New Convention Center Hotel. What took So Long?

The Fenty administration and the the JW Mariott Corporation today announced a deal to build a new Convention Center Hotel.

Officials today said the city has lost 29 major conventions and the 250 million dollars that come with them because we didn't have enough hotels within close walking distance to the Convention Center which opened in 2003 at a cost of more than 800 million dollars.

What took so long and two administrations to complete the deal?

One source close to the talks told me the Fenty administration until recently was refusing to submit the deal to the Chief Financial Officer Natwar Ghandi for review.

The CFO has to sign off on such contracts where public dollars are involved and in this case we're talking about more than 130 million of the taxpayer's dollars going into the new hotel project. In the end Ghandi looked it over and gave his okay...

Oh, another thing! The hotel agreement says that 50% of the jobs will go to DC residents...that's a goal and not law. The new baseball stadium carried the same stipulation but in the end according to DC Councilman Jack Evans, Chairman of the Finance and Revenue Committee, only about 35% of the stadium jobs went to City residents. Problem seems to be finding an "employable workforce", people with the training. Depending on who's talking, either the employers aren't looking hard enough or a lot of city residents don't have the skills.