By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — As a result of a question from council member Jade Piros de Carvalho at Tuesday's City Council meeting, City Manager Jeff Cantrell spoke about where he believes the city's next steps lie with regard to the Atrium Hotel.
"Most of the time, cities aren't in the role of maintaining hotels," Cantrell said Tuesday. "It's something we try to avoid. We pay money to avoid that. Instead, it would seem, especially based off of recent events, we're kind of already babysitting this property in a big way. The community is dealing with it. Our departments are dealing with it. Part of the discussion with the Chamber was that there is renewed interest by some parties that were not associated with the original developer that we had launched discussions with. We're trying to open up those discussions a little bit to see what their specific interest is, but at some point, I'm probably going to bring to you guys a request to make an outright purchase of $1.6 million to just buy, acquire it, hold it, stabilize it."
Cantrell has a concern that stabilizing it may cost as much as buying it.
"We're potentially looking at a million, million-five to do that," Cantrell said. "I've seen a range of costs on the demolition that ranges from as little as $800,000 all the way to $1.4 million. Part of that is the piece that readies it for future development. It wouldn't be a complete teardown. It would still save and preserve the conference center portion of it that's still viable. It would eliminate and get rid of the old hotel rooms that so many people have complained about on the convention side."
Cantrell is clear that if the city takes this on, they're probably going to have to subsidize whomever comes in to develop the property after the demolition and council member Jon Daveline wants to see the pro forma on what long term obligations on the property might look like before committing to the purchase.
"Let's face it, that facility, even under a new model, is not going to fully support itself," Cantrell said. "There's going to be the anticipated contractual obligation of the city to support that going forward, with whoever that developer is. That piece that John mentions is integral to that discussion and our capacity to support whoever that developer is and their visions."
Given that the pro forma has not been presented to the council yet, there is no specific timeline on when Cantrell might return to the council with such a proposal.
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