Harrison Square, the story keeps changing

The City now has a deal in place and it is worse then I expected.

Please read coverage of this from Jeff Pruitt over at the Blog Fort Wayne Left:
<http://fortwayneindiana.blogspot.com/2007/07/subsidy-square.html>

Jeff provides great coverage of this.

I have a few things to add:

1. I told you so. (I cannot help it)

2. For a long time Fort Wayne and Harrison Square supporters have insisted that more then half of the project would be funded by private investors. I have scoffed at this for just as long. I have always maintained that more then half of the funding would be public. It is now official. My guess is that if everything was considered it would be 55% publicly funded or more...

3. There is a clause that would cause Fort Wayne taxpayers to subsidize the operations of the new downtown hotel an additional $250,000 per year if the hotel does not meet its internally generated benchmarks. We could be forced to provide $250,000 per year for TWENTY years!

4. The City has always maintained that the hotel would be a higher end hotel then the hotel that is now proposed. In the beginning the hotel was to have 360 rooms, then 300 rooms, and now it is 250 rooms. The hotel is much smaller and of a lower quality then what the City has been using in its studies. The hotel will generate less revenue then expected and this fact has ensured that more then half of the project will come from public money.

5. The hotel now wants another additional subsidy that the City has agreed to provide; a one million dollar above-street walkway...

I could certainly go on and on.

It is apparent that the City has sold our City Council and the taxpayers a "bill of goods" Slowly but surely the truth is coming out.

Good grief.

Mike Sylvester