CentrePointe

Hide your wife, hide your kids, because nobody’s safe outside the pedways

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February 20, 2012
By David M. F. Schankula

Last week the Webbs’ released their new CentrePointe design. Or, not really new but refashioned — it’s a Studio Gang design stripped of some of its power but better than what the Webbs kept coming up with on their own.

One part of Beverly Fortune’s really fantastic article we didn’t get around to mentioning on Thursday — because it deserves more than passing mention — was Dudley Webb’s pedway vision:

Several members took issue with a pedway shown connecting the hotel to the Financial Center parking garage. It would be possible for people to walk from the CentrePointe hotel all the way to the Lexington Center via pedways.

Board member Kevin Atkins asked whether that worked against the current push to get more people walking downtown. Last summer the city completed a multi-million-dollar, three-year project to build new sidewalks on Main Street, Vine Street and South Limestone.

Dudley Webb said that when women had to walk from the Lexington Center to the CentrePointe hotel at night, they would feel safer walking in pedways.

There are two points to discuss here.

The first is Dudley’s idea that pedways are good design.

The second is his hilarious (or, if you want to be angry — craaazy) views on safety.

Let’s start with the design element.

We here at B&P have long advocated for MORE PEDWAYS. Like the cowbell is to music, so too is the pedway to our urban-county fabric. Time and again, we have called for pedways in our time, even going so far as to google bomb Lexington, effectively turning us into the Pedway Capital of the World (regardless of the fact Louisville is now looking to build a significantly longer track — a classic example of that sad city’s Lexington-envy). As written in these pages in 2010, the Webbs are building a pedway to heaven:

Sure, “CentrePointe” does not yet exist and its current business plan – a hotel twice as expensive as the competition achieving occupancy rates well above the city’s current average – makes absolutely no sense. And the fifty million dollar condos aren’t exactly a hot commodity.

But Jim Newberry and the Family Webb know something the rest of us do not. They have a secret weapon.

It is the power of the Pedway.

As we have detailed over and over, the CentrePointe project as a whole is laughable: high on ego, short on funding, mindless in design, lacking in brains, etc.

But its Pedway system… oh, the CentrePointe Pedway system is genius. We hope this thing gets built some magical day in the future just because of the heavenly Pedways it offers the well-healed citizens of this fair city.

You see, even if the CentrePointe monstrosity sits essentially empty and serves no purpose for the vast majority of Lexington’s citizens – it will still have the Pedways!

Like Festival Market, Victorian Square, the Big Blue Building, the “World Trade Center” and the “Radisson” hotel before it, if there is one thing the Webb Company knows how to do… it’s build Pedways.

Images courtesy of Clarke.

So we are not opposed to the pedways. Webbs idea to build a pedway from his latest CentrePointe project to his parking garage is fine with us — it’s brilliant. We personally advocated this to Woodford Webb last summer when the Webbs brought in Jeanne Gang and listened to her bizarre pedwayless plans. In fact, we want the Webbs to go even further. To build another pedway from the parking garage at Park Plaza and the Public Library above Phoenix Park and across Limestone into the CentrePointe blocke. This would allow one to walk on air from the center of downtown all the way to its western end. This is genius.

Now, some would say that Jeanne Gang is a “genius.” But she said pedways were bad design. So did the Rupp Area master planner. And so did the Court House Area Design Review Board.

But what do they know?

Dudley Webb knows pedways.

And he knows that not only are they good design, they are a public safety imperative.

There is a lot of violence on Lexington’s downtown streets with people being attacked at all hours of the day by murky forces of evil.

Our streets are not safe. Our women are not safe.

Dudley Webb said that when women had to walk from the Lexington Center to the CentrePointe hotel at night, they would feel safer walking in pedways.

This is true.

It is true even though every single woman I have spoken with finds it offensive. And it is true even if every single person I have spoken with thinks it’s stupid or totally disconnected from reality.

The thing about the downtown Lexington pedway track is that much of what it connects are well-designed Webb family structures.

Should Webb’s latest pedway stand (and it should!) it would stretch above McCarthy’s, into the Big Blue Building parking lot, through the building, across Mill into the World Trade Center to the Radisson (or whatever) across to Festival Market and over Broadway to Victorian Square then all the way down to the empty condos and across to the Lexington Center at which point it circles back through to Kentucky Central (or whatever) and back into the Radisson.

This is about the safest route any woman would want to take late at night.

Put another way: Any woman who wouldn’t take this route is taking her fate into her own hands. Or feet.

The streets are dangerous. Anyone who has ever walked from one place to another in downtown Lexington and gotten there quickly, directly and without incident understands this.

The pedways hold many advantages.

1) The pedways are isolated. People don’t use them, they are generally deserted. Assuming that no criminal elements are there, you are unlikely to come across any witnesses or anyone who might hear you scream.

2) The places the pedways connect are isolated. There is very little foot traffic in the parking garages late at night. It’s a good place for someone to hide in a car, or between them, and there’s few passersby to contend with. The long empty hallways inside the empty buildings the pedways connect are winding and contain many blind corners. There is safety in not knowing what is hiding around the bend. You cannot find this safety on the open street level where, for the most part, you can see both in front and around you.

