I regret that I couldn’t make it to the Illinois Finance Authority’s public hearing on Tuesday regarding the Wonderful Development (i.e., the proposed downtown Marriott hotel project). It looks like I would have been the only dissenting voice. The Journal Star reports that “Every person who publicly spoke before the authority was in favor of it. No one spoke in opposition.” Those who publicly spoke included Mayor Jim Ardis, Civic Center General Manager Debbie Ritschel, Peoria Area Convention and Visitors Bureau President/CEO Bob Marx, and “various trade groups.”

Mayor Jim Ardis defended the city’s position that it has done the appropriate due diligence on a project that is backed by nearly $40 million in public bonds.

If they really did “the appropriate due diligence,” it was all done in secret. No vetting was done in public, nor was there any public hearing before the city council decided to commit $40 million to the project.

He also defended the use of a tax bond for the project, saying that without public assistance, major Downtown projects would languish. He cited the “10 to 15 years” without development within the museum block as an example of the lack of the private industry moving forward with a project.

The City purchased the downtown Sears property in 1998 when Sears announced it would be moving to Northwoods Mall. Following that, they acquired the rest of the block. Ever since then, they’ve owned the whole block. They spent a few years haggling over what to do with it, then ultimately decided to give it to the museum. And that’s why there was a “lack of the private industry moving forward with a project.” They couldn’t. John Q. Hammons expressed interest in building a hotel on the block and the Mayor wouldn’t even return his calls. Furthermore, the museum group has had public assistance (lots of it!) for almost a full year and they still can’t get anything built down there.

“I would ask any . . . critics to name for me projects of this importance to the city that will have a private investor come before us and shoulder all of the burden,” Ardis said. “It doesn’t happen anymore.”

First of all, I take issue with his characterization of this project as one of “importance.” It’s not important to Peoria. All it will do is give us an overbuilt hotel to go along with our overbuilt Civic Center. Secondly, the reason a private investor won’t come before us and shoulder all of the burden is because they know it won’t be profitable. That’s why banks won’t loan the money, either. Why should we build an unprofitable hotel? Peoria has money to burn, apparently.

Ritschel and … Marx defended the hotel project as something that will make the Civic Center a more attractive destination for larger conventions and events.

Marx said at least 10 groups representing more than 17,000 room nights have approached the city about wanting to have an event at the Civic Center only if there was an attached hotel.

“They won’t event talk to us until we have this project come to fruition,” Marx said.

If it were that important to the Civic Center, then why didn’t they include a hotel in their $55 million expansion plan? Why did they say they could be successful without an attached hotel?

And what about those 17,000 room nights? Suppose they got $120 per room night for those (keep in mind that it will probably be less because they’ll give lower rates to big groups like that), how much would that amount to? $2,040,000. That’s not enough to make one bond payment. 17,000 room nights out of 178,850 annual room nights available (proposed 490 total rooms times 365 nights per year) accounts for 10.5% occupancy. Considering the current Pere Marquette (which has only 287 guest rooms) is barely getting 50% occupancy, I’d say we’re looking at some serious losses on this project.

But there’s no reason why Peoria residents should have to go to the IFA to complain about it. We should have had an opportunity to voice our concerns before our own local elected leaders. It’s too bad the IFA has provided more opportunity for input than our own City Council.