The city council's Economic Development Committee spent most of the morning in executive session discussing an operator agreement with Omni Hotels and a developer agreement with Matthews Southwest for the convention center hotel, emerging shortly after 11:30 to recommend a full council vote on both during tomorrow's briefing.
The developer agreement was provided and hopefully will be available on the city's Web site soon. But until then, we scanned a couple interesting pages for your perusal and provided them after the jump. The first page provides a detailed look at exactly how Matthews Southwest will spend $335 million in construction dough (which is approximately $20 million less than the original Guaranteed Maximum Price); the second offers a breakdown of how the debt will be repaid. The operator agreement was not released.
After the meeting adjourned, the Trinity Corridor Project Committee shindig began, and the first item on the agenda was the Belleview Pedestrian Connector, which, as Robert pointed out earlier, leads to a development that no longer exists.
Mitchell Rasansky quickly labeled the connector as "the bridge to nowhere," even referencing the Gravina Island Bridge project in Alaska. He pressed for the final cost of the project, which was estimated to be approximately $10 million. Rasansky cast the lone vote in opposition, saying it doesn't make sense to spend funds at this time because the development "is not going to get built."
"To me, it's insanity," Rasanksy said. "I kept looking at this bridge and tried figuring out where it was going."
Much more from Rasansky later in a recap of the presentation from the corps.
