Let Demand Push Hotel Development.

Dear City County Observer

(The reader sent the CCO a copy of his letter to the Editor of the Courier)

From your op ed, on August 8, 2010 you said “It’s too bad Browning Investments was unable to line up financing to transform the old Executive Inn into a smaller, higher-quality hotel in Downtown Evansville.”

“Too bad”… seriously?

From your paper on February 3, 2009, Dan Shaw wrote “In May, Browning Investments, an Indianapolis Company, said it wanted to build a four-star hotel near the new arena. James Browning, Browning vice president of development, said the company is still trying to find a site for a hotel. They hope to select one within the next a couple of months, he said.

‘We want to support the arena and the convention center,’ Browning said.

Browning Investments had looked at the Executive Inn and decided the hotel was too outdated to serve its purposes.

‘We don’t think it’s possible to renovate it to be a convention-center hotel in the traditional sense,’ Browning said.”

Can Evansville residents comment that it is “too bad” that somehow the Courier bought hook line and sinker into the idea that Browning would and could make the Executive Inn a 4 star hotel, despite the fact that they
explicitly told the Courier that they didn’t think it possible in Feb 2009? (pre-demolition!)

Can Evansville residents comment that is is “too bad” the Courier continues on a story line, now, treating the high costs Browning ran into as brand new news – ignoring how Dan Shaw reported it as a given in 2009?

Yes, the owners had defaulted and the bank had taken ownership… Hasn’t the Big E had numerous owners over the years, and wasn’t it still operational at the time?

You said, “The arena is going up so quickly because it’s financed with taxpayer-backed bonds. The hotel project is going nowhere because the private sector is not willing to take the risk.” Huh?

On July 13, 2009, Dan Shaw wrote “On Monday, Weinzapfel said Browning Investments will buy the Downtown hotel from its current owner, Mutual Hospitality Management of the Chicago area. The city will then pay Browning
for the part of the hotel which is to be demolished. That deal will carry a price of about $10 million, which also includes tax incentives local officials have offered Browning. The money will go in part to replacing the
hotel’s facade.”

Isn’t it possible that the local officials didn’t give them enough “tax incentives”? Is it possible the “incentive” carrot didn’t have an adequate stick attached? (to protect the public money) Or is it possible that those
“tax incentives” given to a private business – where said private business announced publicly “We don’t think it’s possible […]” – was irresponsible and/or a poor decision?

Granted, hindsight is 20/20, but let’s please not promote the old propaganda line that the private sector has simply failed us here… If not for the government planning, purchases and incentivized actions, it sure seems like
rational people would conclude:

1.) Minus the incentives offered, Browning would have kept with their statement in February 2009 and not even tried to turn the Big E into a 4 star hotel.

2.) Mutual Hospitality Management may still own and operate a functional hotel in that site, a hotel that was an Evansville landmark.

Now, however, it seems we have a partially demolished hotel that (all the sudden?) is too expensive to upgrade and too expensive to demolish. Not all costs can be overcome by simple “private sector” demand. But public sector incentives and/or actions spurred this all.

Trying to parse this into a great public victory and a private sector failure seems ridiculous.

Dan Effinger
Evansville, IN