Daily Archives: June 24, 2009

City of Peoria

Holiday Inn City Centre seeks to become Crowne Plaza, asks for $8 million from city

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Crowne-Plaza-rendering

“Peoria Hotel Associates LLC is seeking partnership with the city of Peoria in a redevelopment plan for the revitalization and upgrade of the Holiday Inn City Centre.” So states a memo addressed to the Mayor and City Council members. The content of the proposal is very similar to the Marriott Hotel deal the council approved in December 2008, albeit on a smaller scale.

The redevelopment plan calls for the current Holiday Inn City Centre property to be “brought into the 21st century through a complete and comprehensive rehabilitation and renovation plan,” which would include upgrading the exterior, redeveloping the lobby and commercial space, changing 66 rooms into 35-40 suites, replacing Bennigan’s with an “upscale branded restaurant,” and changing the hotel from the Holiday Inn brand to either Crowne Plaza or Doubletree Suites.

The cost of the upgrade would be $10 million. The current owners of Peoria Hotel Associates LLC (d/b/a Holiday Inn City Centre) is Iowa-based Kinseth Hospitality Companies. According to the memo, they’ve already “maximized financing available through conventional bank lenders with a current loan in placee of $11,750,000.” So, they’re proposing this redevelopment “with the intent to participate in a city bond program similar to the redevelopment package that the current Pere Marquette Hotel is utilizing.”

We are requesting $8 million of financing similar to the Pere Marquette financing program with the goal of signing a redevelopment agreement very similar to the Pere Marquette/Marriott hotel redevelopment agreement. This will be coupled with a $10 mil New Market Tax Credit (netting $2 mil in cash). Listed below is a capital budget for our redevelopment process. We believe that the bonds will be paid through substantial sources of additional tax revenues that the city will achieve, including TIF, BDD taxes, BDD sales taxes, as well as substantial new taxes on the increases in revenues that we expect to achieve.

Cost Summary:

Exterior Upgrade $2,500,000
Lobby/Commercial Facilities $3,500,000
Restaurant & Bar re-concepting $1,000,000
Suites Conversion $1,000,000
Infrastructure/Systems $1,000,000
Meeting Rooms Upgrade $500,000
Brand Conversion $500,000
Total $10,000,000

You can read the entire memo and accompanying report here (warning: it’s a 7 MB PDF file):
PDF Link Kinseth Hospitality Memo and Report

It’s not surprising to me that they would ask for a similar deal to the Pere Marquette/Marriott. And I fully expect the council to approve it whenever it comes to the floor for a vote. Once you open that door, everyone wants to come in and get their share of the money. It’s only a matter of time before a similar request from the Mark Twain appears.

It’s also not surprising that they want to dump Bennigan’s. The restaurant chain filed for bankruptcy last July, and Kinseth Hospitality recently filed a lawsuit against the franchise’s parent company for damages allegedly resulting from that bankruptcy.

Cafe-Exterior-rendering

UPDATE: The Journal Star now has the story you read here first, and they’ve interviewed a few council members. Funny, it’s one-fifth the cost of The Wonderful Development, yet the council members interviewed aren’t too keen on this new project. They cite concerns such as the amount of debt it involves and whether there’s enough market for that many upscale hotel rooms. Huh. I thought a project like this “pays for itself.” That’s what they said about the nearly $40 million bond for the Marriott. And as I recall, there were questions about the optimistic occupancy rates predicted in the Marriott project. Yet the council had no problem approving that project with next to no deliberation. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation.

City Council, City of Peoria, Heart of Peoria Plan

Dismantling the LDC one piece at a time

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The deconstruction of the Land Development Code continued at Tuesday’s City Council meeting. Now the City is going to allow “separate, accessory parking lots in the West Main Street, Local Frontage category.” Because nothing says “pedestrian-friendly” and “urban” like large surface parking lots . . . or so City administrators in the Planning and Growth Department think. They defended the amendment by saying surface parking lots fulfill the intent of the code:

Administration of the LDC found that prohibiting separate, accessory parking lots is not consistent with the intent of the Land Development Code as stated in section 1.5:

  1. Create a “park-once” environment.
  2. Promote reuse, redevelopment and infill.
  3. Encourage mixed-use neighborhood main streets.

