1979-05-21 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Mr. Cha~tes Lilly spoke in opposition to the bond issue part of the project. Mr. Bob Vickery was very critical of the City's physical planning procedure for Capital Improvements. He stated in his opinion, there are two' ideal social and economic proposals for Vinegar Hill. The first of these is housing and the argument against housing is that the land costs too much, but housing would bring people downtown. The second would be something which returns a large number of people to the Downtown area and in this sense a small convention center with a large hotel is an almost ideal use of the property. It will bring people into the City, it will have convention facilities and will certainly help the economic development of the City. He stated that as a member of the Economic Development Group he voted for this proposal as an ideaii~based on the social and economic criteria, but he did not like the design as shown. He listed what he considers high priority items as follows: 1. Any development on Vinegar Hill must tie the Mall to West M~in Street and make it a living reality wherebyyou can move from WeSt Main tQ~the Mall in a plesant manner; 2. It must preserve what is now th~ inviting prospect at the end of the Mall, it must not put a fifteen story motel which completely blocks the Mall with an elevator tower; 3. It must create a pivotal landmark of which the citizens of this City can be proud; 4. It must tie or relate in some meaningful way to the Midway site which is an equally critical area for the City's future; 5. ~It should be an expandable scheme so that if the City so decides to provide three million dollars and not five the scheme could be started and be added to later if it was a success; and 6. It must be designed with the highest standards capable of our modern society. Mr. Charles Holliday, President of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Lodging Association stated, "Charlottesville-Albemarle Lodging Association would like to go on record in opposition to the proposed Vinegar Hill Hotel/Conference facility. We're hotel professionals and I feel the Vinegar Hill Site is feasible to operate a profitable hotel. Our knowledge of what it takes to operate a profitable facility, we're much in opposition to using public funds to enter into competition with local motel,restaurant operators. Our owners have spent many years building their particular motels with out assistance from public funds we feels that others seeking to enter the local market should do so totally at their own expense. There are several reasons why we would feel that this venture would not be beneficial to the City, the Vinegar Hill site at present is not easily, accessible to the traveling public, it takes many years to build a convention business we're seeing that at our own places, it doesn't take two or three years it takes five to seven years. What are we going to do in the meanwhile? The tax payers will have to bear the brunt of the development, we would have to exceed competition to pay the mortgage on such a facility."