Another Half Baked Standard-Examiner Editorial

The Std-Ex editorial board fails (or refuses) to get its own reported facts straight

By Curmudgeon

Folks shouldn't miss the Standard-Examiner's remarkable editorial this morning in re: the Windsor Hotel. The editorial is not the Std-Ex's finest moment.

Why? Because it reports what happened inaccurately and ignores or distorts what was reported in its own news columns by Mr. Schwebke.

For example, the editorial argues that the Council turned down the Windsor's request to permit it to build higher than current zoning on Historic 25th Street allows, that what was before it was a request to let "the building" --- the Windsor alone --- exceed current zoning height limits on 25th Street. Nowhere in the editorial do readers learn that the Godfrey Administration did not ask the Council for a variance for the Windsor. That it asked the Council to change the zoning over the entire 25th Street Historic District, and that that, not a simple variance for one property, is what the Council said "no" to.

Nor will readers of the editorial hear about the letters from organizations with a long history of work in Utah historic preservation, cautioning the Council that changing the zoning over the entire 25th Street Historic District might endanger the street's valuable status as a federally-recognized Historic District.

And then there's this: "Ogden Properties would like to resell the Windsor to Ogden Redevelopment Agency, but that would be a very expensive proposition. Dave Harmer, Ogden's community and economic development director, believes the price might exceed $1 million."

Does the editorial so much as mention that the City, when it provided a subsidy to the Windsor owners so they could buy and rehab the property, retained the option to buy the property back, at the same price for which the Windsor developers bought it, plus the cost of capital improvements to the property, if the project had not been competed by a date certain? Well, no. Nary a mention. Though the Editorial Board found space to include Harmer's claim that the price might be as high as a million to buy it back, backed by nothing so far beyond the current owners demanding about $700K more for the property than they paid for it a year and a half or so ago.

Nor will readers of the editorial learn that when the city provided a subsidy to the Windsor owners to allow them to buy and rehab the property, the new owners agreed to develop a rehab plan consistent with existing zoning restrictions within the 25th Street Historic District. They did not, but instead devised a rehab plan that required a zoning change. No one forced them to do that. They chose to gamble that they would in fact get the zoning change they wanted. That was a risk they and their investors assumed. That it did not happen as they wished is unfortunate for them, but the city bears no, repeat no, obligation to make them financially whole as a result of their taking a risk that turned out to be an unwise one. Perhaps the plan would have worked if the Administration had requested a zoning variance for the Windsor property only. But it didn't. It over-reached and asked for a zoning change to apply to the entire downtown Historic 25th Street District. Perhaps the developers need to redirect their anger from the Council chambers to the Mayor's office.

We can all agree with the editorial's hope that the Windsor can be saved and not simply demolished... at least I can. But when the editorial distorts facts reported in its own news columns, as it does, and carefully cherry picks what facts it does report, to rest responsibility for what happened nearly exclusively on the Council's shoulders, it betrays its readers and the sacred... yes, sacred... trust newspapers and newspaper men and women assume in a democracy. Jefferson understood how important the press is to the preservation of a democracy, and how vital it is that journalists honor that sacred trust when he wrote that if he had to chose between living in a nation without a government, or living in a nation without a free press, he'd prefer the former to the latter.

The Std-Ex's readers, and Ogden in general, have a right to expect, and to demand, better of Ogden's home town paper than we got in this morning's disingenuous editorial.