Addition to Chapter Four of Revised Convention Center Series

By Christian Hart-Nibbrig

(Addition to Chapter Four of Convention Center Series)

The Ernst & Young report, and the controversy surrounding its release, presented an ethical dilemma for Lancaster Newspapers, Inc. 

In evaluating its four “scenarios” for the proposed convention center, Ernst & Young assumed the publicly-owned center would be attached to a privately-owned hotel.  The hotel would be adapted from the former Watt & Shand building on Penn Square, according to the study.

The Watt & Shand building was owned, of course, by Penn Square Partners.  And one of the three Penn Square Partners was Lancaster Newspapers.

In 1999, the 100 year-old newspaper company, led by its chairman and president, Jack Buckwalter,  found itself a major partner in what would become one of the largest capital projects in Lancaster’s history.  Tens of millions of taxpayer dollars were discussed in connection with this project.

Lancaster Newspapers’ business and editorial offices were also located directly across the street from the proposed project, on one of the four corners of Penn Square.  The company owned other downtown real estate near the proposed project site, the value of which would be impacted by a convention center and hotel

Given the vested economic interests of Lancaster Newspapers, both as a partner and neighbor to the project, and the public money that would go to funding it, questioning Lancaster Newspapers’ impartiality should have been expected

One might have reasonably thought, too, that Penn Square Partner and Lancaster Newspapers’ chairman, Jack Buckwalter, would have explicitly ordered the staffs of his three newspapers to vigorously and impartially investigate and report the facts regarding the project.

That directive from Buckwalter – well within his purview as publisher — would have provided the public, his loyal, paying customers, with a basis for evaluating the project’s viability.  It would also allow his newspapers to maintain their professional credibility.

But that did not happen

The handling of the release of the Ernst & Young study in the summer of 1999 exposed a strong pro-project bias on the part of Lancaster Newspapers.

After the report was finished and submitted to the Lancaster Campaign in mid-July, it was reported that Lancaster Campaign executive director, Tom Baldrige, promised county hotel owners copies of the full report.  Baldrige reneged on that promise, and the hotel owners were not provided copies of the report.

Jack Buckwalter was a board member of the Lancaster Alliance, the organization that launched and entirely funded the Lancaster Campaign.  The Lancaster Campaign paid for the Ernst & Young report with Lancaster Alliance money, part of which came from Buckwalter himself.  Jack Buckwalter personally had proprietary access to the report.

Buckwalter, therefore, could have insisted to his fellow Lancaster Alliance/Campaign board members  – which included Penn Square Partners Dale High and Rufus Fulton — that the Ernst & Young report must be released.  Or, Buckwalter could simply have made copies of the report and handed it to the editors of the Intelligencer Journal, Lancaster New Era, and Sunday News and told them to report its contents.

But Buckwalter did not do that, and the Ernst & Young report stayed sequestered and unreported by any of the Lancaster Newspapers.

The Lancaster Newspapers’ articles leading up to the September vote on the hotel room tax read more like public relations pablum than balanced, unbiased investigation into an important, expensive urban development project.

The headlines, front-page placement, and length of the articles reflect their editorial slant:

ELSEWHERE IN PA., HOTEL ROOM TAX IS BOOSTING BUSINESS, Lancaster New Era – August 19, 1999 (1,136 words)

CONVENTION CENTER, HOTEL PROPOSED AT PENN SQUARE

WHY NEW HOTEL ROOM TAX  IS A KEY PART OF CONVENTION CENTER PACKAGE, Lancaster New Era – August 19, 1999 (1,486 words)

CONVENTION CENTER, HOTEL PROPOSED AT PEN SQUARE $75 MILLION PLAN TURNS EX-WATT & SHAND INTO LUXURY HOTEL AND SHOPS, WITH 14-STORY TOWER, Lancaster New Era – August 19, 1999 (1,734 words)

CONVENTION CENTER/HOTEL PLAN WOULD HELP CITY, COUNTY, Lancaster New Era- August 20, 1999 (608 words)

THE WATCH ON THE SQUARE: CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

EXPERTS LIKE LANCASTER’S CHANCES AT MAKING A GO OF LUXURY HOTEL AND CONVENTION CENTER, Sunday News – August 22, 1999 (1,650 words)

PENN SQUARE COMPLEX IS HAILED AS ‘EVERYTHING THE CITY NEEDS’.Lancaster New Era – August 26, 1999 (1,168 words)

Adding column inches to some of these ‘articles’ were full-color, artistic renderings of the proposed project. These lovely, made-up images, with smiling pretend citizens under make-believe sunny skies, were splayed on the front pages of Lancaster Newspapers before the room tax was voted on. These illustrations amounted to front-page advertisements for the project

Most disturbingly, all of the Lancaster Newspapers got essential facts wrong about the project.  The most important mistake, repeated over and again by each of the three newspapers, was the cost of the project.

The sponsors, which included Lancaster Newspapers’ Jack Buckwalter, knew very well that Ernst & Young estimated the cost of a 61,000 square-foot convention center and 281-guest room hotel to be $91 million, not the $75 million figure that was reported again and again and again.

It seems inescapable that Jack Buckwalter, Charlie Smithgall, Paul Thibault, Tom Baldrige and the other sponsors who obviously read the report – which was finished one month before these articles appeared – deliberately misled the public regarding how much the project would cost.

Not one of these men, including the newspaper publisher, corrected the $75 million figure.  Not one

There are crimes in journalism, and reporting as true what one knows to be false is a capital offense.  And Lancaster Newspapers committed it in this case.

The Lancaster County Commissioners were scheduled to vote on the hotel room rental tax on September 15^th, 1999

On that morning, in its editorial, the Intelligencer Journal, to the surprise of no one, weighed in on the issue:

“… We also believe that the county commissioners should impose a room tax on hotels throughout   the county to help pay to build the convention center and to promote tourism in both the city     and county. . . .”

EDITOR: Author Nibbrig is a graduate of the prestigious Columbia School of Journalism.