Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 21:48:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] DC Hotels
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Michael Nelson wrote:

> It was my understanding that the negotiation for the final piece of
> land needed for the hotel has not reached a settlement.  It seems to
> me that the DC City Council has been too busy lately worrying about
> the new baseball stadium parking to have time to work on the
> convention center hotel.

I got another Washington Convention Center Board of Directors meetings
to proofread today.  It was very frustrating, since I was given far
too little time, as WCCA paid for next-day expedite service.  The
sound quality was awful, as it was recorded with a single mike in the
middle of large echoey room with about 40 people in it, some of them
eating, chatting with each other, or talking on a phone.  There were
slide shows, but I wasn't given the slides.  I did get a blurry
photocopy of the handwritten sign-in sheet, which not everyone present
bothered to sign.  The transcription was done overnight in India, and
was dreadful.  I didn't have time to proofread all of it, but I did
make it a point to do all the hotel parts.  Here's what was said.
This was at about 10:00 a.m. yesterday (Thursday).

  MR. ABDO:  Madam Chair, I just want to report, and I'll do this
  briefly, that while the development committee had some marching orders
  as of our minutes of the last meeting, it was stated that by September
  30th that we would have all the outstanding issues resolved as they
  would relate to the convention center hotel, our agreements with
  Marriott, our agreements with RLJ Development.  And I can tell you at
  this point that not everything is resolved.  However, we feel that
  there has been some solid movement in the right direction.  Our chair,
  Beverly Perry, myself, Norm Jenkins from Marriott, as well as Tom
  Baltimore from RLJ had a substantive meeting as recent as about three
  or four days ago.  We feel that we have identified the specific issue
  at hand.  We believe we've also found some models and best practices
  that are working in other municipalities that we can lean on, that
  we can extract from to get this deal tied down.  So we believe that
  finalizing these agreements is imminent.  But that is all that I can
  report to you at this time.

  THE CHAIR:  Okay, thank you.  Are there any questions or comments?
  And I also say that the staff has just been in this negotiation
  continuously.  And I think that we're seeing significant movement.

  MR. ABDO:  We are.  I think we're down with some minutiae right now
  but it's important minutiae that we need to get fully vetted.

  . . .

  MR. DICKENS:  Right, because this years we had the Embassy Suites and
  the Hampton Inn and the Courtyard.  We had these three hotels open
  this year.

  THE CHAIR:  Well, the hotel association has got to get busy.

The latter two paragraphs, before my proofreading, read:

  MR. DICKENS:  Right, this is where you had the empty space until now.
  (inaudible) with these three hotels that are open this year.

  THE CHAIR:  Okay.  Well, the hotels association is currently busy.

In other words, the portion of the transcript I didn't have a chance
to proofread is basically garbage.  And there are some transcripts
that go out without being proofread at all, due to lack of time or
manpower.  Sigh.

The most recent mention of 2010 that I can find dates to the February
2nd meeting.  Keep in mind I'm only one of four proofreaders, so most
WCCA meeting transcripts I never see, as someone else gets them.
Here's the text from that Groundhog Day meeting:

  MR. ABDO:  The Development Committee took part in a meeting yesterday
  along with Robert Bobb and others from the Executive -- Jeff Sachs,
  our consultant, was there and provided board members an update and
  a presentation on the Convention Center hotel.  The only Council
  members that were not present for this meeting were Vincent Gray,
  Marion Barry, and Adrian Fenty.  Other than that, we had the
  attention of all members of City Council.  The meeting went
  incredibly well, it was about an hour and a half long.  It appears
  that the site selection of 9th Street versus the old convention site
  is not even an issue at all.  Everyone's focus is on 9th Street.
  Council seems very comfortable with 9th Street.  The real focus
  of the discussion was on how to get this thing built, and is it a
  public deal or is it a public-private deal, and the appetite is for
  a public-private deal, with Bob Johnson and Marriott being the team
  that would make this thing go forward.  The issue that's outstanding
  is TIF dollars, and there is a difference in what Marriott sees as
  the numbers that they want and the numbers that the CFO, the WCCA,
  Council, and the executive feel is the appropriate amount.  The
  executive is continuing to negotiate with Marriott on fine-tuning
  that number.  Our Finance Committee, along with our CFO, the CFO of
  the District, and our Finance Committee members will be meeting as
  early as Monday to sort of have a strategy in place and a number in
  place that everybody is comfortable with, and then we expect to move
  this forward through Council, hopefully in February.

Alexis's reference to how the DC bid became a fiasco, ridiculed
throughout all of fandom, would seem to imply, not merely that *he*
knew more about the hotel than WCCA or Marriott, but that so did
*nearly everyone in fandom*.