3) No one will hear you scream. On the street, people make noise and they holler at each other and cars drive by and people wave and laugh and sometimes some jackass vomits or two meat heads hit each other while large groups of people remain in total safety in the places around them. Inside the pedways, none of this awfulness can happen. That means you — man or lady, it doesn’t matter — can get good and sauced and wander all throughout the Lexington pedway system singing your brains out. You can scream songs at the top of your lungs crossing over Main or Broadway, and no one will hear you. You can chant and drum and, because there is no one around, no one will stop you or come to your harmonic aid.

Let us sing.

There’s a Dudley who’s sure
All that glitters is gold
And he’s buying a Pedway to heaven

When he gets there he knows
If the hotels are all closed
With a word he can get what he paid for

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
And he’s buying a Pedway to heaven…

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WKYT visits CentrePointe architects, and other takes

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February 20, 2012
By David M. F. Schankula

Missed this, from WKYT:

Also, see Tom Eblen’s Sunday column on the subject:

I will admit to suffering a bit of CentrePointe fatigue when I went to see a preview of the fifth iteration of Dudley Webb’s still-unfunded downtown hotel, retail, office and condo development. But it was worth the trip.

I liked the designs that were shown informally Wednesday to the Courthouse Area Design Review Board, which must approve them.

Most of all, I realized how valuable this long and difficult process has been. Not only has it improved CentrePointe’s design — assuming the project is ever built — but it has taught Lexington some valuable lessons about the value of good design and public engagement.

And if you’re not done, there’s always The Streetsweeper:

From the wanna-be Frank Lloyd Wright’s to the “anything built in the ’80s is bad” crowd, they all showed up and it was off to the races.

Some folks think that Dudley is just trying to ruin the city’s reputation, others that the Webbs are truly criminal for stealing the wonderful vibrancy of the block’s former self. Four years (and one deep recession) into the project, some believe that if they bring enough criticism that they can delay the outcome until they can influence a change of design. Others still long for the memories of a once popular music venue and little else on a downtown block which was mainly vibrant after dark and basically stagnant during the day.

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Webbs’ latest CentrePointe architects, EOP, release more design details

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February 16, 2012
By David M. F. Schankula

Following the news of the most recent CentrePointe design (H-L, B&P), the architects at EOP have released more details and a couple new images. Here’s the glass shard building, an Urban Active:

And here’s what they have to say about the project as a whole:

EOP’s design builds on the master plan presented by SGA and includes a 28-story tower consisting of a Marriott hotel on the lower floors and condominiums, pied-a-terres and two-story penthouses on the upper floors; an elevated expansive outdoor public space with sculpture garden, terrace and pool; an 8-story wedged office building with a Saul Good restaurant; a 3-story signature building for Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse and Urban Active Fitness; plenty of underground parking; and 3- and 4-story buildings along Main Street designed by other local architecture firms. The Main Street buildings will be a mixture of two-story townhouses and one-story flats above street level retail in varying heights and materials.

So again, it’s like the Gang plan without Gang and replacing the Tower of Tubes with what one might imagine is the somewhat uninspired demands of Marriott for their promised hotel (which is not truly terrible like the Webbs’ initial forays). The plan maintains Gang’s vision of a non-monolithic monstrosity, the same ten story office structure and the three story restaurant/gym, along with the refashioned Main Street. Which looks like this:

They’ll be back soon, they pledge, for a public meeting to present the whole plan to the people, and will be joined by the local design firms working on those Main Street structures.

[For more reactions to this latest Webb attempt, visit the Kaintuckeean.]

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CentrePointe is back with a brand new invention!

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February 16, 2012
By David M. F. Schankula

Well that only took four months.

Back in October when Dudley and fam fired the worldclass architect they’d hired to reinvent their dead block they said they’d have a new plan in three weeks.

The Herald reported at the time:

Webb hired Lexington firm EOP Architects to incorporate Gang’s ideas into a design for the block. EOP already was involved with the project as one of Gang’s guest firms.

“We are excited to be able to take a great vision in terms of the master plan and move forward with it,” EOP’s Rick Ekhoff said Thursday. He said he hoped to make the EOP plan public in two to three weeks.

We last checked in six weeks later. EOP and the Webbs had remained silent, no new designs, no word, no action. Just a four year old “Coming Soon” sign.

But seasons change. And the CentrePointe rises again! At least on paper:

The view from Vine, between Upper and Mill.

The Webbs hung out with the Court House Area Design Review Board yesterday for a ‘preliminary review’ of  a “project bounded by Main Street, Vine Street, Upper Street and Limestone Street.”

The current plans which have not yet met the same fate as all previous plans are basically a rip off of the Gang principle. At its base, that is a good thing.

