Tax subsidies for a new luxury hotel in downtown KC? Are you kidding?

History is full of examples of lousy timing. There’s the Titanic and that iceberg. There’s the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that sparked World War I.

And now there’s a proposal from two developers to build a $63.5 million luxury hotel with the help of $20 million in tax subsidies.

In a city that’s recently launched a serious discussion about the urgent need for more affordable housing and tax-increment financing while also facing looming questions about a suddenly overbuilt hotel market, our reaction shouldn’t surprise anybody, including the developers:

You’ve got to be kidding.

Not only is the timing killer here, so are the optics. Developers Eric Holtze and Whitney Kerr Sr. can’t possibly expect the Kansas City Council to go along with a plan to subsidize a high-end hotel when the community is just finally coming to grips with its housing crisis.

And they can’t realistically expect there to be political will to allocate more in tax-increment financing when the community just went through an agonizing process over subsidies for the new downtown convention hotel just about a block away. Developers plan to sell $42.2 million in TIF bonds, coupled with $82.3 million in taxable bonds to complete the financing for that long-missing piece of our hotel lineup. Taxes that the hotel generates will repay those loans.

Toss a healthy dose of politics into these flames, and the prospects for “Hotel Bravo!” dim further. The first mayoral forum took place last week with more than one contender expressing skepticism about approving TIFs for any project other than clearly blighted properties, preferably on the East Side. That’s why tax-increment financing was originally created.

It was mayoral contender and Councilman Quinton Lucas who pointed out that TIFs become massively unpopular every four years when candidates are running for office. This year will be no exception.

“I’d encourage the developer to sit down and renegotiate and think about a better package,” Lucas told us.

Councilwoman Jolie Justus, who’s not a candidate a mayor, said, “Clearly it would be wonderful to have those types of luxury hotels. But this is not the time to have that conversation.”

The Kansas City hotel market, which has gone from cruddy and outdated to fashionably well-stocked in seemingly the blink of an eye, might benefit from an ultra-sleek and wildly expensive four- or five-star luxury property. The location, across Wyandotte Street from the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, makes sense for that select group of so-called “vanguard” travelers coming in from the coasts.

So be it.

But Holtz and Kerr should regroup and repackage their initial Hotel Bravo! proposal with its sky bars and penthouse suites. Because as it stands now, this dog isn’t going to hunt. And it shouldn’t.

This story was originally published September 17, 2018 at 5:30 AM.