem and city staff. (Vision Vancouver council Heather Deal was absent from the meeting.)

Robertson then admitted, as an aside, that the circumstances surrounding the restructuring of the city’s loan to Millennium, and the ensuing worries over the completion and financing of the Olympic Village, amounted to a “train wreck”.