Recession be damned, D.C.’s  getting a convention center hotel.

Yesterday, Mayor Adrian Fenty signed the authorizing bill, which was approved by the DC Council last month. The legislation will set in place a plan to finance construction using public and private funds.

In a hearing about the convention center hotel earlier this summer, job creation came up repeatedly (as it usually does—with people wondering how much work will be promised to District residents).

Here’s a snippet from yesterday’s press release:

The project will produce more than 1,150 jobs during 40 months of construction. Marriott will hire about 1,000 people to work in the hotel permanently. The company has agreed to fill at least 51 percent of those new jobs with District residents and work closely with certified local, small and disadvantaged businesses. The development team expects to break ground on the hotel project this fall and it is expected to be complete in 2013.

Image by NCinDC, Flickr Creative Commons

The engine of capitalism churns forward! Today a bill authorizing the construction of the convention center hotel was passed by the D.C. Council.

The long-delayed project sat idly by as the National Harbor attracted convention business, and Disney acquired 15 acres of property in the area to build a resort.

In early June, At-large Councilmember Kwame Brown and Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans re-ignited the effort to devise a funding scheme for the project. The initial plan called for an extreme use of public funds.

But over the last few weeks, a new proposal was devised with much more private investment.

At a recent hearing, Evans invoked images of crumbling bureaucracy and decrepit school buildings to describe the value of big money projects to the city.  

“I want you to imagine a District of Columbia without a Verizon Center and a convention center,” he stated. “It would probably look like Detroit.”   

Plus, Shaw locals came out and said they really wanted some nice restaurants and stuff in their neighborhood.

So there you have it. 

“We went from a 100 percent publicly financed hotel to a deal that requires the developer to fund the majority of the costs,” said Brown in a press release issued today. “While it’s not the ideal result, in these tough economic times we can now look forward to revitalizing the Shaw neighborhood and putting District residents to work.”

Image by NCinDC, Flickr Creative Commons

Yesterday, the DC Council passed, on first review, a bill allowing the city to contribute an additional $72 million in public funding to the construction of the convention center hotel.

Image by Cooper Cary

The Convention Center Hotel, located at 9th Street and Massachusetts Ave.

“I want you to imagine a District of Columbia without a Verizon Center and a Convention Center,” stated Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans. “It would probably look like Detroit.”

“We are now spending records amounts of money in our school system. We are spending record amounts in our human services system. Those record amounts of money are generated in economic development,” Evans stated.

These comments came midway through today’s hearing on the convention center hotel, a long-stalled project which was kicked into gear again earlier this month.

The success of the convention center and the city’s tourist industry, according to various DC officials and business leaders, rests on the completion of this 1,170-room Marriott, which would have 100,000 square feet of meeting space.  Shaw locals that testified about the project seemed pretty jazzed about the retail/restaurant possibilities for the neighborhood as well. 

The question, of course, is financing and just how much of it the District is willing to put forth (and then we’re back to the whole Nats Park discussion again.)

When the hotel idea was first revived, the city was considering issuing $750 million in bonds to help fund the project,  breaking the city’s bond cap,  and possibly pulling subsidies from some other projects. Then, last week, the Washington Business Journal reported that the developers had found a way to possibly raise their equity participation.

Here’s the latest plan, according to Chief Financial Officer Nat Gandhi’s testimony:

“The proposed financing plan includes funding for $537 million project costs. About $331 million, or 62 percent of the funding will come from private sources and $206 million or 38 percent from the [Washington Convention Center Authority]” That 206 million is a combination of 50 million in WCCA investment, 22 million in District/WCCA lease secured debt, and 134 million in TIF-secured debt.”

The discussion—the parts I saw earlier on—about the hotel mainly centered around all its benefits to Shaw, to boosting tax dollars, and how it would augment convention business, in general. And then, there was Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells, who wondered several times if a big designated convention center hotel was really all that necessary. After all, San Francisco doesn’t have one, he stated.

Plus, said Wells, “Some of the areas with large convention centers and hotels, when they’re not busy, they’re the ‘deadest parts’ of town.”

Next up for the convention center hotel bill: This Friday, Kwame Brown’s Committee on Economic Development will convene a special meeting and mark-up of certain bills and proposed resolutions at 4:00 p.m., Room 120.

Renderings by Cooper Carry