NEWS - Editorial & Opinion

Without an Excel spreadsheet, score card, tape recorder and nothing else to do with one’s time,  it’s nearly impossible for the average taxpayer in Chatham County to make sense of the constantly changing ‘public-private’ deal on the table to build a new major hotel on Hutchinson Island.

The Georgia International and Maritime Trade Center Authority (GIMTCA) board is the proponent of building a new 500-room convention hotel that will need significant public investment because it can’t find a hotel developer or major hotel chain interested in building it on their own.

The fundamental business plan we were sold for the trade center, sold to both elected officials and the taxpayers back in 1998, was flawed from the beginning.

Are we being sold another flawed plan?

The trade center is owned by the State of Georgia – by the taxpayers who have spent $25 million on the acquisition of the land, the construction of the building, the river walk and its later repairs. It has financially struggled to reach its potential since it opened,  even before the economic downturn.

In various years since the trade center was built, the responsibility for convention sales has fallen to both the Savannah Convention and Visitors Bureau (the CVB) – now called Visit Savannah – and sales teams employed by the Trade Center Authority itself. They have tried.

But larger, sophisticated conventions and their organizers – the types of conventions that Savannah must attract to fill the trade center – want hotel rooms next to the trade center to allow conventioneers to mingle in the evenings and run back to their room between sessions. Convincing them that staying in a charming smaller hotel in Savannah’s charming historic district across the river just isn’t flying. Too many convention organizers have left town with their attendees unhappy.

City and county leaders have tried various shuttling strategies by land and by sea, using buses, trolley cars and water ferries – often using public funds including federal dollars – to move conventioneers back and forth between the trade center and the historic district. But convention bookers remain unconvinced despite all best efforts.

We built it, but they did not come – at least not in the quantity that is needed.

Complicating the finances and bookings at the trade center is the general decline of events and weekend “shows” such as boat and home shows. People are buying products online, not spending their weekend walking through cavernous buildings, dragging the kids.  Even the Savannah Chamber of Commerce moved its primary annual EXPO back to the civic center to appease members.

Fundamental to this debate also is…what is better for Savannah’s Historic District? 

Hotel owners, restaurants and retail businesses that have made multi-million dollar investments, that pay significant wages and that pay commercial property and corporate taxes object to the county and the state building a hotel on the north side of the river to compete with them and keep convention attendees on site.

While well-intentioned in this endeavor, it is difficult to make the case that our elected and appointed commissioners, aldermen and authority members can craft a better,  successful business model when industry professionals have shown no interest in taking 100 percent of the risk.

The only viable solution for Hutchinson Island, including for the trade center, is to get behind building a casino there. There is significant interest up in Atlanta for a casino of its own, and the belief that if Atlanta can get one through the Georgia General Assembly, then Savannah will be able to land one as well.

Georgia casino supporters believe that those who object to the exposure of their children to gambling can literally avoid them – Atlanta's would be at Underground Atlanta and Savannah's would be across the river on Hutchinson where locals don't want to go anyway.  Think about adding cruise ships to that mix.

As to what's on the table today for a public-private hotel deal, the project’s price tag has been a moving target, from $151 million down to $131 million. Levels of public investment has ranged from $25 million to $151 million, depending on the strategies used to pay back bonds that would need to be guaranteed by Chatham County taxpayers.

Bottomline: if international, seasoned hotel development companies will not build it on their own, Georgia and Chatham County taxpayers should not be doubling their mistakes on Hutchinson Island.

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