Results tagged “conventioncenterhotel”

The hugely delayed Washington Convention Center Hotel deal, which in July appeared to be back on track thanks to a city-brokered public financing deal with developers, is once again in trouble. Developer JBG Cos. is suing to stall the start of construction, claiming that the contracting process that gave a 99-year lease to Marriott was not up to snuff, the Washington Business Journal is reporting. The lawsuit could very well mean that the sale of bonds for the project could be delayed, which would in turn push back ground breaking on the project. The city's only hope to keep things on track will be if a judge agrees to toss out the case in short order, as construction has been slated to begin this fall.

Ward 6 D.C. Council member Tommy Wells is first out of the gate with a statement admonishing his colleagues for considering diverting funding away from longstanding projects in order to fund the construction of a new Convention Center Hotel. Word of such discussions, which would involve taking away dedicated subsidies from projects like the Southwest waterfront, the Capitol Riverfront, the Skyland Shopping Center and the O Street Market, first surfaced earlier this week.

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.