Tag Archives: Hotel Pere Marquette

City Council, City of Peoria

Wonderful Development deadline to be extended yet again

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You’ll never guess what’s on the City Council agenda for next Tuesday, 24 January 2012. It’s a request to extend the deadline on the downtown hotel project yet again. Yes. “Time is of the essence,” Councilman Spain breathlessly implored in December 2008 when this erstwhile clandestine project was first revealed to the public, be sure you lean to use social media to get sales. Now, three-plus years and as many redevelopment agreements later, we’re told “it would be a rush to have all the documents agreed upon by January 31.” Indeed.

So the new “deadline” is going to be February 29. But don’t hold your breath. The council request not-so-subtly implies that even that may not be enough time. “Even with a February 29 deadline,” it concludes, “there is much work to be accomplished before our financial advisor can be directed to move forward with marketing the bonds.” Long about February 21, you can reasonably expect the council agenda to include another deadline extension.

One wonders why the council doesn’t save itself some time and just set the deadline for a more realistic timeframe … like the fifth of never, for instance. Or the year 3000. Because it’s quite clear that the council has no intention of ever enforcing any deadline at all. The deadlines have all been a farce — a pallid attempt to convince Peoria citizens that the Council is being a good steward of the public’s money.

City of Peoria, Peoria Area CVB, Peoria Civic Center

Civic Center loses wrestling tournament to Springfield

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The Illinois Kids Wrestling Federation’s annual Jon Davis IKWF Kids Open will be moving to Springfield for 2011 and 2012. The Peoria Civic Center has hosted the event for more than a decade. The contest is held every January and has brought in anywhere from 1,300 to 2,100 wrestlers annually. It was held at Redbird Arena until 1995 when the group left to protest ISU’s decision to drop wrestling as a varsity sport.

In e-mails forwarded to The Peoria Chronicle by a source who wishes to remain anonymous, Sports Sales Manager Chad Mentzer of the Peoria Area Convention and Visitors Bureau wrote, “After talking with Mike Urwin with IKWF, there are two reasons why we lost this piece of business…. #1 Hotels. Average cost [in Springfield] is approximately $20 cheaper per night. #2 Facility rental fees. Projected fees in Springfield are, based upon expenses from 2009, considerably less than the Peoria Civic Center.” The group sought a block of 400 room nights for the one-day event.

Joel Green, Director of Sales and Marketing at the Hotel Pere Marquette responded to Mentzer’s e-mail by saying that his hotel had “lowered our rates considerably for 2011… after holding our rates for 2009 and 2010.” January rates are historically low to begin with in the Peoria hospitality industry. Regarding the venue, Debbie Ritschel, General Manager of the Peoria Civic Center, added, “In this particular case the fact that they [Springfield] will not have to cover ice in their arena may have also been a factor.”

In April, Holiday Inn City Centre General Manager Sami Qureshi stated that the top reason conventions skip Peoria is due to the Civic Center’s rate structure. This recent convention loss and the reasons cited by the IKWF appear to support that contention.

The loss of this event also highlights the competitive nature of hotel room pricing. If the Pere Marquette lowered its room rates below 2009 levels and Springfield was still able to offer rates $20 per night lower, one wonders how a four- or five-star Marriott hotel will be able to offer competitive rates that are high enough to pay off the debt service on a $37 million bond taken out by the City of Peoria.

General News, Peoria Civic Center, Peoria Mayor, State of Illinois

Civic leaders line up to tout Wonderful Development

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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.