Just say no: Kansas City Council must reject incentives for downtown luxury hotel
Last week, local development attorney Jim Bowers tried to convince a City Council committee that it should ladle incentives onto a luxury hotel project near the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.
It’s known as the Hotel Bravo proposal, but you may know it as the Plan That Will Not Die.
“The Kansas City Star recently wrote an editorial, on Aug. 31, in strong support of this project,” Bowers told the Neighborhood, Planning and Development Committee.
Um, no.
Bowers was referring to an opinion column written by our colleague Michael Ryan. His commentary was supportive of the Bravo proposal, but like all columns, it represents the views of the individual writer, not the full editorial board, or the newspaper.
So let’s set the record straight. We still oppose any public incentives for an overwrought, bloated luxury hotel near 16th and Wyandotte streets. The City Council, which is expected to take up the Bravo plan Thursday, should reject it.
Developers want to build roughly 145 hotel rooms in a 13-story building. It would cost around $63 million, they say, although the cost estimate may be wildly out of date after three years on the drawing board.
Some of the public incentives have narrowed. Developers have asked to use tax increment financing for a mere 20 years, not the normal 23 years. They’ve agreed to pay the city an average of $450,000 annually for parking at the performing arts center, money that could be diverted to other distressed areas such as the 18th & Vine Jazz District.
That sets a bad precedent. 18th & Vine needs help on its own terms, not because it can provide votes for an unrelated downtown project.
Project supporters also made the ludicrous argument last week that somehow luxury hotels are linked with population growth. It’s absurd. Here’s what makes cities grow: safe streets, good schools, prosperous neighborhoods. Achieving those goals is made more difficult by diverting future tax revenue away from schools, streets and neighborhoods.
Kansas City has plenty of hotel rooms. The new Loews Kansas City Hotel and others like it are perfectly capable of housing wealthy visitors in the style to which they are apparently accustomed. Bravo doesn’t need public subsidies to make the rich feel better about their time here.
And when will incentives for downtown ever come to an end? In recent years, the City Council has backed subsidies and tax breaks for office buildings, a hotel, the Kauffman Center, an entertainment district and apartments. It’s time for downtown to stand on its own two feet.
We’ll repeat: If Hotel Bravo’s developers want to build their project, let them borrow money from a bank, or put up their own cash, just like ordinary Kansas Citians building or buying a house. Let them pay taxes like everyone else does.
Stop asking the public to shoulder some of the burden.
This week’s Bravo vote will show “if this city is ready to actually say no to a truly outrageous incentive request,” Kansas City Public Schools representative Kathleen Pointer told the committee last week. She’s exactly right.
It will take nine council votes to approve incentives for the project, because the TIF Commission recommended rejection of the plan. Even the Neighborhood Committee sent the project forward without recommendation, a rare decision for any council committee.
Kansas City still has enormous challenges in public safety, transportation, education and neighborhoods. It does not need another publicly-subsidized downtown hotel.