Interesting letter to the editor by Stephen Trower in the local newspapers on the Scoops lot hotel deal with Tom Gaglardi's Sandman Signature Group.
(Wouldn't it be great if the new hotel had a coffee / ice cream bar called the "New Scoops" or the "21st Century Scoop" or something like that. Oh ya, and if it had a purple and green colour scheme - and a KAMI fish mascot in the corner.)
Back to Mr Trower's letter. In it he talks about a few potential concerns:
- Taxpayer subsidy for banquet and convention space
- Traffic flow
- Parking
- City selling rather than leasing lot.
Before addressing some of these points, I would first like to say that a major plus for me in this proposal was that it takes the very divisive proposal of a hotel between Interior Savings Centre and the waterfront off the table for a long time. Heck, we may even see a rezoning back to parkland.
I always enjoy reading Mr Trower's thoughtful, intelligent letters. In the spirit of conversation, here are my initial thoughts about the concerns he raises:
- The study looking at expanded meeting and banquet space at the Interior Savings Centre, across the street from the proposed hotel, should perhaps make it clear the space should be available to all potential bookings, not just bookings from the hotel.
- Traffic flow modifications should be the financial responsibility of the developer, and not the city
- I am not sure what the plans are around parking. I probably didnt well enough follow some of the discussion we had on this, but I will commit to getting more certainty about these plans.
- The city might have looked at leasing the land instead of selling it, but that might give less certainty and less opportunity to the developer.
I think a classy hotel on the scoops lot will be a good thing. It's not a make or break thing, a matter on which we need to hang our civic pride, but it will help provide a first class amenity to Riverside Park and to downtown in general.
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