The hotel and million dollar condos appears to be about 25 stories tall and occupies just the south west corner of the block — as had the Gang design. Where the Gang hotel was iconic, pleasant to the eye, the Webbs’ latest effort is frankly better than anything they’ve come up with before without losing that classic “generic” Webb touch. It looks a little like they took one of the cheapo skyscrapers that have gone up in Manhattan in the past six years and lopped off the top. It’s kind of stubby.

But it’s still far better than the pre-Gang designs. And it does a better job (how could it not?) of keeping the street open.

Same view, street level.

From the ground, you see the austere hotel entrance (because that’s what fancy people want out of a hotel entrance, that’s why they’re paying significantly higher rates to stay here than to stay at the Hilton down the street) and in the background a fun four story glass shard structure.

This Vine street view would be a huge change to the nature of Vine. Before it was a stretch of broken sidewalk stretching in front of an empty field, this part of Vine was a stretch of broken sidewalk stretching in front of buildings that, basically, did not open to Vine. There were some trees and shade, but it was largely a beige place not inviting foot traffic nor offering a driver anything to circle back around and possibly stop for.

With the CentrePointe designs pre-Gang, the Hotel/Condo monstrosity devoured the entire block, did nothing for the public street level. It’s a bit different here and again, they’d love to take the credit, but this is Jeanne Gang’s work, not the Webbs.

The Tour de France passes the block at Vine and Limestone at dawn. Or is that dusk? It’s been raining.

 

And just as Gang prescribed, the plan hangs on to the 10 story office building at Main and Lime and the squatter glass shard building at Vine and Lime, which may host a rooftop garden, possibly with bar/restaurant, and restaurant inside. And along Main Street… three and four story retail. Again… Gang.

The biggest change here is the hotel itself.

Studio Gang’s CentrePointe, from the Vine Street canyon.

Other than that, the Webbs have done what Gang told them to. And even with the hotel, they’ve done some of what Studio Gang told them to do and for the first time, the Webbs have put forward a plan of their own (if you want to give them credit for this plan like it’s their own, which obviously it is not) that doesn’t allow the hotel to dominate the entire block (or all of downtown).

B.Fortune writes:

The block is included in the Courthouse Area Design Review Zone, in which all new buildings and exterior changes to existing structures must be approved by the Design Review Board.

Board members on Wednesday were tactful in their remarks, but they said they wanted to see changes in parts of the plan Ekhoff presented.

Several members said there needed to be more pedestrian access through the block, at ground level, so people could walk from Main Street to Vine Street.

Buildings facing Upper Street needed more windows instead of solid brick walls, they said. One board member said it now looks like the project has “turned its back on Upper Street.”

There’s a fabulous discussion about pedways — in which Dudley promises to protect the city of Lexington — but we’ll cover that in a separate post.

The Board pushed the Webbs to promise a public meeting on the project and they ecstatically agreed. Or at least, they said they would hold a public meeting.

And in terms of progress and prospects:

Board member Harry Richert asked whether the entire project, with all the buildings, could be built in phases. Webb said it would be too expensive. It will be built at one time, he said.

Webb said three businesses — Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse out of Cincinnati, Saul Good Restaurant and Pub, and Urban Active gym — have committed to take space on the block. J. W. Marriott will take the hotel space.

That would leave a floor wide gym empty above the Big Blue Building’s parking garage (Urban InActive, I suppose) but other than that it saul good. Right?

I’ve reached out to J.W. Marriott for comment on their continued commitment to making Lexington the next location for their brand.

I recently had the chance to visit the J.W. Marriott in Grand Rapids. It was a pretty place. There were these lights. It had big windows looking over a rollicking river.

Anyway… we’ll have more later, including a closer look at the crime fighting pedways and perhaps a rumination upon the Courthouse Area Design Review Board.

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Taste of Bye-Bye? The Webbs buy the other side of Main Street

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December 12, 2011
By David M. F. Schankula

After this morning’s post about the continued non-existence of CentrePointe, a sweet little birdie sent us some interesting news.

The building across the street from CentreLawne was sold on December 2nd.

101 W. Main St. houses the Taste of Thai restaurant (which is tasty) and Sam’s Hot Dog Stand (also). It was sold by the estate of its previous owner for about twice it’s assessed valued (PVA assessed at $380,000, purchased for $750,000).

The purchaser is “101 W Main LLC.” That company’s principal office is 250 West Main Street (aka, the Big Blue Building) in Suite 3000. Suite 3000 is home to The Webb Companies. Ronald Tritschler, who works for the Webbs is the registered agent of both 101 W. Main and the overall CentrePointe project (the Residences at, the Parking at, the Hotel at, the Offices at, and the Spa at).

Will this be a new addition to the CentrePointe project? Perhaps an extra lawn to keep a phantom stallion from the invisible mares? Will delicious Thai food still be available in the coming years or at least months?


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Where is CentrePointe? The Webbs said three weeks, it’s been six

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December 12, 2011
By David M. F. Schankula

10/27/2011, the Webbs announce they have dumped Studio Gang and the more reasonable plan for the CentrePointe block and instead are going backwards to their previous J.W. Marriott colossus idea. After dumping Gang, the Webbs hired a local firm, promising their new ideas in just two to three weeks. Reported the Herald:

Webb hired Lexington firm EOP Architects to incorporate Gang’s ideas into a design for the block. EOP already was involved with the project as one of Gang’s guest firms.

