Evansville City Council Passes Hotel Resolution along Party Lines

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Councilman Dan McGinn who cast the lone no vote for tonight's hotel resolution

Tonight the Evansville City Council voted 8 – 1 along party lines to “support” going forward with negotiations with the Kunkel Group to eventually reach a binding contract to develop a downtown Convention Hotel.

Attorney for the Kunkel Group Krista Lockyear openly emphasized that the Memorandum of Understanding touted Friday by outgoing Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel as “the” hotel agreement was not binding and has no legal standing. The document itself confirms this. Ms. Lockyear made a case that the project was needed for the reported 850 jobs that is has been asserted to create along with the need for a hotel to be used to re-establish a convention business base in Evansville? Bob Warren, the newly hired CEO of the Convention and Visitors Bureau echoed Lockyear’s sentiment in stating that Evansville can only do small meetings and that convention attraction is essentially impossible with the facilities that Evansville has in place now.

Lockyear was explicit in here statement that by voting yes tonight that the City Council is not funding this project and is only giving its “support” for the Winnecke Administration to go forward in a negotiation with Kunkel along the lines of the MOU. She also committed that only upon closing of a $22 Million construction loan that Kunkel’s $2.5 Million in equity and the City of Evansville’s incentive of $8 Million will be placed into an escrow account. Councilman John Friend reported and Ms. Lockyear agreed that the City Council can put a 3rd Party manager in place to provide management oversight for the project much like John Kish did for the Ford Center.

Councilman Dan McGinn who was the only dissenting vote made it clear that this vote was not needed to go forward with negotiations and technically has not legal reason to be held asked many questions about the projects including one about the market for a 220 room hotel in downtown Evansville. Although Ben Kunkel stated that there was actually a need for more rooms it has been previously reported that a professional study indicated that the immediate need for rooms is only 160 and that the reason for the need to incent the project with public money is due to the indication that the additional 60 rooms are not needed at this time.

Councilman McGinn also made it a point to state for the public record that there are no other meetings of the Evansville Redevelopment Commission this year and that this project is not on tomorrow’s docket. Without a meeting of the ERC the Weinzapfel Administration would have difficulty in getting to a binding contract during the next 11 days.

The Council adjourned after passing this along party lines after a 30 minute series of expressions of appreciation to each other by current and past members for having served together. It was truly a democrats love fest joined by former council members Steve (Bags) Bagby and outgoing Fire Chief Kieth Jarboe.

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7 COMMENTS

  1. The gang of cronies continue to vote just like King John wants and demands!!! We have no true leadership of the people for the people!! King John continues to give the city the old one finger salute as his reign ends.

  2. Why even have this vote if they aren’t voting to fund the project until after a binding agreement is reached? Time will tell what the real dollar value kicked to Kunkel will be…and I bet it’s well in excess of $8million. I hope Winnecke stops this charade as quick as this band of idiots has attempted to push this garbage through. Good riddance to this administration. The madness is hopefully drawing to an abrupt end.

  4. I would like to extend to all of the blithering idiots who voted for the likes of Missy the Mobster Mosby, Johnny Friendly to Corrupt Politicians, Connie the Con Artist Robinson, and all of the rest of the Democratic Machine politicians on the City Council my utmost contempt and sincere hopes that they are all thrown out of office in the next municipal election. I’d also like to heap the fires of hell on all of the voters in the last election who voted multiple times on behalf of dead people, some of whom have been at room temperature for over a decade. May you all rot in hell!

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