This information was printed under “Corrections/Clarifications” on Page B-2 of the Lancaster Sunday News published on February 20, 2011:
“In an article in last Sunday’s Business section on hotel tax receipts and the Lancaster County Convention Center, it was incorrectly reported that the convention center is on property owned by the Lancaster City Redevelopment
Authority. That property is owned by the convention center authority. The hotel structure is owned by the Lancaster City Redevelopment Authority.
“The hotel’s ballroom, meeting rooms, kitchen, parking garage connector, half of its lobby and much of its offices are owned and maintained by the Lancaster County Convention Center Authority.”
So….since the taxpayers and county hotels are enabling Penn Square partners to enhance the profit margin of the hotel, shouldn’t we be allowed to see the ‘bottom line’??
What a travesty to all but PSP!!!!!!
Perhaps the law firm of Stevens and Lee, the LCCCA and Penn Square Partners should be sued for the following reasons:
1. Stevens and Lee and the LCCCA obviously did not negotiate with Penn Square Partners on the Convention center in the best interests of the public for whom they both had fiduciary and ethical duties to do so. This is “obvious” by the substance of the resulting agreements, which placed a greatly disproportionate share of the costs and risks on the public and the potential benefits to Penn Square Partners.
2. Stevens and Lee had a huge conflict of interest in that they represented both the LCCCA and Penn Square Partners and, as the evidence seems to show, illegally resolved every conflict of interest in favor of Penn Square Partners.
3. Stevens and Lee and the LCCCA conspired, together, and with the Penn Square partners itself, to keep critical (and deleterious) information on the CC project away from the public during the critical period when the project agreements were being negotiated.
Notes: We all can recall, that when the public began to ask legitimate, serious, and necessary questions about the CC project, through their duly elected representatives (LC Commissioners, Molly Henderson and Richard Shellenberger), and hired legal counsel, and doing so in order to understand the many and complex agreements that exposed them to potential risks, they were illegally and unethically (and outrageously) stonewalled by the LCCCA, Stevens and Lee, and Penn Square Partners.
Part of this powerful conspiracy was to use one of the Penn Square Partners huge media muscle (The three local newspapers owned by Penn Square Partner, Lancaster Newspapers), to ridicule, defame, slander, and ultimately drive the people’s elected representatives from public office for having the “brazenness” to fulfill their oath of office when powerful forces demanded that they simply “shut up”.