Sitting in the fifth-floor lounge of L’Hermitage Hotel on Richards Street, Shahram Malek told the Georgia Straight that he was ready to talk about the real-estate project that put his company in newspaper headlines across the country.

Malek, a director at Millennium Development Group, and his brother Peter created Vancouver’s Olympic Village, which includes 1,100 residential units, several commercial outlets, and a community centre.

“I think the Olympic Village has been a catalyst for development of the entire neighbourhood,” Malek said. “We designed, developed, and built the entire Olympic Village, which is comprised of eight city blocks, in 30 months, which is unheard-of.”

He pointed out that his company leased approximately 90 percent of the commercial space, securing major tenants such as Urban Fare, London Drugs, TD Bank, and Legacy Liquor Store.

“We’re also proud of the fact that we rented out the rental buildings and the fact that the community is the first LEED-platinum community in North America and possibly the world.”

In 2008, Millennium’s New York–based lender, Fortress Group, refused to advance any more funds in the midst of a global economic meltdown. In February 2009, the city took over the Fortress loan and claimed that its financing arrangement with Canadian banks saved taxpayers $110 million. In 2010, the City of Vancouver pushed the company that owned the village, Millennium Southeast False Creek Properties Ltd., into receivership.

In an agreement with the city at the time, Millennium turned over 32 properties. Malek estimated to the Straight that the company’s total contribution, including the approximate net sales value of those properties and the cash investment, was approximately $200 million.

“We made a fairly significant investment and we have now also fulfilled all of our financial obligations to the city,” he said.

Malek refused to say anything negative about his dealings with the city or Vanoc, noting only that his company “didn’t have the luxury” of preselling its units, which is typically done in large multifamily projects. In addition, the company couldn’t show the units because of Olympic security considerations. That, he suggested, made it more difficult to market the project.

“It’s something people are enjoying, and it’s something all of us can be proud of as Vancouverites and Canadians,” he said. “It’s something that’s a lasting legacy for our city and we’re very happy with it.”

Not everyone is quite so diplomatic. When contacted by phone, veteran receivership expert David Bowra said that it’s “a very good question” whether the city should have pushed Millennium Southeast False Creek Properties into receivership.

Bowra acknowledged that it’s easy to “second guess from the peanut gallery”, noting that he wasn’t at the table when the decision was made. However, he also stated: “I can assure you, in the almost 40 years that I’ve been practising, if you can avoid receivership, you do so. There are ways to work things out. You sit down with the owners and find a middle ground where you know they may no longer be in control of it. It may well be that the city or the various representatives did attempt to sit down with the developers.”

When asked what was accomplished by pushing the company into receivership, Bowra replied: “I think you will discover that in all likelihood, the benefits were far fewer than the cost. I mean, the project was finished.”

Meanwhile, Vision Vancouver councillor Geoff Meggs has defended the city’s decision to have a receiver take over.

“I think the experience has proved that it was absolutely critical to go into receivership and put a team in charge of maximizing the revenue that was available to retire the city’s debt,” Meggs told the Straight. “But we had no choice but to finish off the Olympic Village at a time when other developers weren’t building anything, because of the Olympic deadline. So at that point, a huge loan had to be undertaken because of the mismanagement by the previous administration, and the receivership made it possible for us to ensure that it was best value for taxpayers, because it was being done under a court-supervised process. So I think it was a decisive point.”

The city announced in late April that it had paid off the debt by selling its interest in the last 67 condos to the Aquilini Group for $91 million.