The City Of Evansville Deserves A First Class HotelÂ
Evansville, IN – Mayoral candidate Gail Riecken at a press conference today discussed the future downtown convention hotel. While construction has started on the parking garage that will serve both the hotel and the future IU medical center, construction of the actual hotel is yet to begin. The original plan proposed by the Mayor and approved by the City Council was a first class, 10-story hotel with a roof top bar, indoor pool and apartments. What we are getting is a completely different hotel.
“No one – and I mean no one – wants a downtown convention hotel more than I do,†said Riecken. She continued, “A first class hotel the people of Evansville can afford would be a big boost for the downtown. A first class hotel is what we the taxpayers were sold by the Winnecke Administration. A first class hotel is what this city deserves. Unfortunately, the hotel being built is neither first class nor affordable.“
In building this hotel the Winnecke administration was so desperate to get it done they failed four times. In the end, the residents of Evansville are getting a cheaper hotel and still paying the same price, which ends up being a higher percentage of the total cost.
“After four years of failure the Winnecke administration is desperate to do something – Anything!†said Riecken. “First, the administration failed when it could not convince City Council to fund a shockingly high public subsidy in the hotel approaching $40 million. Second, the administration failed when the Winnecke administration recruited an investor to “bail out†the city in order to save the hotel deal. The deal fell millions short because the investment in the hotel and the Old National Events Plaza naming rights were not worth the price promised.  As quickly as the “bail out†came in, it disappeared. Third, the administration failed when it scrapped the original first class hotel concept for the motel we now see. The developer would not finance a first class project without more free city money – smaller, less amenities, and a lower class of hotel is the result. Fourth, the administration failed when the overall price of the project went down but the City taxpayers’ financial commitment went up. We are paying more and getting less.â€
Gail Riecken is running for Mayor of Evansville and is a former Evansville City Council woman, Evansville Parks Director, and a current member of the Indiana State House of Representatives. She is a lifelong Evansville resident and has been married for 46 years, has 2 children and 3 grandchildren.
We agree !
The hatchet-job the C&P is doing on her for these comments is sickening. Their “poll” is either being tampered with or the people voting in it have never been to a decent hotel.
I think Ms. Riecken’s coverage has been quite favorable. The press conference is getting wide coverage, her primary points are being clearly reported, the provocative “blight” comment is being mentioned time and time again. This was extremely well done as a tactical matter, the GR team did this very well, and the C&P has near entirely done what they wanted them to do.
‘I think Ms. Riecken’s coverage has been quite favorable.’ ~ Becker
Sure you do, you’re a Winnecke functionary.
The CP has been anything but fair to Gail Riecken. A while back they ran an editorial lauding the new Moped law. They mentioned Suzanne Crouch and ‘other legislators’ but didn’t mention Gail’s name at all. She co-authored the bill. I’m sure you think that is quite favorable treatment too.
If the Winnecke administration was half as transparent as you are they’d have at least one accomplishment they could point to.
If you are under some delusion you’re making sense Bandana, it’s only w/ the guy you see in the mirror. The rest of the world is driving you to paranoia.
Becker, you’re a phony fruitcake and a cheapo Winnecke hugger. Enjoy your fine new Blight Motel. Sucker. You’re another example of Wnnnie The Poop plumbing the very depths of what’s available for his little operatives. You’ll always have your little orange bottle.
Bandana! Whew! What the hell is this? I like to equate the Tea Party guys as rearing their heads from their bunkers, so paranoid that even longstanding Republican people they swear are liberal commie socialists. Bandana, you are so wrapped up in the Mayor’s election, so STRESSED over the whole thing (look at your writing here. “sucker, operatives, poop-plumbing, winnecke-hugger”) that you’ve joined them!! Your writing here is the most paranoid thing I’ve ever seen! It’s worse than the “country-boy-can-survive mater-wine” Tea Party bunker boys! Get a life! Riecken is doing a good job. But….You’re like a swearing, growling, wounded animal gritting his teeth at everyone in the room as you retreat to your corner!
We need a first class hotel in downtown…Meanwhile, the rest of the city infrastructure, finance, prosperity, and standard of living are crumbling down!
Don’t like Gail. However what’s said about the DoubleBubble is true. It’s a bait and switch car salesman style to the max.
Blighted Winnecke Wide motel downtown (BWW from now on).
“Let’s have drinks at B-Dub’s !”
Dear Missy Mosby, Jonathan Weaver, Kelly Coures, Paul Green, Jack McNeely, Mayor Winnecke and the rest of your FB friends and followers:
Our parks are worse than they were four years ago, our roads and streets are worse, virtually NOTHING has been done about the Combined Sewers, the City’s finances are much worse, we can’t get our streets plowed in the winter(supposedly it doesn’t snow enough to justify buying enough snow ploughs to do the side streets, riiiight), the Victory loses money, the Zoo loses money, the Arena loses money and yet YOU cite the Hotel/Motel (whatever) as progress!!!!!
Man you and your followers are really full of yourselves, and of course anyone who points out these inconvenient facts is labeled a hater who trashes Evansville.
Try to get this through your head. Motel/Hotel, 5 stories, 10 stories, indoor pool, outdoor pool, it isn’t going to matter. The amount of convention business we’re going to get wouldn’t fill an eye dropper. This is going to be the biggest flop since Gigli. It will make New Coke look like marketing genius.
The convention business has been declining for over 10 years and will continue to do so. It has a 35% overcapacity of space, yet you insist on saddling Evansville and it’s taxpayers with this huge white elephant.
I don’t care what numbers Bob Warren pulls out of thin air our share of the convention business will be only what few Indiana groups and businesses that required a southern rotation in their conventions. Event planners will be laughing in our collective faces.
Gail Riecken is correct, this will become a blight on Evansville for years.
Instead of doing your jobs for the last four years you have done almost nothing except obsess over this stupid Hotel/Motel, whatever you want to call it.
THANKS FOR NOTHING!
Representative Riecken is committed to tearing down this blight and will issue a decree to that effect within 30 minutes of her inauguration as mayor, however far the construction has advanced. There are many investors known to her and her campaign who are more than willing to drop $150 million on a new 20-story downtown hotel, with no need for a public subsidy.
It is obvious that this is so. No one with a functioning mind would believe that a mayor who was on the record repeatedly calling the Republican Winnecke’s hotel a “blight” would then place herself in the position of having to use the blighted hotel to house visitors from prospective businesses looking to come to Evansville. Some will say that cities competing for convention business and other travel will use her loud comments about the Evansville BlightTel to discourage people from coming to Evansville, but surely no one in that extremely competitive type of business would ever dream of using her comments that way.
Finally, let me remind you that Representative Riecken is an authority on hotels and motels. She gained a great deal of experience with them when she fled her job to Illinois with the other Indiana Democratic legislators.
J. Coddington Fetlock IV
Maximum co-coordinator
Organizing for Idiocy
Evansville Cell
Gail Riecken’s mayoral campaign ended 9/3/2015 with her comments about the downtown hotel. The only question now is how wide will be Mayor Lloyd Winnecke’s margin of victory in November!!
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