Per this Register story from May 6th, a new 221-suite Courtyard Marriott Hotel is being planned for the Anaheim Resort (outside Paywall here — it’s hard to see on the Google map image above, look for the “A” marker in the upper right hand corner).
With over 100 hotels in the Anaheim/Garden Grove area that serve the Disney Parks and the Convention Center, a new one is certainly no surprise, but we wonder if anyone’s struck by the idea, attributed to Jim Edmondson, the property owner. The Register story says he “is not asking the city for a tax subsidy to finance the project, [Anaheim Planning Director Sheri] Vander Dussen said. City officials are in the process of crafting a new, possible subsidy for the developer of two hotels proposed for the GardenWalk mall.”
We’re impressed that the Marriott folks don’t need a handout to expand their business in Anaheim, unlike the friends of the City Council who are trying to GIVE AWAY $158 million to save the cash-poor GardenWalk project as shilled reported by the Anaheim Blog yesterday: On the May 14 Council Agenda: GardenWalk, Charter Review Committee. It’s also not on the streetcar route, and that says something about that boondoggle’s apparent value to the Resort hoteliers.
We’ll trust the civic-minded that are objecting to this blatant gift to a local developer are at the May 14th meeting (FAQ here) to point this out to Kris Murray & Co. and give some props to the Marriott company for doing it the right and honest way.
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UPDATE (05.12.13): Facebook quote from FlashReport’s Jon Fleischman on the OCR story:
This is bad news. Mayor Tom Tait is right-on… Shameful that a Republican-majority Council would be intent on creating a policy that amounts to a very specific taxpayer subsidy for one individual developer/project. It’s cronyism at its worst, combined with some creepy Sim-City overlording.
UPDATE (05.13.13): Oh my, we pissed off Pringle’s Butt Boy: http://anaheimblog.net/2013/05/13/gardenwalk-opponents-advance-stubbornly-ignorant-argument-to-the-end/. Yes, Cunningham, a hotel IS a hotel. But it’s the Marriott company that knows how to honestly build and run them without a gift of public funds by three corrupt city council members that operate at the bidding of your boss.
UPDATE (05.14.13): Adam Elmahrek at the Voice of OC has just blown the lid off the Giveaway with this story of a City Council Closed Session which concocted a “legal settlement that in essence grants another large subsidy, this time to the owners of the mall.”: Anaheim Council Agrees to Another Business Subsidy. In part,
The settlement, which the Council voted on in closed session, calls for the mall owners, Anaheim Capital Partners, to receive up to 50 percent of the city’s portion of sales tax revenue generated by the mall for the next 25 years. This fiscal year, the owners get 30 percent, and going forward the subsidy could be worth tens of millions of dollars. In exchange for the sales tax revenue, Anaheim Capital Partners dropped a claim on the room tax revenue generated by the hotels, effectively clearing the way for that money to be handed over to the developers of the hotel, which include hotelier Bill O’Connell. The revelation about the sales tax subsidy is likely to further heighten tensions surrounding the room tax subsidy, which has been the subject of intense controversy since it was first brought before the council more than a year ago.
Wow. You’re clever. Motel 6 should hire you to do its advertising: “Hey, a hotel is a hotel. Stay at Motel 6 – It’s just like a Westin!”