“We are excited to be able to take a great vision in terms of the master plan and move forward with it,” EOP’s Rick Ekhoff said Thursday. He said he hoped to make the EOP plan public in two to three weeks.

That was over six weeks ago.

Woodford Webb did not respond to a request for comment.

Overly ambitious timelines are nothing new to the Webbs, of course. On the CentrePointe project alone they have repeatedly promised action and news within near-term goals — Dudley’s almost comic use of “30 to 60 days” to promise exciting news of big investors and groundbreaking were so constant they become known as a “Webb Unit” (e.g. here, here, or here).

It remains unclear if these continually missed self-imposed deadlines are indicative of a lack of business acumen or, rather, are a miscalcualted attempt to pacify the public in the immediate while invariably letting them down in the long-term. (Which is kinda the same thing.)

At the end of October, the rebranded CentrePointe team said there’d be a new plan in a matter of weeks. It’s been six and they don’t appear to have anything.

In other hotel news… the J.W. Marriott in Tucson, AZ is facing foreclosure:

The JW Marriott Starr Pass Resort & Spa – the earth-toned luxury hotel perched in the saguaro-strewn slopes of the Tucson Mountains – is facing foreclosure.

The owner of the 575-room hotel, Starr Pass Resort Developments, has defaulted on a $145 million loan recorded in August 2006, says a foreclosure notice filed in the Pima County Recorder’s Office.

An auction on the property has been scheduled for 1 p.m. Feb. 2 on the eastern steps of the Pima County Courthouse, 110 W. Congress St.

Let that be a hot tip to all you potential CentrePointe investors out there — if you want to drop hundreds of millions on a J.W. Marriott Hotel you could give it to the somewhat questionable Webbs or you could just buy one that’s already built and save some scrilla. Plus Tucson is warmer.

It’s not just Tucson. The hotel foreclosure market is booming, as Lodging & Hospitality reported a couple weeks ago:

Hotel Foreclosures an Oncoming ‘Train Wreck’

Steve Van hates being the pessimist, but he can’t help it. The CEO of Prism Hotels & Resorts says comparing the last two years of hotel distress to what’s coming is like comparing “a car wreck and a train wreck.”

He doesn’t see any other way to avoid the oncoming flood of CMBS maturities that originated in 2007, at the absolute pinnacle of the lodging industry, as well as a wave of costly property improvement plans now being mandated by franchise companies emboldened by strong operating results.

Van knows a thing or two about hotel distress. The Dallas-based hotel management company he founded in 1983 has handled more than 150 receivership assignments since 2000. It currently is acting as receiver at approximately 30 properties and Van believes many more are coming.

“How long can you hold your breath?” he asks of the extend-and-pretend strategy employed by many lenders and owners the past two years. “At some point you start getting brain damage.”

The delinquency rate on securitized hotel loans was at 14.12% through October, highest among all commercial real estate classes, according to Trepp, a New York-based analytics firm that tracks the commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) industry. Van believes the number could reach 50% next year with all the loans coming due that originated in 2007 and earlier that were extended.

And Bloomberg/BusinessWeek reports:

Hotel Lenders Avoid Foreclosures as $17.5 Billion in Loans Loom

Wall Street banks have arranged $27.2 billion in bonds linked to skyscraper, shopping mall, hotel and other commercial property loans this year, compared with $11.5 billion in 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Sales plummeted from a record $232 billion in 2007. Lenders pulled back from making new loans to package into securities in July as European debt woes roiled credit markets, making it harder for borrowers with debt coming due to refinance.

Hotel foreclosures may accelerate amid a sluggish economic recovery. In the last two months of this year, $5.52 billion in loans backed by hotels are maturing, followed by $9.11 billion next year and $2.9 billion in 2013, according to New York-based data provider Trepp LLC.

Aaaaand:

There will be a “huge increase’” in U.S. hotel foreclosures next year as debts come due and little financing is available, said Robert Sonnenblick, a hotel developer.

The wave of commercial mortgage-backed securities needing replacement debt “is going to be a close-to-catastrophic problem,” Sonnenblick, chairman of Sonnenblick Development LLC, said today at the Bloomberg Commercial Real Estate Summit in New York. “The end result of all of this is you’re going to see a huge increase of hotel foreclosures.”

There is some good news here. The Webbs won’t face foreclosure on CentrePointe any time soon because, so far, they haven’t been able to build it. Look on the bright side.

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Webbs get lost, accidentally plan CentrePointe for wrong city in wrong country

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November 18, 2011
By David M. F. Schankula

CentrePointe is finally getting built!

Two twenty-story towers!

The plan states the area “is intended to function as a focal point for business and activity, accommodating a large amount of employment and related development with good access to transit.”

The Centrepointe towers, FoTenn wrote, will “provide opportunities for high-density residential development” and “create a compact, pedestrian oriented heart for the wider area (that) fosters community and human interaction.”

