The wheels of progress grind on at city hall, even in the face of what President Obama keeps calling an economic catastrophe the likes of which we’ve never seen: Wednesday appears to be the day the city council finally approves both the development deal and the operating agreement for the taxpayer-owned downtown convention center hotel we as taxpayers will be borrowing about $550 million to build.
The DMN reports that after weeks of wrangling, the city and Omni Hotels have agreed on the hotel’s operating agreement, and the construction and development agreement with Matthews Southwest is likely to be on the council’s agenda Wednesday, too. (Before you get too excited about Omni’s "endorsement" of the project in agreeing to manage it, remember this: The hotel company would manage your house if you paid the company enough.)
A majority of the council appears willing to disregard the state of the economy, as well as the upcoming May referendum on whether the city should be able to build the hotel, in order to follow Mayor Tom Leppert’s vision and just do it. And, for the most part, no one (and by this, I mean voters) really seems to care — I can’t say I’ve seen a groundswell of anger about the hotel project, and I’ve actually been looking for it.
This whole project, in a nutshell, pretty much says all that needs to be said about the state of city affairs here in Dallas.
