Comments about ‘County aims to build hotel by Salt Palace’

$300 million tax payer money in this economy when people are stuggling to keep their jobs great timing? Ask who stans to make money on this hotel and who sponsored the survey...the Salt Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau. Hotel Occupancy is already low and even exiting hotels say that such a mega hotel would very likely simply shuffle and canabilize rooms away from existing hotels

Can we stop government from doing stupid things? Cottonwood Heights Rec Center put the Canyon Racquet Club out of business near my home. We subsidize it by 2 million dollars of tax dollars each year so a small percentage of our city can benefit from its facilities. The reward will not go to the taxpayers. We will risk a loss of more than the money invested. Witness Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that began with good intentions but ended with bad results. Government is not good at allocating capital...What it creates is dead but comes alive with our monetary transplants. Then the collective village has to kill this monster that we thought was going to be our servant but instead becomes our Frankenstein.

This is the time to do this project. Provide Jobs during the slow time and have this beautiful hotel with more meeting space ready when the economy has recovered. The other hotels would also benifit in the future as Utah would be bringing in more conventions, more often, with more people. What a boost to Utah.

This sounds like the bailout of GM, AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. What in the world is SL County thinking? Oh wait, its run by Democrats. Now I understand.

NO Employment
More taxes
More Buidings
More cuts in Schools
More Traffic
More money being used!
More money no,money spending

Not out of my pocket..when were having Hardships at this time.Another Hotel okay after the money Crosses over the frail waters!

This sounds like exactly the right thing for Salt Lake County to be doing. As the maxim goes, you have to spend money to make money.

should not be in the hotel business. If this is really a money making idea, someone will do it with their own money. If this does not make money, who ends up paying the bills? Taxpayers do. If there is a conflict between the county owned hotel and a privately owned hotel how can it be resolved without favoritism? This is a bad idea.

Denver isn't the best city to compare to. It built its mega-hotel accross from the convention center only after they city couldn't find a private developer willing to do it. Before that hotel was built, it had a severe shortage of hotel rooms in the downtown area and couldn't meet the needs of even small conventions. SLC already has a lot of rooms in the central section of town. It might make more sense to replace one or two of the four hotels ajacent to the Salt Palace with a mega-hotel rather than build a fifth hotel right there.

It appears the majority of you missed this:

" If built, the hotel would be owned and operated by a private company."

Of course they want to use government money to build it, because we are capitalists.

Wouldn't it be better to wait for a private company to decide a hotel sounds like a profitable business idea and to build one? Why is the county govt. trying to decide what businesses to start? The reason nobody has built a hotel there is likely because there are a myriad of hotels downtown and none are operating near capacity as it is. So how would making more rooms bring more people here? It seems like it should be the other way around.

I'm wondering about something. If the hotel would be owned and operated by a private company, why does the Legislature have to approve it? I thought cities through permits did the approval.

the Hotel would get the same sort of deal Larry Miller got from Salt Lake City and Dave Checketts got from the state legislature. ebay, Ikea and dozens of others have gotten the same deal from local governments. The funding for the project would come solely from future taxes generated by the hotel. No hotel, no tax dollars. RDA's, CDA's and EDA's are sometimes a very good thing. And often they're controversial.

Dont know anymore..

Did someone really say something like "cities approve this type of thing through permits"? Wow....have ya ever been to a planning and zoning meeting? And no its not a permit. Maybe you should stick to remodeling your basement and leave the large construction and development projects to the big boys.

I don't understand where the money will come from to build this hotel. Didn't they just raise my taxes as a result of the bond election last November to build the police/safety building because there wasn't enough money?

I have talked with friends from out of town who have attended conventions here. They like the facilities but get annoyed at having to walk through dismal sections of downtown and across giant intersections to get the Salt Palace. It would be much more appealing to walk directly from the hotel to the conferences.

Government should help facilitate this and get it rolling, but please keep my tax dollars away from this deal.

This is an Economic Development project. Currently there is financing assistance available through the Obama Economic Assistance Act that our community could be eligible to receive for this type of project. The St George airport received some of this assistance. Financing the cost of construction of the project using municipal revenue bonds is as low as they have been (ever). The municipal bonds are being used to lower the financing cost (interest rate) vs. conventional financing. The bonds would be paid back by a Convention Center authority and are revenue specific to the project and not an obligation of the community at large. The cost of construction (material and labor) is as low as we’ve seen in years. The LDS Church’s development of the City Creek project is saving millions through these cost reductions. There is a window of opportunity that millions could be saved in financing and construction cost at this time. This will initially bring more constructions jobs to downtown plus thousands of service related jobs in the future. The hotel and convention business would bring in millions to downtown businesses and our tourism industry by visitor, expanding our tax base. This is needed Economic Development!

Would a fast shuttle between the current hotels and the Salt Palace solve the problem cheaper if the concern is "walking a few blocks through a dismal part of town" Maybe that same $ could be spent on revitalizing that dismal part of town.

The reason for the use of muni bonds is to get a lower tax rate ... that is because the County puts its full faith & credit and promises to pay if things go wrong.