By Curmudgeon
Interesting Scott Schwebke story in this morning's Standard-Examiner:
• Room for More Ogden Hotels?Much of interest in it, and well worth a careful reading. But first off, kudos to the SE for ferreting out the name of another of the hotel-building companies interested in building at the Junction that Matthew "Stonewall" Godfrey's administration was refusing to make public as recently as a week ago. Nice work. Now keep digging.
Also kudos to the SE for making central to the story the question of whether investing public money in a new downtown high-end hotel is prudent in the current business climate and when the occupancy rate for Ogden's three existing downtown hotels ran at about 60% last year. The story, let us note, was not reported simply as "two companies vying to build at the Junction," but focused instead on raising doubts about whether any company can build and operate a successful hotel downtown just now or in the foreseeable future. And whether public money should be gambled that one can. With opinion from people in the field on both sides of that question included.
It's a chewy story; read up.
