DENVER | City officials have until January to decide how to move forward with the Gaylord Hotel and Conference Center project, members of the Colorado Economic Development Commission said at a board meeting Sept. 13.
The commissioners allowed Aurora more time — more than two months past the original deadline — to finalize project details after the Tennessee-based Gaylord hotels brand was sold to Marriott International Inc.
Under the deal made to Marriott, Gaylord would continue to own its hotel properties and would reorganize itself to become a real estate investment trust in January 2013, focused mostly on group-oriented destination hotels in urban and resort markets. The deal is expected to be finalized at a special meeting of shareholders Sept. 25.
Before the division was sold to Marriott in May, the commissioners had awarded the hotel project about $81 million in tax rebates over 30 years to help build the project.
If there are “substantial” changes to the original hotel plans, Green said Aurora would need to resubmit another application for state tourism incentives next year. The deadlines for the second round of Regional Tourism Act money will be set by the commissioners at a November meeting.
The city of Aurora has also offered an additional $300 million in tax rebates to help with the construction of the $824 million Western-themed hotel and conference center, which calls for 1,500 hotel rooms and 400,000 square feet of exhibition and conference space to be located in Aurora near the Denver International Airport.
City officials are waiting until Gaylord’s meeting of shareholders Sept. 19 to move forward, said Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan.
“Once that’s completed, it gives both Gaylord and the city the opportunity to sit down and talk about what’s next,” Hogan said.
There are currently many unanswered questions about the project and how it would fit into the Gaylord’s restructured model, Hogan said.
“We don’t know what that means in terms of finding a replacement and what role we’d play in attracting a replacement, and having a deal with the replacement,” Hogan said. “We don’t know how they want to do it.”
As a REIT, the organization would not be able to build new development, said Brian Abrahamson, vice president of corporate communications for Gaylord, in August.
Gaylord “still loves” the Aurora location for a large-scale hotel and conference center project, though, he said.
“As a REIT, however, we cannot be in the ground-up development role. In order for the project to go forward with our involvement, we need to bring on other investors, particularly until the project is up and running.”
The eternal optimism and faith in Gaylord shown by the AEDC and Mayor Hogan is refreshing, believing that the incentives Gaylord worked so hard to aquire will now be willingly and altruistically transferred to a third party solely for the benefit of Aurora reflects a belief that crony capitilism may well be Aurora’s salvation.
If only the AEDC was this persistent in bringing a project to Aurora that did not require that 100% of projected revenue for 33 years be turned over to the developer, Aurora could resolve their “structural deficiency.” On the other hand if the goal is to give “major developers 100% of projected revenues for 33 years, do Aurora City Council Members even need the AEDC? Is it necessary for Aurora’s City Council Members to give the AEDC $400,000 per year to develop incentive packages that gives away 100% of projected revenues.
I know, I know, some on council say, “it’s not like we are handing developers a bag of money” but Aurora City Council Members are certainly enabling developers to hang on to a big bag of money each year instead of collecting this money, and generating a revenue stream that would mitigate Aurora’s yearly budget shortfall.