The amount owed to Manitoba taxpayers for the construction of Investors Group Field continues to soar and there seems to be no end in sight to the growing tab.

Taxpayers are now owed $191.4 million for the cost of building the troubled football stadium, up nearly $5 million from last year and $31 million over the original $160-million loan, according to the University of Manitoba's 2016 annual report.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers have made payments of $2 million on its share of the taxpayer loan as of March 31. But the football team is still concentrating primarily on paying off a separate $10-million bank loan to cover stadium cost overruns. The Bombers are expected to start making full payments on their share of the taxpayer loan next year, a loan that continues to be interest-free for them until December 2017.

But even if the Bombers do manage to come up with the $4 million to $5 million a year in principal and interest payments beginning next year, the overall amount owed to taxpayers is still expected to grow.

That's because the original $160-million loan is split into two parts: a $75-million loan that's supposed to be paid off from property tax revenues generated at the old stadium site at Polo Park and an $85-million loan to be repaid from Bombers' revenue and other events at the stadium. So far, though, the Polo Park site has only produced about $2 million in property taxes through the tax increment financing scheme set up by the former NDP government. And it doesn't look very promising that whatever ends up at that site will be able to generate much more in the near future.

The Target store that opened there in 2014 shut its doors last year and no prospective tenant has announced plans to move in. But even if the former Target space is filled with one or more retail outlets, the property taxes generated there still won't be enough to repay Phase One of the stadium loan. And by Dec. 31, 2037, the city of Winnipeg is no longer obligated to hand over property taxes from the Polo Park site to Triple B Stadium Inc., the organization set up to run the stadium and pay off its loans.

As of March 31, the balance of the Phase One loan stood at $108.4 million. At 4.65% interest, the Polo Park site would have to generate over $8 million a year to repay the $108.4 million loan by the end of 2037. That seems very unlikely for a piece of property that was purchased last year for $18.5 million by Cadillac Fairview, which also owns Polo Park Shopping Centre.

Right now the Polo Park site is generating about $2 million a year in city and provincial property taxes, not even close to covering the $5 million a year the loan is accumulating in interest charges. And the longer the Polo Park site sits empty, the higher the loan payments will be if there's any chance of paying it off by 2037.

If it's not paid off by 2037, then what? If the city of Winnipeg sticks to the original TIF deal and stops remitting property tax revenue from the Polo Park site to Triple B by the end of 2037 and there's still a massive balance on the Phase One loan, who will pay?

I think we all know the answer to that.

The Bombers won't have to pay off that portion of the loan. They're only responsible for the Phase Two loan. And when you ask government and Triple B officials how the Phase One loan will ever be repaid, since the math doesn't add up, all you get is silence. Crickets.

Nobody wants to talk about this elephant in the room. Because at the end of the day, it will be taxpayers who will get stuck with the bill.

And the politicians, civil servants, football brass and Triple B executives who cooked up this fantasy deal in the first place won't be around in 21 years to deal with the fallout.