Olympic Village goes into receivership

The financially troubled Olympic Village in Vancouver has been put into receivership.

The City of Vancouver announced Wednesday that it has negotiated an agreement with the accounting firm Ernst and Young to assume control of the Millennium Southeast False Creek Properties and the Millennium Water development, as the Olympic Village condominium project is now called.

Following the 2010 Winter Games, units in the eight-block, 25-building village were to be turned into a combination of free-market condos and social housing.

But sales never really picked up and in September, Millennium came up short on its loan payment and then said it didn't expect to finish selling the more than 400 remaining units for another 2½ years.

Even before the Games, the developer's original lender stopped paying its loan, forcing the city to step in and secure hundreds of millions of dollars to finish the project in time.

Millennium is scheduled to come up with another $75 million by January, but it is not clear now whether that payment must be made in light of Wednesday's announcement.