Carter Wrenn posted on February 14, 2006 13:12
The downtown hotel has hit a stumbling block – but not because City leaders decided it was a mistake to stick taxpayers with a $20 million bill to build a Marriott Hotel. Instead, the problem is stucco. That’s right, stucco. Councilman Thomas Crowder is raising all sorts of cain because the builders want to put stucco on the taxpayers’ hotel.
I’m not an architect (Crowder is) and I don’t know the advantages of, say, granite over stucco and Crowder may be dead right, stucco may stink. But it seems to me the City Council has missed the whole point. It’s not the stucco we don’t need – it’s the taxpayer subsidized hotel.
Maybe a miracle will happen and stucco will torpedo the whole project. (But, I’m afraid, it’s also possible - just to get rid of the stucco – the City Council will decide to give the Marriott folks more money.)