I’m going to stick my neck out here and make an unavoidable point: the hotel and convention center project is truly “too big to fail”. If the convention center were to close, the hotel would be unable to survive on its own; there isn’t enough business in downtown Lancaster to keep it in operation (just look at the Brunswick, which when built was much nicer than the Marriott is right now).
Taxpayers would still be liable for the convention center debt, and closing the hotel would make Lancaster City taxpayers responsible for the outstanding $24 million in construction debt PLUS paying off the balance of the $14 million Fulton Bank loan.
Political pressure combined with practical considerations will force politicians to once again produce more taxpayer dollars to keep the “integrated facility” in operation.
Lancaster County: “Too small to bail”
Close it and be done. Stop throwing good money after bad. Man up and admit failure and stupidity. A word of the wise for next time, before embarking on an economic development project that involves a particular, existing industry (hotel sin this case), when just about every hotel that is not going to reap a reward of public “incentive” objects, listen to them, they know more than you do.
To anonymous above- how exactly is that going to help? Isn’t downtown Lancaster struggling enough without having yet *another* empty building bringing things down?
Instead of so many people fighting, still, about whether this convention center should have opened, why not help keep it going and bring more traffic/business to downtown Lancaster. Whatever happened to community solidarity?
Lancaster City has the potential to be such a gorgeous little downtown area, especially with things like Central Market, First Friday and the Ladies’ Night event they were doing on the third Fridays of the month. I don’t know if they are still doing that, but it was a fun thing.
So many downtown businesses seem to be going out of business and leaving abandoned window shops, that to push the convention center/Marriott to close will just promote the downward spiral and eventually turn Lancaster City into a full-fledged slum or into a ghost town.