Bigwigs To Dallas Taxpayers: Let’s Run A Hotel!
Look out for that steamroller, folks. Now the Powers That Be are urging the city of Dallas–i.e., Dallas taxpayers–to own a new convention-center hotel outright, not merely finance it. The most telling part of this morning’s DMN article about the scheme came courtesy of A.C. Gonzalez, the assistant city manager. Absent city ownership, Gonzalez is quoted as saying, “the numbers did not work in regards to this particular project. We had a project that just did not pencil out.” Translation: The hotel does not make economic sense on its own merits. Is anybody besides the Observer paying attention to this?
16 Comments to “Bigwigs To Dallas Taxpayers: Let’s Run A Hotel!”
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I urge you to contact your City Council representative and let her or him know that our City and its citizens should not be in the hotel business. We all want more conventions (and respect the noble goals of Phillip Jones and the DCVB) but this is taking money from citizens (and other projects) in order to finance a massive project that does not positively pro forma. No developer wants to take this on so our City should take it on? DCVB and City Council…your passion is outstripping your business sense.
If you want to increase convention center business, designate that proposed hotel site as an exclusive adult-oriented business zone. Upscale strip clubs (which Dallas is famous) equal more convention biz plus no need for taxpayers to subsidize some black hole hotel scheme.
Not to worry. I’m sure that Leppert has a plan. Perhaps he can take all of the excess revenue that the Trinity Parkway will earn and use it to fund hotel construction.
Wasn’t our Mayor run out of Hawaii? I knew he was up to something and he’s saddled right up to “the Boys”, not good. Doesn’t seem to have Dallas’ best interest at heart. Doesn’t he own a huge commercial construction Co?
Call your council member and tell them, Hell no!
The Austin Convention center hotel is owned by the City, and has been in the RED since it opened. This is the same, it will never make a profit.
How does the city justify building a hotel, when no development company will do it??? Because its a money losing venture.
Señor Nathan, I have the faith of many men that our farsighted El Gato has a plan, and a fine one it is sure to be.
I for one cannot wait to meet the many beautiful señoritas in the rooms above the stairs!
Emilio
there are other journalists in dallas covering this story and have been for months
it’s not just the DMN, D or the Observer that cover dallas and the rest of Texas for that matter
expand your daily readings, Mr. Hunter, and you’ll see for yourself
Unlike many of the Dallas City Council’s bad ideas that are only mildly harmful, this one could inflict massive damage on the City’s finances. This is such a bad idea in so many ways….
If the was such a good deal the big hotel corporations would have jumped on this opportunity a long time ago. Now, they can stand on the sidelines, watch, and laugh at our elected “buffoon” squad and their latest folly.
From “Convention Center Not Living Up to Lofty Goals” published by the Washington Post in 2007:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....01431.html
“The center was promised to bring out-of-towners who stayed in hotels and spent money,” said Heywood Sanders of the University of Texas at San Antonio, who studies the performance of convention centers and is a longtime critic of such publicly financed projects. “They routinely overpromise, and they never do what they’re supposed to do. The question is how badly they perform. Putting in a hotel is no guarantee that it will improve the center’s performance.”
Playing devil’s advocate here: The city shouldn’t look at the project the same way a private developer does. The private developer can only look at the hotel’s cash flows (revenue from room rentals, expenses from construction and operation). These developers may determine that it doesn’t make sense for them to do the project based on those criteria, but that does not mean the city shouldn’t do it. If the city builds it when a private developer won’t, the city should alos count the benefit from the increased property taxes and the increases in sales tax collections.
I don’t know all the numbers, but don’t use the “private sector can’t get the numbers to work” rationale to explain that the city shouldn’t do it.
BF. If the city owned it, they would not have to pay property tax, or sales tax. So, they are not increasing the tax roll. They are actually lowering it by taking the parking lot off the books.
I’m concerned that our “Let’s Make a Deal” Mayor is focusing on an area in which he will absolutely benefit i.e. his hidden construction company contacts funneling money to his coffers. Since he arrived in town he has put forward a number of grandiose idea’s with little concern for the day to day functions of the city which should be the Mayor’s focus(look at the areas of sanitation, road reapirs/resurfacing or code enforcement).
If a city owned hotel is such a good idea, put it to the vote. The common man of Dallas isn’t going to have a Dallas National membership or a secret handshake deal with a Hunt, Hicks, Jones, et al.
Mr. Mayor, do the job you were elected to do. I for one, don’t care if we get the National Slaughterhouse Owners National Meeting or another batch of Mary Kay’s in town. I do want to see some semblance of effectiveness from the myriad of City services we already have in place.
Listening to Leppert on the radio this morning, he seemed to be primarily focused on the hotel’s impact on the commercial tax base for the city center. You can count on them to always do what’s good for the city government and “public servants.”
Dallas is woefully lacking in city-wide conventions that bring tremendous amounts of revenue to the city. In the early 90s, Dallas was attracting a fair amount of business - what happened? Nothing is even in the pipeline for the coming years.Don’t tell me it’s not because we don’t have a “convention center hotel.” The Hyatt is across the street from the convention center.
The Gaylord Texan seems to be doing a ton of convention business. Why is that facility able to accomplish what the Dallas Convention Center is unable to accomplish? I’m opposed to the convention center hotel in general, but I have to wonder if it’s not related to the fact that there is a hotel at the Gaylord that is attached to the convention facility, so attendees don’t have to get bussed around, which nobody really likes. And it’s close to the airport, which is an advantage that the downtown convention center can’t match either. There are a lot of other interesting things to do and places to eat nearby the Gaylord, but that part of downtown near the convention center has few dining and entertainment options.
If I were picking a convention location, why would I choose Dallas over Indianapolis, which is a less-interesting city in general but has a very developed downtown area right next to the convention center, not to mention 3 or 4 big hotels adjacent?