Dallas Convention Center Hotel Referendum to join three failed efforts
Categories: Business, Dallas, Featured, Politics and Elections
Written By: Shawn Williams
Strong Mayor - Failed
Not so strong Mayor - Failed
Trinity Toll Road - Failed
Three referendums put forth to the Dallas voters and three big NO’s. Now they’re getting the crew back together for another comeback tour.
I don’t doubt that opponents of the Convention Center Hotel will get their 20,000 signatures, but I hope that they are looking realistically at whether or not this has a chance of passing. Since Laura Miller caused the Great Southern Dallas Awakening, conventional wisdom has changed with these sort of things. You remember The Awakening right? When it was assumed that people in Southern Dallas would fall for anything, even giving Laura Miller more power.
Since then, there has been a shift in the political landscape and voting patterns in Dallas. Getting 20,000 signatures is easy. You could probably get 20,000 people to agree to changing the name of Dallas to Pluto. But to think that a majority of citizens will vote against their councilpersons on this particular issues is…arrogant. The fact of the matter is that this is a popular mayor and even a (gulp ) popular council.
Opponents of the CCH talk about Dallas occupancy rates, and yes they are low. But part of the reason is too many hotels that are poorly located. The hotels that are on the Stemmons Corridor chose to locate there. I’ve read Trammell Crow: Master Builder, I know why most of them did.
But this is a new day, and people want to be downtown. If many of these poorly run, ill-conceived, poorly located hotels were to close, then you’d be looking at higher rates.
It’s kind of like the airline industry that we continue to support even though they have a poor business model. In Dallas I guess we are now supposed to compensate for hotels who are located away from…(wait for it)…people.
So round up your 20,000 signatures Mrs. and Mr. Convention Center Hotel opponent. With Jack Matthews on the project, a man who took an even bigger gamble with the Southside on Lamar, I’ll take my chances.
October 1st, 2008 at 4:20 pm
I signed the petition, after I explicitly asked, “this is just for ballot access, right?”
I think I support what they want to do, but I’m not signing off on it until I can read the documents.
October 1st, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Shawn,
Your logic is somewhat faulty. The airline industry is a government welfare industry because it receives money from the tax purse. The hotels along the Stemmons Corridor are not receiving any tax breaks or subsidies. In fact, after the AAC vote, they are paying more taxes than the average business. The reason why they are open is because they are successful. You accused the hotels of being “compensated”? How are they being compensated?
I will also point out that this referendum will be different. The efforts against the AAC, the original Trinity River Project, the Toll Road Referendum, and the effort in favor of the strong mayor referendum were all true grass roots coalitions. They were all seriously out spend by the city’s power brokers and business elites. They were also all tight votes, most of them around 51 or 52 percent to 48, 49 percent. This time the grass roots crowd has a moneyed ally. It should be an interesting vote to watch.
Lastly, the tightening credit markets should make it a bit harder for the city to borrow money for a hotel, especially if there is a referendum in the works.
Nathan
October 1st, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Nathan,
My airline/hotel industry example was not apples to apples. I was trying to point out the fact that A + B does not =C int the fact that
A - Hotel occupancy rates are low
B- CCH will add more unoccupied rooms
C- Don’t build CCH
That’s where I was going with that.
October 1st, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Nathan
I thought about something else as it relates to the changing politcal landscape. Think about how much more money Toby Shook had than Craig Watkins. Or even Ben Hill v. Craig Watkins in ‘04 I believe it was.
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:52 am
Shawn,
I don’t know the figures from those campaigns, but I imagine you are right, that both Toby Shook’s and [Bill] Hill’s individual campaigns were better financed than that of DA Watkins. What gave DA Watkins an edge in ‘06 was the simple fact that Dallas County had been slowly trending toward the Democrats AND there was a national trend against the Republicans that same year. That said, Dallas County is better for electing DA Watkins.
However, I think if anything, your points about the DA election only show what an uphill battle the CC Hotel supporters might have in front of them. I guarantee you there will be an army of voters who turn out to vote against the hotel. These are the same voters who disfavor other big downtown projects, mainly because they don’t feel their neighborhoods are as safe as they should be, that their streets are as well paved as they should be, that their community centers and parks are not as well maintained as they should be, ect. That means they are coming on to the field with a significant percentage of the vote already in pocket. Factor in Crow’s money and you have a serious ball game on your hands.
And as usual, the power brokers and business elite will assemble a coalition of chambers of commerce, ministers, elected reps, ect, to prove that a vast majority of the city supports moving forward with the project (Mayor Leppert’s favorite expression), when in reality, it is only a very narrow margin of a majority (witness almost every other recent contested referendum). I’m sure they will raise a considerable amount of money as well.
I predict that this vote will be close (as they all are) and that most likely the mayor’s side will prevail. But with the tightening credit market, I think that the money won’t be there in the end. The same goes for the Trinity Toll Road, a project that has already gone up in cost, despite the Mayor’s assurances. We (both individuals and governments) need to stop borrowing money with such recklessness. The coming years (with or without a government bailout) are going to force us to change our culture of borrowing and spending what we can’t pay for.
Nathan