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Center gets occupancy permit
Announcement is expected Wednesday on opening date
Sunday News
Jun 07, 2009 00:21 EST
Lancaster
By PAULA WOLF, Staff Writer
Friday afternoon, the Lancaster County Convention Center and Lancaster Marriott at Penn Square received a permanent occupancy permit from the city, clearing the way for the integrated facility to open after earlier target dates were missed.
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Tom Smithgall, senior vice president of development for High Associates, the project's master developer, said Saturday that an official opening date for the $174.4 million hotel and convention center is expected to be announced Wednesday.

Officials have said the first major event at the center will be the Pennsylvania League of Cities and Municipalities' annual convention June 24-26.

The occupancy permit was hand-delivered to Smithgall by Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray, who stopped by the hotel and convention center on his way home from city hall.

"[Tom's] been through a lot to get to this point," the mayor said Saturday.

The facility has been operating with a temporary occupancy permit for a few weeks. Getting the permanent one "is a great milestone," said Mark Moosic, the facility's general manager.

Gray said he told city inspectors to make absolutely sure everything was up to code before issuing the permit.

The last two or three weeks, a lot of testing was completed, and progress was made on having the facility meet Americans with Disabilities Act requirements, Smithgall said.

There's still some work left, including "a massive cleanup" from the top floor of the 18-level, 299-room hotel on down, he said.

Also by the end of this weekend, "a lot of the heavy construction will be done," Smithgall said.

Gray said he visited the site every day last week, "and without exaggeration, I can say there have been dramatic changes."

This coming week, furniture will be brought in and light fixtures hooked up, Smithgall said.

He noted that the bar and restaurant "are pretty much set up."

"We're anxious to get people in" and show off the facility, Smithgall said, but it's not quite ready.

"I tell people we have a dusty house," he said.

The hotel and convention center project is a joint venture of the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Lancaster, Lancaster County Convention Center Authority and Penn Square Partners.

About a decade in the making, the project was delayed by years of litigation. More recently, missed deadlines held up the opening by a few months.

Penn Square Partners, a limited partnership, consists of general partners Penn Square General Corp., a High Industries affiliate, and Penn Square Ltd. LLC, an affiliate of Lancaster Newspapers Inc., publisher of the Sunday News, Lancaster New Era and Intelligencer Journal.

While finishing touches are still being done, the facility's 170 employees started orientation and training last week, Moosic said.

Interstate Hotels & Resorts, the company contracted to run the hotel and convention center, is conducting the training along with Marriott Hotels, he said.

The employees are learning "basic service techniques" and other skills, and that training will continue this week, Moosic said.

Menus also are being finalized, he said.

The 170 workers — whom Moosic called "the best of the best" — were hired from more than 4,000 applicants.

And plenty of responsibility comes with these jobs, he said, because "a lot of people are expecting great things."

Representatives from Interstate and Marriott have already noticed how energetic and enthusiastic this group of workers is, Moosic said.

Gray agreed. The employees "are so excited and juiced," he said.

He's also proud that 73 percent of them are city residents, and he credited PA CareerLink of Lancaster County with doing "a fabulous job."

CareerLink screened many of those who initially applied for jobs. Hundreds of them also participated in the Ready2Work program and received a Career Readiness Certificate.

Asked about the hotel and convention center's role in revitalizing Lancaster, Gray sounded hopeful but realistic.

"It's not any silver bullet," he said, "but it's a positive building block."



Paula Wolf is a staff writer for the Sunday News. She can be reached by e-mail at pwolf@lnpnews.com.

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QUOTE (Artie See @ Jun 11 2009, 07:24 AM)
STILL no answers to all of your questions.

Perhaps those "specific examples" are too difficult to find...


My expectations for most politicians and "those who profess to know government" aren't real high. Although there has at least been attempt to answer the questions, the responses show just how much this person does not know about the convention center and Lancaster City. Plus it never ceases to amaze me how an individual in Florida, Ft lauderdale I believe, where the unlimitless spending of the past few years has landed them in a very dire situation, housing prices have fallen drastically, banks have folded due to bad decisions, and people owe more on their houses than they are worth, insists on telling individuals who live in a relatively stable area where housing prices have dropped very little, local banks have stayed intact, and although the jobless rate is increasing it is still below these other areas, how they know more and do a better job with the economics of the area.
LancCity
QUOTE (LancCity @ Jun 11 2009, 06:20 AM)
1)Even the Convention Center studies and backers don't agree with you here. They are hoping to have center occupancy 52 days of the year, many of those will be one day events. Even if they are extended, only 299 rooms are available and the city can not handle traffic flow of an event that will bring thousands in and out at the same time. Restaurants can not afford to expand their staff for just 52 nights a year. And the restaurants that have been doing quite well downtown may actually see a reduction in business. You see, when there is an event going on, people from outside of the city will avoid driving to these places because of our already existing traffic and parking issues that will be compounded by any event held at the center. They will go somewhere outside of the city instead and there is no guarantee they will return afterwards. Let alone parking during the week is very limited even with the addition of new garages. Even PENNDOT questioned the viability of our road system's ability to handle the additional traffic, yet with a little pushing, the politicians mysteriously got the ok. And don't forget that this is not the only convention center in the Lancaster area so it is very doubtful that it will bring the hundreds of thousands of visitors needed in order to pay for itself.

