“It took well over a year, but Mayor Gregor Robertson and his team has persuaded the explosively growing social-media company Hootsuite to stay in Vancouver.

On Thursday, the city announced it has struck a deal with Hootsuite to let the company buy a Vancouver-owned building in Mount Pleasant through a lease-to-own arrangement. And there will be more efforts like that, says the mayor, as the city fights to nurture fledgling head-office businesses to make up for ones that left over the last two decades.”

See the full article HERE.

Bets are still on that Edgewater Casino will relocate to a site west of B.C. Place Stadium.

Las Vegas-based parent Paragon Gaming has extended its lease with Canadian Metropolitan Properties for the Plaza of Nations casino until 2015 while Paragon and B.C. Pavilion Corporation hold their cards close to the vest.

In April 2011, Vancouver city council rejected a bid to expand the licence from 600 to 1,500 slot machines, but the city gave Paragon the green light to move the licence to a proposed $450 million casino/hotel complex on PavCo land. Company president Scott Menke told the Courier in May that he was expecting to announce the move by the start of August. That was before PavCo CEO Warren Buckley resigned and Jobs, Tourism and Innovation Deputy Minister Dana Hayden took over on Aug. 1.

Read more: http://www.vancourier.com/life/Community+Calendar/7475023/story.html#ixzz2D41OpoMf