Is oil man buyer of Calgary manor? He's playing coy
Who bought a sumptuous Calgary mansion from former star Flames goalie Mike Vernon for a record price last month? At $10.3-million, it was the highest sale price ever in the city (eclipsing a precrash record of $7.5-million) and the house sold in less than four months.
The real estate agent has said there was more than one bid on the property. One rumour had cable scion Heather Shaw as a possible bidder. But the name thrown up by the city's rumour mill as the lucky buyer is that of Sveinung Svarte, the CEO of Athabasca Oil Sands Corp., which announced a $1.9-billion joint venture transaction with PetroChina this week.
Asked about the house purchase in an e-mail exchange, Mr. Svarte said: "I have heard those rumours ... as well. If you drive by my [current] house you will see signs for a development permit for adding a floor to my house. Those are my current housing plans in Calgary." Pressed further to say directly that he did not buy the property, he did not reply.
Mr. Vernon's former 13,000-square-foot home in the Elbow Park district is a beauty, though there were complaints from neighbours when the National Hockey League star proposed the building in 2004. Described in the listing as a "gracious sandstone estate home privately nestled on a 10,000-square-foot lot along the banks of the Elbow River," the custom-built residence features huge entertaining rooms with French doors that give on to river vistas, private courtyards and formal lawns, and a boat dock.
Mr. Vernon, an investor in the beleaguered Bear Mountain Resort near Victoria, has moved to a home in the Mount Royal area of Calgary.
that's a lot of green
A Gemini Award for a corporate branding exercise? Could happen. The "One Million Acts of Green" Web-based environmental project, partnered by Cisco in Canada and the CBC, is the first co-marketed program to be nominated for a Gemini. It's one of five contenders in the category of Best Cross Platform Project; the award will be presented Oct. 20 in Toronto.
The nine-month OMAoG campaign, launched last October, encouraged Canadians to register "green acts" on an interactive website. Almost two in every 1,000 Canadians registered and completed 1.8 million acts, equivalent to saving more than 100 million kilograms of greenhouse gases, campaign organizers said. Cisco has since taken the idea global.
The project is also in line for an Echo award from the U.S. Direct Marketing Association at its shindig in October, where Jay Leno will crack wise as emcee.