Unfortunately, this is in Ottawa. Which is in Canada. Which wouldn’t be a bad place for the Webbs to relocate to. It’s sad that it’s not just their architectural designs but also their names that are unoriginal.

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The Boutique Bait & Switch, part 2: The Marriott Myth

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November 2, 2011
By David M. F. Schankula

On Monday we covered part 1 of the Bait & Switch, outlining how the Webbs obviously never really tried to find funding for the boutique hotel Jeanne Gang designed and the Webbs pretended to be interested in.

Today, let’s take a look at another part of the Webbs strange play-calling. As Ms. Fortune reported:

Gang’s vision for the CentrePointe block included a boutique hotel. Webb said he and Gang both talked with the owners of 21C Museum Hotel in Louisville, trying to recruit them to open a hotel in Lexington.

“When that didn’t work, … we went back to our original design for a convention hotel, which is much larger,” he said. Webb said the hotel would be a J.W. Marriott. “The design with the bundles wouldn’t work.”

Asked whether Gang was given an opportunity to design a larger hotel, Webb said that Marriott “only deals with architects who have done convention hotels in the past, so consequently, we were at a dead end on that one.”

1. After asking one group to finance the boutique, the Webbs threw their hands up and reverted to the convention design.

2. The Webbs then went back to Marriott.

3. Marriott only deals with architects who’ve done convention hotels in the past.

First of all, as we outlined Monday, there are plenty of other sources for funding a boutique hotel designed by a world class architect at the top of her game. Let’s revisit this quickly.

The Webbs claim they asked 21C and then gave up and went back to Marriott, as if that was the only option. Not only was 21C not the only option… but when the Webbs went back to Marriott, there was absolutely no reason to go back to the chain with the convention hotel and not with the boutique.

Marriott has an entire line of boutique hotels. From the Marriott website:

The stylish and distinctive ambiance of boutique hotels is one of the undeniable luxuries of travel, and in that realm Marriott International, Inc. is among the leaders. Our global collection of boutique-inspired hotels pay incredible attention to the details of traveling well and create a unique, urbane atmosphere with an eye on local character.

In all, Marriott has 18 “brands” — types of hotels, from the “Courtyard by Marriott” (a glorified Days Inn) line to the Ritz Carlton company. Of those 18, three of their brands — three specialize in the increasingly popular “boutique experience.”

Renaissance Hotels Travel should be inspiring. With over 145 Renaissance Hotels world-wide, you’ll find inspiration at every location. Choose from one of our historic icons, chic boutiques or luxurious resorts. Each offers it own personality, local flavor, distinctive style and charm. All will stimulate your appetite for discovery.
EDITION Hotels This is the latest edition of luxury boutique hotels and the perfect combination of energetic atmosphere, attitude and style. Each property is distinctive and designed by award-winning hotelier Ian Schrager.
Autograph Collection The Autograph Collection is a diverse collection of high-personality independent hotels. It plugs you into fresh, inventive and positively unique experiences only an independent can deliver.

But the Webbs don’t seem to have pursued any of these Marriott brands. Instead, they pretend that Marriott doesn’t do boutiques (and that no one other than 21C would do) and they pretend that when 21C said no, they were forced to revert to the convention hotel and get Marriott back on board.

But what Dudley actually said is that they reverted to the convention hotel and went back to J.W. Marriott. That’s one of Marriott International’s other brands and it is the brand that still adorns the “COMING SOON” sign that’s stood sadly on the CentrePointe block for three years, displaying a now three-times outdated version of the Webb architectural greatness.

JW Marriott Hotels & Resorts
  • Most elegant and luxurious Marriott brand
  • Provides business and leisure travelers a deluxe level of comfort and personal service on their terms
  • 39 JW Marriott Hotels worldwide; 16 US, 23 international

Some may wish to make the argument that the Marriott’s boutique brands weren’t a good fit — that Marriott would never go for it — because Marriott’s boutiques are only in big cities like the Renaissance in Times Square, a block away from the gigantic Marriott Marquis (which features a fun elevator ride, the only revolving restaurant in Manhattan, not very good views and $8 gin and tonics, two of which will get you a full revolution). That’s a fine argument. The hotel market is down and building luxury accommodations of any size in a place like Lexington offers significant hurdles. But this argument ignores the fact that there are only 16 J.W. Marriott’s in the US — the most elegant and luxurious brand. The closest Lexington gets to any of those locations is Indianapolis or Grand Rapids. The first is a more major city and the second is home to major American companies from furniture manufactures to Meijer to GE Aviation. Which again is not to say Lexington can’t be the 17th city, but that it’s silly to claim Marriott’s boutique brands couldn’t also call Lexington home, and in a worldclass designed Jeanne Gang building.

Now, to the fact that Dudley Webb says the phantom hotel will be a J.W. Marriott. Some have noted that because the J.W. logo is still on the sign, and that Webb is going back to it, that this means Marriott supports the building. And that may be true (and it may also be true that the Webbs don’t have the money to replace their hilariously dated “Coming Soon” sign).

