The Pittsburgh Downtown Neighbors Alliance (PDNA) reported in a gushing Feb. 20 news update that the public subsidy for a newly proposed new hotel to be attached to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center could range from $30 million to $100 million.
It says the taxpayer dollars would be culled from state, City of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County coffers.
“Good grief,” quipped Jake Haulk, president-emeritus of the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy. “Does it ever end?”
Frankly, we’re surprised that the PDNA would so lavishly praise such a project given its mission statement that reads as follows:
“We strive to advance the greater downtown area by embracing the downtown Pittsburgh community, diversifying the small business landscape and cultivating arts & culture through innovative projects and events.”
The simple fact remains that such a convention center hotel is not needed, might waste up to $100 million in precious public dollars and would screw the many privately funded hotel rooms that have been added Downtown over the last 25 or so years.
And this the PDNA considers to be “innovative” and “advancing” Downtown? Allowing a name-brand hotelier – said to be “an upscale group that has often worked alongside convention centers” — to suckle at the taxpayer teat doesn’t exactly strike us as “diversifying the small business landscape” Downtown. How about you?
And oh by gosh by golly, it appears that the PDNA conveniently forgets this salient fact: There’s already a 660-room Westin hotel next to the David L. that’s connected to the convention center with a short skywalk.
And let us repeat another salient set of facts:
Back in 2011 (in Policy Brief Vol. 11, No. 43), the Allegheny Institute’s Frank Gamrat and Haulk panned the then-latest new convention center hotel talk:
“Before the talk of subsidy goes any further, it is incumbent on the advocates to share the data on current room night usage attributable to convention goers and on the annual pattern of room night demand.
“Building a hotel to accommodate a couple of large conventions that creates a glut of rooms for the rest of the year is a non-starter. And the claim that a lot more conventions generating room demand would come has to be more than just a claim.
“It is not enough to say build it and they will come. Promises and claims are easy. Taxpayers are jaded and skeptical about the promised payoffs from the use of their money on politicians’ favorite schemes,” the think tank scholars wrote at the time.
Again, class, and as we’ve repeated many times, hotels don’t create demand. Demand creates the need for new hotels. And if that demand truly exists, there’s profit to be turned by private investors.
Those working behind the scenes to bring a new convention center hotel to fruition represent the willful ignorami in bad standing. The effort should be called what it is – theft by deception.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