2) I didn't say that I had a bad time, I told you what happened and that I didn't hold it against the area. In fact I found no problem with the way I was treated because it wasn't bad. In fact this is normal just about everywhere I travel. But you did imply in your other post that you would fix anything, now you seem to be backing off a bit. Just talking to the tourism folks won't always fix it. Maybe you don't have as much power as you think.

3) None of your answer has anything to do with knowing how government works. Do you honestly believe that we don't try and clean up downtown everyday? Guess what, we do! None of us want to live in a garbage infested city. That is why we have supported single hauler trash system and new landlord laws to help curb issues among other things. Did you know that Lancaster has been trying to get ADA compliant for years? One of the biggest projects, curb cuts, had a huge funding pot that seemed to have disappeared over night under the last administration, but no one seems to be sure if it was used properly or not. Right now just about every street corner (at least in the northwest where I am) is being replaced. No one is challenging curb cuts, although some have challenged the bulb-outs because in some areas they have been installed incorrectly. All of this could probably be completed by now except the people you seem to praise that back the convention center have diverted millions in neighborhood funds that could have been used for additional curb cuts and sidewalk smoothing and instead are now replacing the sidewalks in the downtown area that were compliant and were in good condition with strips of brick to look prettier. So they have chosen aesthetics over ADA functionality. And you wonder why we get mad? The city is not adding any officers in their already short staffed police department (at one point they were trying to decrease positions) to help with events at the convention center, and no new equipment or personnel have been added to the fire department. Nothing like building a high occupancy building with little way to fight an emergency other than the building's internal systems. All this because there is no money, yet our politicians seem to be able to find hundreds of millions of dollars in the middle of the night in order to fund their pet projects.

I guess now I understand why you avoided answering my questions.

Thank you VERY much for your truly outstanding post.

You have accurately spelled out the situation here in Lancaster, far better than I could have.

It's good to know that someone else noticed Smithgall's disappearing curb cut grant money.
Artie See
QUOTE (Artie See @ Jun 11 2009, 08:00 AM)
Thank you VERY much for your truly outstanding post.

You have accurately spelled out the situation here in Lancaster, far better than I could have.

It's good to know that someone else noticed Smithgall's disappearing curb cut grant money.


Actually the thanks goes to you. I am not around a lot and it is very difficult to attend meetings and other things. I depend on people like you to point out issues and then I can research them more to form my own opinion. I like to hear both sides of the stories and tend to read talkback a lot and compare it to the newspaper, private publications, and public record. Right now I have a really big problem with Charlotte K. She was quoted the other day that it wouldn't cost much to re-angle the lines on College Ave because the workers are salaried. I have news for her, it did cost us a lot no matter how much she tries to make it sound ok. It meant these employees couldn't work on other projects. I dare her to say there is nothing else for them to be doing. I also have a real issue with the mistakes made with the bulb outs. Although I like them because they stop people from parking on the corners, I find it very disturbing that they were put in without any real plan. Now they are tearing them up and replacing them. Can we waste anymore money? Of course we can! Charlotte has decided that since she lives in an Ephrata development where every house looks the same, so should Lancaster City. We are spending money on making all the sidewalks the same. Guess what, before this project started they were, it's called concrete! Yet she says there is no money to improve our water and sewer facilities and must raise taxes for these projects. It's time to take a hard look at where the money is going and reallocate. If we can't reallocate at the local level, it is time to do it at the state and federal levels. I also belive that to curb some of these "economic stimulating" projects, we should tie a politician's retirement to it. Switch from a pension for them to a 401K. The 401K receives "kicker" bonues depending on how well the project is built according to budget and how many of the stated benefits it achieves. Not just in the short term but force them to predict the stability of the project into the future. If the project fails, they get no money either. Maybe then they will be a little more careful with "free money".
LancCity
I don't have time to play games with you today, but I do want to say two things, First I NEVER SAID ANYTHING ABOUT JOBS BEING CREATED. Those statistics, even by the President, are meaningless and can't really be measured. Two, the question you asked about if you had a bad time IN FORT LAUDERDALE was hypotetical in my opinion, you didn't ask about your trip to wherever in Florida, you asked me about if you came to Fort Lauderdale.

Think what ever you want it's a free country. Typical and what I thought, you didn't want an answer you wanted to make my response personal, and it's what I expected to happen. Have a great day!

Reader70
QUOTE (Reader70 @ Jun 11 2009, 09:28 AM)
I don't have time to play games with you today, but I do want to say two things, First I NEVER SAID ANYTHING ABOUT JOBS BEING CREATED. Those statistics, even by the President, are meaningless and can't really be measured. Two, the question you asked about if you had a bad time IN FORT LAUDERDALE was hypotetical in my opinion, you didn't ask about your trip to wherever in Florida, you asked me about if you came to Fort Lauderdale.

Think what ever you want it's a free country. Typical and what I thought, you didn't want an answer you wanted to make my response personal, and it's what I expected to happen. Have a great day!


It's ironic that the "economics" that you are touting also can't be tracked, other than the bed tax which will be going directly to help pay for the center along with my taxes. In an earlier post, you stated how we needed this because manufacturing was gone, and now you are saying it may not produce jobs. So why is it necessary again?

I asked a question and gave you my personal exam-ple of visiting your area. You seem very good at telling everyone what should be done, but can't follow it up with actions in your own area. And we are supposed to listen to you again why?

And I very much enjoy the fact that you said that you don't have time to play games. That is a very similar response you get from our local politicians when you ask them questions.
LancCity
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