But Marriott putting its name on a sign only takes you so far. Just as Webbs claim that a couple of banks have expressed interest in maybe funding an possibly eventual project, Marriott stands to lose nothing in this deal.

Marriott isn’t going to pay for the building. If somebody comes to them and says they want to build Marriott a $250 million hotel, Marriott — especially in this environment — isn’t going to say, “No.” The banks aren’t going to say “No,” either. They’re going to leave the door open because maybe, maybe, the deal will someday make sense.

It is certainly helpful to the Webbs to have Marriott’s name attached to their fantastical vision, but even if they are able to line up the financing, there’s no reason to think that Marriott won’t just back out and if they do, then the deal could fall apart and the supposed interested banks can back out. The only real losers are the Webbs.

So the Webbs are no closer to a deal than they were before the supposedly dead guy supposedly died.

And then there’s that last part.

Marriott “only deals with architects who have done convention hotels in the past, so consequently, we were at a dead end on that one.”

The Webbs have selected local firm EOP Architects as the new lead on their project. EOP was one of the six locals selected to build out Studio Gang’s vision for an individualized Main Street. Their hotel work includes the Gratz Park Hotel, the French Quarter Suites and the Hilton Garden all here in Lexington, as well as work on the Boone Tavern in Berea and a Hampton Inn in South Carolina.

Gratz Park is beautiful and the French Quarter is stunning. But it’s unclear which of these projects qualifies as “a convention hotel” — which Dudley claims is the prerequisite that disqualifies Studio Gang — and none rises to the size or scope of the J.W. Marriott brand. Which raises serious questions about Webb’s true intentions. (And this should in no way be construed as saying EOP can’t do the job or even that they are below it. As EOP has said, they are working to meld Gang’s ideas with Marriott’s needs and we should see there vision in a few weeks — hopefully it will be a great one, even if it’s undoable or if the Webbs, ultimately, pull the project away from them, too.)

So it’s unclear the Webbs actually sought funding for a boutique hotel, or if Jeanne Gang couldn’t have worked with Marriott if the Webbs had actually wanted such a thing, or if Marriott’s J.W. brand is any more realistic an option.

And, going further, it seems Marriott’s J.W. brand is actually unrealistic.

Here’s what Marriott’s “Hotel Development” site tells prospective builders and company shareholders:

Here’s what the Lexington market looks like, via the Distillery District’s TIF application (PDF):

And that same TIF application shows Lexington’s occupancy rate hovered around 61% from 2003 to 2008.

The J.W. Marriott brand carries a 71% occupancy rate with revenue per avaialble room at $143.34 — more than twice as much as Lexington’s market bears.

Which is a fact everyone but the Webbs seem to have known for years.

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Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: How Woodford Webb wooed me, but never really won my heart…

3 comments
November 1, 2011
By David M. F. Schankula

As discussed on Friday, the recent news of Dudley Webb dumping Jeanne Gang and her groundbreaking ideas for the CentrePointe block rips open the old public wound, putting the Webbs in an even worse place than they were just 11 months ago (which was already a pretty bad place.)

When Gang’s involvement was first announced, the public was hesitant — we’ve played this game with the Webbs for thirtysome years. Then they announced a public meeting.

A public meeting! After three years of locking the people out, after three years of hiding behind their complicit mayor, Mr. Newebberry, they were going to talk to the public. Even ask for input! It appeared something was changing.

In that room — the old courtroom of the old courthouse — I sat in the jury box and listened to Ms. Gang describe the beginnings of her vision at length and in depth. It seemed hopeful (see the ACE Weekly report).

Afterward, we were invited to mill about and talk with her and her team about our concerns and our ideas. In that crowd of people, Woodford Webb came up to Joe and I to say hello. It was my first time meeting him and he was warm, charming. “What do you think?” he wanted to know, excited like maybe we were getting somewhere.

We chatted for a bit. He jokingly lamented not having his own “category” on B&P (at the time only Donald and Dudley did; we added him), and then he talked about that one time when he went on WKYT back in 2009 and said they’d start construction “tomorrow” and how he’d never actually meant “tomorrow” in a literal sense but a hopeful one. I laughed and said I knew that. It was a good chat.

The whole day seemed to have rejuvenated spirits and mended some fences, or at least started to, like a new leaf turned over. Newberry was gone and with him went the concrete behemoth designed for Atlanta and plopped down on Main Street facing the wrong way.

The next day I ran into Leslie Beatty at Giacamo’s at lunchtime. We talked about CentrePointe and the presentation.

Leslie said, “What’s in it for the Webbs?” I asked what she meant and she went on, “Why did they open this process up, after refusing to for three years? Is this a bait and switch? I don’t trust them.”

I said I wouldn’t put it past them but that that seemed crazy. How stupid would you have to be to invite the public into a process they’d been begging to join, then hold their hand and, with friendly smiles, take them down a path toward something approximating progress into a vision of a downtown to-scale with the city and in line with its needs — only to yank it away and revert back to the soulless proposals that had so obviously failed in the past?

Seriously: How stupid would you have to be?

