Home  News Local News Commission green lights $400 M project
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Commission green lights $400 M project |
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Written by Sonia Morgan
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Sunday, 15 June 2008 |
 A deal brokered between Broward County and Hilton to build a hotel at the Broward Convention Center is raising concerns, as it will require the county to earmark more than $7 million in tourism taxes annually to market the hotel.
County commissioners accepted the deal at the Broward County Commission meeting on Tuesday– a decision which has opened doors for criticism from small hoteliers and others in opposition of the agreement.
Supporter of the deal, Commissioner Stacy Ritter told the National Weekly it makes sense to have a hotel at the convention center. “We have never had a convention center hotel and when people have a convention they like to stay on-site. And essentially we are competing with Denver and Phoenix and we constantly come up short.”
Commissioner Suzanne Gunzburger, who also backed the deal, said the plan may not have been ideal, but it will ensure that the hotel is built and that money from the county would not be compromised.
But, small hoteliers are disgruntled that the $7 million which the county will put up, is from bed-tax collected from hotel stays in Broward County, and which they say will ultimately go towards marketing the competition.
Commissioner Ritter, however, suggests that “There’s no competition between the smaller hotels and the Hilton and the convention center hotel is market specific.” She also pointed out that $3.5 million of that money should come from the hotel itself. “The opposition is saying that we are marketing for one hotel but the fact is that it will be putting us on the map [as far convention centers go] which will be beneficial to other hotels,” she added.
Supporters of the bill placed emphasis on the economic benefits, especially through job creation, that the hotel would bring to the area. Ritter said “even the people who are not supportive of the idea admit that it will create jobs.”
The new hotel is projected to create over 1000 jobs during construction, and about 480 full time jobs upon completion, not counting temporary workers.
John Beckford, vice president of client services at Employment Resources Inc., a proponent for the passage of the measure echoes Ritter’s sentiments. He said his company – a staffing company owned by Marcia McPherson – like many other minority businesses stand to benefit from the erection of the hotel. He told the National Weekly the company has been providing temporary help staffing at the convention center since 1994. “In those 14 years we have provided several hundred jobs which translate economic benefits for Broward residents.”
To that end, candidate for Broward County Commissioner, Dale Holness added it would mean, “Jobs, jobs, jobs! With Lauderhill and Central Broward having some of the highest unemployment rates in Broward County, I can do nothing less than support this convention hotel and I asked the developers to put training programs in place and reach out to parts of our county that have the highest unemployment and poverty rate to ensure that all of Broward County benefits from the job creation and the economic developments that will occur from the building of this hotel.”
According to Beckford, a hotel at the convention center would attract more and larger conventions and could easily provide a 15 to 20 percent increase for Employment Resources Inc and the trickle down impact will be “key for us both in providing jobs for the people in our labor pool and providing continued success, viability and growth for the business.”
With the projected plusses to building the hotel Commissioners Ritter and Gunzburger along with Diana Wasserman-Rubin, Kristin Jacobs and Ken Keechl supported the financing, while Mayor Lois Wexler and Commissioners Ilene Lieberman, Josephus Eggelletion and John Rodstrom stood in opposition.
The cost of the hotel is estimated at about $400 million and is expected to be ready by for the ribbon cutting by 2011-2012, according to Ritter. The hotel has been long on the county’s agenda ever since the erection of the convention center in the 1980s.
But, those in opposition of the deal are still skeptical about using public money for marketing, despite Broward’s lawyer, Noel Pfeffer’s assurance that the state law would allow the county to use the hotel taxes to market the 1,000-room hotel.
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