Of course, with the help of more tax subsidies;
City officials announced that Fairway Suites will develop a hotel on the southeast side of Elmwood Golf Course.
The City and Fairway Suites will begin negotiations on a lease agreement for the proposed site. A final agreement would then need to be approved before a project could proceed.
“We are very pleased to be working with the City of Sioux Falls to develop a hotel on the Elmwood site,” says Brian Burton, Chief Operating Officer for Fairway Suites, LLC. “With the opening of the new Denny Sanford PREMIER Center and efforts focused on the redevelopment of the surrounding area, we feel that the long-term outlook for the location is very promising.”
While I am not opposed to leasing the land to the hotel, the city in no way shape or form be involved with subsidizing or building this facility. The city should not be in the business of providing lodging. We have already given away millions (TIFs & River Greenway bulk head) to the DT Hilton. This a prime example of why hand-out Mike and his team (Smith) need to go.
As I suspected the city will have financial ties in the hotel;
http://www.argusleader.com/story/news/2014/03/27/city-will-share-profits-new-elmwood-gc-hotel/6959991/
When they say ‘share profits’ they fail to mention that we will also be ‘sharing expenses’. I think this is not a good precedent for the city. Like I said above, I am cool with leasing the property (Did you know the Phillips Avenue Diner leases their property from the city)? I think it is a bad idea for the city to competing with any private industry, especially lodging. This smells fishy.
Fairway Suites is not a national chain. There’s no reservation system. The composure of the new council should check out budget associated with this hotel. Less than 6 months ago the city stated they were building a new hotel. They backed off when unfair competition with other private hotels became evident. It’s suspicious there’s suddenly a new hotel business nobody’s heard of. I’m hoping area hotels consider an antitrust class action against the city.
This actually isn’t too bad a deal for the City in that they get more rooms built out there with very little risk and the Kansas company seems happy to be here.
The Brimark up the street is adding an indoor pool & waterslide as well, so we can see before too long if that will ruin that neighborhood too.
It’s fishy because this is the ONLY proposal that came in after their RFP, and I’m sure in order to make this work and to create the notion that there is “spin-off development” happening, the city needed to do all they could to make sure this was a concrete plan from the beginning.
Lipstick on an already ugly pig.
Dan, read the linked story, they will have to name the hotel something else.
Sy, they said the same thing about the Pavilion.
Hey, call it Sanford. What’s troubling is the city could become involved in an antitrust suit. The city attorney is green and doesn’t expect it. City leaders don’t care. It’s taxpayer liability. Private hotels can make more money giving away rooms awaiting a lost revenue award. Free rooms do not generate city tax.