Hotel project had enough spin to give anyone vertigo

Don't look now, but something resembling sanity has gripped the Virginia Beach City Council.

Even the mayor seems to have come to his senses - catapulting him onto the front page - with his sudden decision to table a risky deal to build a convention center headquarters hotel.

This ill-conceived public-private partnership was to be rammed through later this month. Now that City Council opponents outnumber supporters, the mayor wants to put the brakes on it.

Quick, the sane majority needs to extinguish this deal with Armada Hoffler before it reappears in a slightly different incarnation. If history is any predictor, this interlude of City Council lucidity will be fleeting, so it's imperative that politicians take another critical step immediately:

They need to rein in city staff.

You know, those highly paid employees who too often seem to shill for developers while drawing paychecks from taxpayers.

Take Deputy City Manager Steve "Crystal Ball" Herbert, for instance, who declared that the $109 million convention center hotel project would "pay for itself."

Really, Mr. Herbert? What if it doesn't?

And will someone please explain when rosy prognostications became part of Herbert's job description?

If Herbert wants to dabble in predicting the future, he ought to stick a turban on his head and open a booth on the Boardwalk, where he can amuse sunburned tourists with his forecasts.

The taxpayers deserve better.

Fact is, the convention center business is in trouble virtually everywhere. From coast to coast, cities chase convention business with increasingly grand amenities and give away space and other goodies in return for jobs and visitors that never materialize. Not in the numbers projected, anyway.

Politicians are seduced into these speculative deals by projections peddled by consultants, hotel developers and - in Virginia Beach - by city workers.

Not just Herbert.

If you haven't visited the city's website lately, it's worth a glance for giggles. Be sure to click on the "Headquarters Hotel" icon on the home page. Once there, you'll enter a stunning world of spin.

Included in the Frequently Asked Questions section are preposterous promises about this wonder hotel - all presented as fact.

In two separate places - in boldface - the city declares that the hotel will either "pay for itself" or "more than pay for itself." Answers to other manufactured questions proclaim that the hotel will create 900 jobs and generate $88.7 million in new spending, and say that the project will create a "profit that will help pay for citywide services."

Seems to me, citizens ought to be able to go to the website and find unbiased, straightforward information. Not a sales pitch.

"If a financial securities firm or a bank made these kinds of misleading representations about a deal they were considering, they would be sued," declared Councilman Glenn Davis, who says he is deeply concerned about what passes for facts on the city's official fact sheet. "If that FAQ was accurate, the mayor wouldn't have jumped ship yesterday."

Davis has been critical of city workers who blurred the line between "passion and sales" and told me Thursday that he'll object to this behavior again at the next retreat.

"There's a fine line between being passionate about the city and applying spin to a project to get council buy-in," Davis said. "They started spinning this and that's not their role. I'm not happy with all the spin."

The City Council should put an immediate stop to it. Everyone in town is getting dizzy.

Kerry Dougherty, (757) 446-2306,  kerry.dougherty@cox.net, PilotOnline.com/dougherty