You read that right: the City is arguing that big surface parking lots are consistent with the Land Development Code, which is based on the Heart of Peoria Plan, which is based on New Urbanist principles. Somehow, I don’t think that tearing down single-family residential houses in order to construct large surface lots is the kind of “redevelopment and infill” the authors of the LDC had in mind. In fact, it goes directly against other intent statements in section 1.5, such as:

  • Encourage and assist in the preservation of existing buildings and housing stock.
  • Use the scale and massing of buildings to transition between the corridors and surrounding neighborhoods.
  • Use the commercial corridors as a seam sewing neighborhoods together rather than a wall keeping them apart

But the change was approved in a rare 7-3 vote, with Sandberg, Jacob, and Gulley voting against it. Not so rare was the fact that only two council members spoke to the issue — Van Auken in favor, Sandberg against — before it was approved. The LDC will not be repealed all at once. It will simply be pecked away little by little until it looks no different than the old Euclidean zoning it replaced.

City Council, City of Peoria

Repeat after me: “Consensus is bad”

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During the last election, one of the big buzz-words was “consensus.” For instance, then-councilman Bob Manning wrote an endorsement of his eventual successor in which he said, “He is known as a consensus builder. He is not a divisive or polarizing figure. Rather, he brings people together to achieve results.” Conventional wisdom at the time was that the council was working better now than it ever had, and the reason was because of this new ethos of consensus-building.

At first, I tried to differentiate between good and bad “consensus.” (Good consensus involved timely and effective public input into projects; bad consensus was just another word for “groupthink.”) But since then, I’ve determined that what I was calling “good consensus” would be better described as simply “good leadership.” And “consensus” is always bad.

Certainly the last thing the council needs is more consensus. “Consensus” is defined as “general agreement or concord; harmony.” The city council couldn’t be any more in agreement if they held hands and sang Kumbaya . . . unless they found a way to get Sandberg off the council so every vote could be unanimous. The council (then or now) doesn’t need more consensus; it needs more critical thinking. It needs more deliberation — public deliberation.

Billy Dennis is right when he says, “Technically, policy might be set in public, but the process of arriving at the decision is not.” How many times have you seen this happen? An issue comes before the council. A motion is made to approve and is seconded. Councilman Sandberg speaks against it. There is no further discussion. Ballots are cast, and the motion passes 10-1. This happens time and time again. On big votes, like the decision to give $39.5 million to the Wonderful Development (aka Marriott Hotel), a few more council members speak in support of it, but the outcome is the same: no deliberation; 10-1 vote to approve.

How can eleven people get together and not have any major disagreements on nearly every issue — even one involving almost $40 million? Is this not an amazing phenomenon? As I see it, there are only two possible reasons why this would happen consistently over a long period of time (I’ve excluded the implausible option of it all being a huge coincidence that they agree on absolutely everything):

  1. The council members are skirting the Open Meetings Act and deliberating these issues out of the public eye. (Note I said “skirting,” not “violating.”) This is Billy’s theory. He suggests that decisions are made “during phone calls and emails, and during social events.” Conflicts exist, but they are being resolved in secret.
  2. The council members are blindly following the recommendations of staff or the district council person without thinking through or deliberating the issue at all. Council members avoid conflict by not thinking.

Both of these options involve “consensus.” Neither of these options is in the best interests of the taxpayers.

Lewis Lapham once said, “In place of honest argument among consenting adults the politicians substitute a lullaby for frightened children [i.e., “consensus”]: the pretense that conflict doesn’t really exist, that we have achieved the blessed state in which we no longer need politics.” And former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher explained, “To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.” Did you ever read a quote more descriptive of the Peoria City Council’s decisions?

Council members, the Journal Star, and the proverbial “man on the street” all think consensus on the council is fantastic — soooo much better than those old, divisive councils where they argued about stuff (gasp!) in public! And yet, the decisions haven’t gotten any better. They just have fewer, shorter meetings with more unanimous or nearly-unanimous votes. And — did I mention? — more secrecy. Because if you’re going to keep up “the pretense that conflict doesn’t really exist,” you can’t have transparency in government.

Bottom line: Consensus is bad. Remember that the next council election.