The Washington Business Journal’s Jonathan O’Connell follows up on the ongoing Washington Convention Center Hotel saga to report that city officials are discussing taking roughly $700 million in subsidies that have already been passed for other projects and diverting them to the hotel. The argument goes that a number of high profile development projects, including the Southwest waterfront, the Capitol Riverfront, the Skyland Shopping Center and the O Street Market, have long been stalled by the collapse of the lending market, so those allocated subsidies are sitting dormant in the meantime. But such a course of action would of course be very tricky for D.C. Council members who represent the neighborhoods that would then lose their public funding for those projects. The scheme could pose particular problems for Ward 2’s Jack Evans, who would be forced to weigh the hotel, which is in his Ward, against longstanding promises to make the O Street Market project a priority. In May, Evans pushed through a $1 million grant to the developers of the O Street Market in Shaw.