Escondido’s hotel heartbreak

Jul 1st, 2009 | By Scribe Team | Category: Scribe Buzz

Union-Tribune Editorial

Escondido’s hotel heartbreak

2:00 a.m. June 27, 2009

NORTH COUNTY — Opportunity knocks only so many times. Cities that dally when quality projects are presented during prosperous times, see them disappear when the economy turns sour.

A hotel next to the California Center for the Arts in downtown Escondido was moving through the approval process in 2006. The 196-room facility could have opened late last year.

But first came opposition to a companion condominium project. Next, as the economy plummeted into recession, the public second-guessed the wisdom of using $19 million in reserve funds for a subsidy. Then capital markets froze up and developer Craig Clark lost his financing. The project died once in January when Clark missed yet another deadline. It died again last week when the council rejected Clark’s new financing and a subsidy request for just $13 million, not $19 million.

R.I.P, Escondido’s hotel.

Dick Daniels, the swing vote, pulled his support for the hotel. It isn’t that he wants to use reserve funds to balance the budget rather than for economic development. It’s that he wants to keep them in reserve in case the economy unravels beyond belief.

Some points needy clarifying:

We, and more importantly Marriott Hotels, believe there is a market for a full-service hotel in Escondido. Escondido is a business center blessed with weekend leisure draws as well.

Subsidies are necessary because cities want and compete for hotels. This hotel would have paid $1.2 million or more a year in taxes and created 200 permanent jobs. Sorry, Olga Diaz, but there will be no hotel without a subsidy. Sorry, Marie Waldron, but when the economy rebounds the $13 million will look cheap.

Sorry, Daniels, but this particular deal isn’t going to stay on the shelf for a year or two until the city is ready. Clark will have moved on to other ventures. Or possibly, just as with High Tech High, San Marcos will be sporting a new Marriott.

The moral is that opportunity knocked several times in Escondido. Don’t blame the council for last week’s vote. It was the opposition and foot-dragging in 2006 that killed this deal. Goodbye tax stream, goodbye convention facility, goodbye jobs.

Union-Tribune