Apparently I underestimated the Webbs. Leslie Beatty was right, as it turns out. (And for that she’s almost assuredly won a Rootie).

But throughout the summer and into the Fall, the Webbs let Jeanne Gang continue to develop and present a project for that block at the heart of this Bluegrass, and the whole time they kept trying to get chummy.

Dudley went on WKYT and tried for a mea culpa, telling Bill Bryant that maybe they’d been a little rude in their earlier approaches, a little short-sighted. Maybe they’d made some mistakes and now they were trying to fix those — they wanted, he claimed, the community involved. He had seen the errors of his ways, thanks to Jeanne Gang and Mayor Gray. It was a heartwarming performance (and Dudley, too, is guaranteed a Rootie for it).

And Woodford. Sweet Woodford Webb. He got so damn warm and friendly I told Joe that Woodford was my new boyfriend. Every time I saw him — out around town, at meetings, on his bike, etc — Woodford was all jovial and cheery, like he couldn’t be happier to see me.

Not that I bought it. It was sweet. Cute even. But I’m not an idiot.

After the first public CentrePointe meeting, I emailed Woodford a set of questions. It was the first time in three years he’d ever replied.

He told me they were thinking about renaming the development and the block, “The Dud.”

“The Dud.” That’s Joe’s nickname for Uncle Dudley. And… it’s a pretty apt name for the block.

The Dud. That’s what the Webbs’ CentrePointe idea actually is.

No amount of scorn or snark could do it any better than what Woodford himself suggested.

After the second public meeting, he again came over — wishing Joe well in Louisville and wanting to know what we thought of Gang’s creative, imaginative, maybe even doable plans. I asked about the money and sweet Woodford was evasive. Charmingly evasive, self-deprecating — “Well in this economy,” ha ha ha — but trying to be open.

That much seemed genuine. He was trying. So was Dudley. Maybe they weren’t ever actually trying to get Jeanne Gang’s ideas built, but they were trying to get themselves liked. There was a genuine need in their eyes, whether from fatigue or self-doubt. They wanted our love, Lexington’s support. They wanted to know what that might feel like.

And for a few months, they had a glimpse.

After the first Rupp Area Task Force meeting, where another out-of-town genius, Gary Bates, spoke of a similarly refreshing vision for Lexington, Woodford sent me an email. He’s on the task force and Bates had talked of possibly adding water as a feature to liven the now dead-space to the west of Rupp.

Unsolicited and unexpected, Woodford sent me this image:

That’s “Lake Lexington.” It’s a 1980s Webb idea that never came to pass. It was part of a ploy to destroy the Salvation Army and remove the homeless from downtown Lexington.

The Webbs called the Salvation Army “a blight on the downtown community.” (The irony.) And they said the homeless should be moved to “a more rural site, perhaps on publicly owned property, away from the inner city and away from the opportunity for drinking and gambling and other temptations that contribute toward keeping these people in a rut.”

They wanted to fill that area in, as you see above, with water. (And it should be noted that around the same time, their World Coal Center skyscraper failed and was, eventually, turned into Phoenix Park — hilariously magnifying the homelessness the Webbs see as a blight, rather than the blight of their own concrete canyons and empty lots.)

Woodford sent it to me because Bates had talked about adding water to downtown. The point, I suppose, was that the Webbs were ahead of their times, maybe even, in their own way, visionaries. (And there’s more on Lake Lexington and the current Rupp debate later.)

Each time I saw him after that, that was our common conversation. Pretty lake? Yes, sure, pretty lake.

And after the second Rupp Area meeting, inexplicably, Woodford sent me the same picture again.

So I wrote back to him. This was mid-October. There were rumors flying that the Webbs were up to their old tricks, that they were dumping Gang and reverting to their cemented ideas of poor design, inhospitable real estate and dead downtowns.

I asked him how CentrePointe was going. I didn’t ask him if it was dead again because, well, it’s hard to break up, and who doesn’t want their boyfriend to lie to them… so you know that they’re lying. Because you knew it all along but you just had to know.

Woodford wrote back:

From: Woodford Webb
Date: Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 8:37 PM
Subject: RE: Re:
To: David Schankula

All is going progressing in a very positive manner. I do not know of anything scheduled currently for October but will certainly let you know if I hear of anything.

So dumping Jeannie Gang was “going progressing.” Squandering the public good will was “going progressing.” Reverting back to a giant, unneeded and fiscally unsound hotel was “going progressing.”

If this leap-backward is the Webbs’ definition of progress then… well, wait. That probably is the Webbs’ definition of progress.

(This would be a good moment to point out that Lexington’s best blogger, Rob Morris, continued to ask hard questions the whole time — another Rootie!)

When the news broke last Thursday that in fact the rumors were true and Gang was gone, I wrote back to Woodford and asked him if he had anything further to add, any clarification he might want to make.

But Woodford’s gone silent. All our late night emails were just a charade. A summer love, perhaps, before we all fell back into yet another Lexwebbington winter.

We were never honest with each other, so it was bound to happen. Like we were never having the same conversation, or even speaking the same language.


