When federal officials in 1994 approved a $5 million loan to build a sports complex in Puerto Rico, they had no way of knowing that the facility would never be built and the money would never be returned.
Department of Housing and Urban Development officials approved the loan to build the Sports City Complex in Vieques, Puerto Rico, with completion projected for 1996, according to a report by the department’s inspector general that was made public Tuesday.
The Vieques complex was to include a main recreational building with a cafeteria and a basketball/volleyball court with seating for 1,000 spectators.
There would also be three handball courts, three game rooms, three child care rooms, an exercise room and a swimming pool. Two baseball fields, each with seating for up to 3,000 spectators, completed the project.
But the Vieques Sports City Complex was never built because an environmentalist lawsuit dragged on unresolved for nearly a decade before it was settled.
Unfortunately, the project had been abandoned by the time the lawsuit was settled. By that time, an additional $5.8 million in federal tax dollars from another HUD program had also been spent on the project.
Wary HUD officials had long been warning Puerto Rican officials about sloppy bookkeeping on the project by the time they threatened sanctions in 2002 if the original loan was not settled.
Puerto Rican officials were warned a dozen times between 2002 and 2012. But HUD’s threatened sanctions never materialized.
Today in 2014, the HUD IG reports that “the failed sports complex was abandoned and not completed, materials and equipment were unaccounted for and the intended benefit was not realized.”
According to the IG, “HUD allowed the situation to continue for more than 11 years” with a result that “more than $10.8 million in federal funds were spent developing a project that was never completed and low- and moderate-income persons did not receive the intended benefit.”
Go here to read the full HUD IG report.
Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.
