Over $1 Billion in public money for recent projects and the Convention Arena Authority wants the public to pay for another hotel

Last Friday, MLive posted a story with the headline, Push for publicly financed convention hotel back under consideration in Grand Rapids.

On the heels of providing $565 million in tax incentives to the billionaire families of DeVos and Van Andel, this just seems like a slap in the public’s face. And of course they have been talking about it for some time, but always without the public being made aware of or consulted if they want their tax dollars to go towards the expansion of the convention center, plus another hotel for convention attendees.

Then there is the fact that the Convention Arena Authority (CAA) has already hired a consultant to tell them that they are “turning away a lot of business” because of a lack of space. 

Rick Winn was also quoted in the saying, “We need to expand the (convention) center. We need to stay competitive.” At least the MLive reporter acknowledged that Winn, who is the chair of the CAA, but is also the president of Grand Rapids-based AHC Hospitality, which manages the Amway Grand Plaza, JW Marriott and other downtown hotels. The MLive reporter did fail to say that AHC Hospitality is owned by the DeVos family.

The estimated cost of the Convention Center hotel is estimated to be $282 million. However, the article provides no estimate for how much public funding would cover of the total cost. 

I went back and looked at some of the more high profiled downtown Grand Rapids projects in recent years to see how much the public is funding and here is what I came up with:

• At least $100 million in public money for the Amphitheater.
• $318 Million for the 2 apartment buildings that will be next to the Amphitheater and the Soccer Stadium
• $100 million for Soccer Stadium
• $565 million in tax incentives/subsidies for the DeVos/Vandel 3 towers project on Fulton and Market.

This means that the total of just these projects comes to $1,083,000,000. This means that the public has provided over $1 Billion in funding for projects just in the last few years. 

One question we should all be asking ourselves is, what has been, or will be, the public benefit of over $1 Billion in these publicly funded projects? How many jobs will be created that pay a living wage to people? And I’m not talking about construction jobs, since those are over once these projects are completed. Some might argue that we will attend concerts and soccer games. But how affordable will they be to the working class people who are already struggling to make ends meet? We know that the CAA just signed a 25 year contract with Live Nation to books shows at the amphitheater, despite the fact that Live Nation charges extremely high ticket fees because of the near monopoly ownership of Ticketmaster.

Another argument is that all of these venues will attract more tourists, which brings more money into the city. Well, how about we think about that for a second. Yes, tourists spend their money when they visit GR, but a large portion of what they spend is on hotels, parking, entertainment venues, restaurants and bars. Sure, the owners of those businesses will benefit, but most of those businesses are already doing well and they don’t tend to pay people a living wage. Tourist driven economics is simply another variation of trickle down economics and we all know that is essentially a lie. Trickle down economics is a lie, especially when you include the fact that over $1 Billion of public dollars will be going to cover the cost of just a few projects, which is not trickle up economics, but a river flow up to the business class that is already filthy rich.

At this point we really need to pay attention to any committee meetings that might happen, where they are discussing the expansion of the Convention Center and we need to pressure our City and County officials to make sure they are transparent and alerting the public when this matter is being discussed. If we are going to resist more public funding for projects that will benefit the Capitalist Class, then we need to be in the know and we need to be organized with clear demands. One of the demands should be, when are the City and the County going to commit to using $1 Billion for housing or other basic needs in this community.