(For what it’s worth, I’m Olivia Newton John, and no, no he did not get very far — obviously Woodford’s all talk. And my suit was only damp from the water, thank you very much. This song is sick.)

****

  • Coming Wednesday: The Boutique Bait & Switch, part 2 — the Marriott Myth.


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The Boutique Bait-and-Switch, part 1: The Webbs didn’t even try…

8 comments
October 31, 2011
By David M. F. Schankula

Dudley Webb says one of the reasons Jeanne Gang didn’t work out is because no one wanted to build a boutique hotel in downtown Lexington. His evidence for this is that he asked the owners of the 21C Museum Hotel in Louisville.

Webb said he and Gang both talked with the owners of 21C Museum Hotel in Louisville, trying to recruit them to open a hotel in Lexington.

“When that didn’t work, … we went back to our original design for a convention hotel, which is much larger,” he said. Webb said the hotel would be a J.W. Marriott. “The design with the bundles wouldn’t work.”

This is ridiculous.

First of all, there is already a group of investors who have looked at creating a boutique hotel in the heart of Lexington’s downtown. They exist. They’ve studied it, want to do it even. And this was well after the economic collapse. The deal fell hasn’t happened, it’s on hold or being re-thought, it’s on hold, last I heard — but they wanted to do a 21C-style boutique.

So it’s not true that no one is interested.

Putting that aside… people with money are putting money into boutique hotels:

  • $3.5 Billion in Stamford: “By next summer it expects to open a boutique hotel and two residential buildings, including a 22-story high rise.”
  • $22 Million in Wichita: Which is being protested by Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity. Where ya at, Lexington Tea Party? Let the Webbs hear your voices!
  • Charleston, SC: “Because of wetlands and the narrow configuration of the three smaller parcels, a boutique-style hotel would most likely be the option there, Hofford said. If the study calls for a hotel with a convention center and exhibition halls.”
  • Boulder Junction, CO: “Plans to build a transit hub, a 140-room upscale boutique hotel and a 71-unit affordable apartment complex at Boulder Junction are moving forward.”
  • Miami, FL: “Neighborhoods all over Miami are getting big residential and retail makeovers. The 56-acre Midtown Miami developments second phase, which will start next year, will include a boutique hotel, a movie theater and 100,000 square feet of retail.”
  • Tampa, FL: “So far, Buckhorn has talked to four or five developers about the potential for redevelopment and consulted with urban planning experts through the Mayors’ Institute on City Design. The possibility he thinks is strongest is a “boutique hotel” with 100 to 120 rooms.”

The point here is not that anyone’s getting anything done. The point is that people are interested.

The point is that Dudley Webb says he asked one investor if they wanted to fund a world class architect’s vision and when they said they weren’t able to at that moment… Dudley Webb gave up.

Perhaps, you say, all those projects bullet-pointed again were misguided, that they are as fantastical as Gang’s and that Webb made the shrewd decision, looking at the hotel market, to step away from the Boutique Hotel game.

That’s a fine point.

But if that’s what Dudley did, then Dudley’s not listening to the very industry he’s trying, desperately, to insert himself into.

Just this past weekend, industry muckety-mucks gathered in Miami for the ”the third annual Lifestyle/Boutique Hotel Development Conference.”

And what did conference goers learn?

Said Steve Rushmore, head of Hospitality Valuation Services:

He said now is the time to buy a hotel. But he would wait until 2013 or 2014 to sell, particularly in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Norfolk, Virginia; Nashville, Tennessee; St. Louis; or Buffalo—markets “that will not show as great increases” as others. He also suggested independent boutiques with food and beverage do better than brand affiliates and/or foreign boutiques. Among the reasons: no franchise fees, lower administrative costs and marketing fees.

So, in fact, the Webbs have a better chance of funding a non-Marriott hotel… and not just that, a boutique one.

But Dudley asked one group and they said no.

None of this should suggest that funding any hotel development would be easy in this environment.

In fact, Rushmore made clear that to get funding for a successful project, you need to pick your market well:

To minimize volatility, developers should pick safe cities like Orlando, Florida; New Orleans; Seattle; Tucson, Arizona; and Minneapolis. They should avoid high-volatility spots like Jacksonville, Florida; Philadelphia; Charlotte, North Carolina; Houston; Anaheim, California; and Detroit.

You’ll note that each of those “safe cities” cities is a destination already . The idea of trying to create a destination hotel in a non-destination city, let alone a mid-sized one without a major airport hub is not a safe bet and makes funding much more difficult.

The point here isn’t that Dudley can’t get his mammoth Marriott funded. People make bad investments all the time.

And it’s not that he could have necessarily gotten the Gang-design paid-for either… but that he didn’t even try.

And the takeaway from that is that he never really intended to.

He spent the past three months misleading the people of Lexington, just as he’s spent the past three years and, for that matter, the last three decades.

****

  • Coming Tuesday: How Woodford Webb wooed me but never won my heart.
  • And Wednesday: The Boutique Bait & Switch, part 2 — the Marriott Myth.
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