If you haven’t read
Kevin Leininger’s story from yesterday’s News-Sentinel regarding the city’s preparations to move out of the city-county building then you need to. The city currently leases part of the city-county building but they are now considering buying the Renaissance Square property.
Back in February I had a post entitled
Keep an Eye On Renaissance Square and the gist of it was that the city was likely going to vastly overpay George Huber for a piece of property that is essentially worthless. One can only infer why they might do this but they’ve been looking at it for years and with leases on the city-county building and the police station coming to an end it’s no surprise that they would now seriously consider this option.
I’m sure they can make a valid argument for why this makes sense but let’s dig a little deeper and revisit what I wrote back in February:
Read more
As promised previously:
The developer who has contracted with the City of Fort Wayne to build and operate the planned Courtyard by Marriott hotel in downtown, has been trying to get a couple of local lenders to loan the remaining money so they can fulfill the contract. Per Greg Leatherman, Redevelopment Department , they have not yet signed the paperwork to complete this deal.
Maybe the commercial loan officers at these institutions should take another look at White Lodging Services request in view of how Allen County contractors and their employees( both groups which are Allen County taxpayers!) are being treated by White. After all, selling the land for $1.00 after the city paid over $3.5 million for it with tax money, the $6 million city-initiated Indiana State Tax Credits (CRED), over $1 million for a “required” elevated walkway over Harrison Street, $1 million for infrastructure improvements around the site,a ten year property tax abatement (amounting to a tax reduction of 50% over this time), $250,000 per year for ten year’s support from the 60% tax-supported Grand Wayne Center operation, and on top of all this, a 16% profit guaranty for the first twenty years of operation, should mean something to White Lodging!
It’s no wonder why Mr. White has become one of the richest persons in the state - his company recognizes “easy-to-bamboozle” entities like our city and takes advantage of them- that’s how they can demand a walkway over Harrison and a 16% profit guaranty. They (I guess understandably) do not have any regard for the workers in Allen County or for the taxpayers who are footing the bill - but, the city does have a contract with them and it states that Allen County contractors and suppliers are to be given an honest consideration in the construction of this largely-tax-supported venture. It does not appear that this has been true to date. At a meeting on Friday between the local Building Contractors Association and our mayor, he was asked to find out why this item in the written contract appears to have not been followed. So it takes a business association like BCA to call the details of a city contract to the attention of those who are signees on it representing the city? Greg Leatherman’s comment was, “the contractor working on the project, Bunn Excavating, is a local company”, but it sure looks like they are under contract to the city, not the general contractor, Shiel Sexton for the work that was being done last week.
On top of all this, the city is treating an Atlanta, Georgia based developer with kid gloves on their shortcomings on the building of The Harrison. Plus now the lack of pursuit of this developer as to their meeting their responsibilities in the contract!
Yet we have applied for an “All America City” designation and are asking our citizens to contribute $25,000 to a fund to pay for a vacation for some of the most well-off people in our town (including city employees!) to be indoctrinated by a local ad agency (probably getting paid out of the funds) on how to sell our town to a group that, if we are chosen, will give our city administration a national “pat-on-the-back”. And we get to post street signs telling visitors what a great government operation we have in our town. YEA
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