City Council President Connie Robinson Announces Her Intention to Vote NO on Mayor’s Hotel Deal

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Connie Robinson

09/19/13

News Release

I would like to thank John Friend, Finance Chairman, for all the extra hours he spent working on the financial evaluation of this project. I appreciate the Mayor always being available to meet with the leadership of council. I informed the Mayor on Wednesday morning I could not support this current proposal for the downtown hotel; I intend to vote NO on Monday.

I feel we need to use our limited resources on what will give us the best economic boom and that would be the IU Medical School. The IU Medical School will provide our urban core with a greater collateral benefit and higher wages than a hotel. The IU Medical School will provide twelve hundred (1,200) full-time jobs vs. two hundred full-time part-time jobs at the hotel. The medical school if located downtown will foster other developments including a hotel which the city would not have to subsidize at fifty (50) percent.

I believe in public/private partnerships and I also believe we need a hotel downtown. However, I am concerned we have not developed a master plan that would become a referral source for current and future developments. The Mayor and the City Council need to be the driving force to get the IU Medical School to the downtown area. We must have a competitive and attractive proposal and this can only be done with us working as a team.

We have many challenges with limited funds confronting our community and we have to be careful not to deplete the resources needed to foster future development in our city. I will vote NO on the current plans for the downtown convention hotel.

Connie Robinson

14 COMMENTS

  1. Thank you Ms. Robinson. The medical school possibility is only one reason for a no vote, and a huge money commitment leaving little to no room to move is another big one. I am very impressed with each council member working through this issue in their own way and coming to their own conclusions. This independent yet coordinated thinking has not been seen from any Evansville city council in more years than I care to imagine. What a breath of fresh air from most of these thinking people. Now it is time to move forward to a better plan for Evansville.

  2. Thanks Connie, and to all who have fulfilled their duties as
    Representatives of the Citizenry, above all else.
    I know tremendous pressures have bee applied to every one of you.
    Again: Thank you so VERY much. …

  3. Thanks Connie, Please Please Please do not let Marsha Abells threat to close the Centre’s door sway your vote this Monday.

    • Her facts were dead on correct and her threats were real. Where was County Commissioner Winnecke when Weinzapfel tore down the Executive Inn and broke his contract? He is protecting that guy for some reason and he has been for a long time.

      Jeeze Wayne, you were a businessman. What would you do if a neighbor cut off your revenue stream? What would Chancellor have done? What the City did to the Centre was criminal and deliberate. The guy who runs the city now sat there like a loyal little girl and let it happen.

    • Hey, Wayne, perhaps Marsha should stop under-reporting the true revenues of the Centre, under-stated by 4.1 million dollars. Perhaps the SBOA needs to review the situation.

  4. Connie: This project is in your Ward. A convention hotel (in-place) will help attract the IU Med Center to be downtown. Let us do both–hotel and IU Med Center. You need to rethink your position.

    • Heh. It should tell you something when even the Democrat in whose Ward this hotel would have been built was against it.

      Think about it, Wayne. 😉

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