By BJ Austin, KERA News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-860683.mp3
Dallas, TX –
Dallas has broken ground on a 500 million dollar, 23-story Convention Center Hotel. KERA's BJ Austin was at the ceremony.
Mayor Tom Leppert told a large crowd that many thought this day would never come, after 25 years of bickering about "where" to put a convention center hotel, whether it was needed, and WHO would pay for it.
Dallas City Councilman Ron Natinsky says the hotel is going to be very good for the Dallas economy now, when construction jobs are badly needed, and in 2012, when it opens - coinciding with the anticipated recovery of the economy. Natinsky says voters saw that last May, and turned back a ballot initiative led by Anatole Hotel developer and manager Harlan Crow that would have killed the project.
Natinsky: We gonna have conventioneers coming to town. We're gonna have visitors coming to town. They are going to fill that hotel, and all the other downtown hotels. And they are going to fill the hotels surrounding and even up Stemmons Freeway. So, everybody's going to benefit from this hotel.
The Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau says it has 400 thousand "room nights" already committed in anticipation of the Omni Dallas Convention Center Hotel. Omni officials say they have 50 million dollars in business in the pipeline.
Ron Natinsky says visitors to the hotel will pay off the 478 million in revenue bonds, not Dallas taxpayers.