Despite the presence of a shiny new convention center and hotels that ready to serve the clientele local officials still feel the need to give a subsidy to a new headquarters hotel because the city continues to be bypassed by conventions—the head of the visitors’ bureau noted that “the city does not have large-enough blocks of rooms to service the largest conventions or even two mid-size conventions at the same time.”
But other hotel owners are speaking up against the favorable tax treatment, noting that problems at the convention center itself should be solved first and those problems are the reason the city is being shunned by potential convention business. The other hotel owners would have a stronger case to make if many of them had not received assistance themselves—public subsidies always beget other subsidies.
But that’s the state of things in Philadelphia as it prepares to move forward with a tax increment finance deal. Yes, it sounds a lot like Pittsburgh and its quest to build a headquarters hotel or accept the reality that it likely won’t happen but this is all going on at the other end of the Commonwealth.
