A historic 4-star hotel must wait even longer to find out if it can have what's called blight status after a committee passed the buck Wednesday on its proposal.
The Intercontinental Hotel is one of the crown jewels of the Country Club Plaza. But look closely at it and its age is showing.
“It's incredibly expensive to rehab a hotel,” Merrie Morris, who lives on the Plaza and studied hospitality and tourism, said. “I don't think people realize how expensive it is.”
A study commissioned by the hotel found a number of problems including:
- Deteriorated surface coatings
- Deteriorated parking facility
- Deteriorated cooling tower
- Deteriorated building expansion joints
- Deteriorated building facades
- Deteriorated building interiors
- Ceilings
- Flooring material
- Wall coatings
- Furniture
It’s a combination the hotel said makes them “blighted.”
There are several ways to meet a blight status:
- A defective or inadequate street layout
- Insanitary or unsafe conditions
- Deterioration of site improvements
- Improper subdivision or obsolete platting
- Conditions which endanger life or property by fire and other causes
“I would rather there be another word other than blight that is used in the situation because this is not the blight of what we think of as blight in the normal world,” Councilmember Quinton Lucas said.
Wednesday afternoon the hotel boss flanked with his legal team went to Kansas City’s planning committee seeking that status.
“This request is consistent with what the city suggested in the recent Midtown-Plaza plan,” Don Breckenridge, general manager of the Intercontinental Hotel, said.
Under their proposal, the Intercontinental would charge a 1 percent sales tax on top of existing taxes to everything in the hotel for 20 years.
All of it to pay off almost $16 million they need for renovations.
“A 1 percent sales tax on the hotel bill is not something especially business travelers look at too often because in every city rates are different,” Councilmember Scott Taylor said.
While there is some support a majority of the public that showed up to the hearing was against it.
“I do have a problem when we ask the taxpayers whether that's the local ones or the ones that come to visit us to help us pay for a problem that in fact is not theirs,” Councilmember Heather Hall said.
The planning committee decided to send the proposal to the city council without any recommendation.
The council will vote in two weeks.
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Andres Gutierrez can be reached at andres.gutierrez@kshb.com
Belinda Post can be reached at belinda.post@kshb.com.
