RIM Park

a park in uptown Waterloo, which is causing the city much grief. The financing seems off, and so the city is suing the groups that financed the park (the interest rate they are getting is fishy, and not what they were told they were getting), and it's generally the most interesting thing happening in the KW Area, Ontario in 2001.

Disclaimer: The previous statements contain statements about statements that haven't been proven in court yet, so don't sue me, I'm just free-speaching and heresaying.

Note: the RIM in the name refers to Research in Motion, a local high-tech company, which is not in any way involved in any of the lawsuits, to the best of my knowledge. They just bought the naming rights.

As an additon to the write-up above, RIM was somewhat involved in the financing scandal, although it was not directly their fault.

The story is that RIM financed this park in the middle of the dot-com boom, when their share price was very high, by giving a large amount of shares to the city. However, instead of selling right away to get the cash to fund the park, the city decided to hold on for a bit longer to milk some extra cash for the park. Unfortunately, the stock tanked with the market, and well after work on the construction on the park had started, the value of the contribution had become much less than what they had expected.

The big 'scandal' centers around who should have seen the stock dropping and who was managing it (which had nothing to do with RIM at all).