Mason City Councilman: “The sharks are circling” – possibly threatening Renaissance Project

MASON CITY – A Mason City councilman says “the sharks are circling” and the Renaissance Project could be in jeopardy.

According to an email NIT received, on Wednesday, January 17, Third Ward Councilman Joshua Masson told G8 Development’s Philip Chodur, “Once again, the sharks are circling” in regards to the downtown Renaissance Project. Mason City has flipped between hotel developers two times in the past, starting with G8 years ago and then flipping to Gatehouse Mason City, LLC, last spring before again flipping back to G8 this past fall. Whispers in the community say that despite some personalities connected to City Hall proclaiming they are all for G8 Development, they are secretly working to undermine G8 and oust the developer again from the Renaissance Project in order to bring back Gatehouse. Known Gatehouse supporters are Mayor Bill Schickel, council members Paul Adams and John Lee, Robin Anderson of the Chamber of Commerce, as well as persons connected to the barren wasteland known as Music Man Square – which under the Gatehouse proposal would undergo a multi-million dollar renovation.

As NIT reported previously, Philip Chodur of G8 Development brought a lawsuit against  the City of Mason City and Robin Anderson of the Chamber of Commerce for meddling in the project, but that lawsuit was dropped once the city and G8 signed an agreement to move ahead. Prior to that agreement earlier in December, state officials laid into Mason City representatives who traveled to the state capitol to appear before the Iowa Economic Development Board, telling them they have a lot of work to do before the state could sign off on potentially millions of dollars in state tax kickbacks for the City. The state’s Reinvestment District program, which Mason City has applied to and has received “pre-approval” for $7 million, expires this summer. A state official tells NIT that “also during this meeting, we discussed the provision stating that the IEDA Board cannot approve a new district plan after July 1, 2018.”  Mason City has, by some estimates, spent upwards of $1 million on the project so far, including hundreds of thousands of dollars for parking ramp plans that will never be used, staff time and expense, legal fees, and more.

Now, NIT is told that some local personalities (some people call them “busybodies”) are just not satisfied with the Renaissance Project and continue to involve themselves – and City Hall allows them to attend secret meetings and hold sway over the future of the project.  Just last week, on Thursday, January 11, a secret meeting was held in City Hall in which some entitled citizens were allowed to attend, even though they are not elected nor working for the city in any capacity.  Chad Schreck, Robin Anderson, Elizabeth Allison of Music Man Square, a foundation board president and others including Mayor Bill Schickel were in this meeting, which was not open to the public, no agenda was announced, and no meeting minutes were recorded.  A person at the meeting told NIT, “We meet as a group to go over the next steps” of the Renaissance Project.

One Mason City taxpayer tells NIT, “these entitled brats secretly run Mason City.  They are agents of the rich, who basically rob this town blind.  The citizens are too dumbed-out of the process to care or do anything about it.  The City’s elected buffoons are mostly poor men with no business experience who need the pittance the city pays them, so they cannot stand up to these crooks and don’t want to, anyway – they know serving the rich gets them places.  It’s really sad, the state the City is in.”

As the City toys with potentially allowing meddling, money-hungry personalities to ruin the Renaissance Project, Councilman Joshua Masson, a G8 supporter, warned Mr. Chodur that these “sharks” might just wreck the whole deal.  He wrote, “Once again, the sharks are circling. As I stated before, we really need to get out in front of this. My understanding is that the agreement is signed, and the lawsuit is dropped. The other major piece of the puzzle is the financing. I have heard various things from various parties as to the state that it is in. Would you be able to give me an accurate assessment of what the current status of financing is, and a realistic date as to when the details will be finalized? The sooner we can get in front of this and get it moved on, the sooner we can get the IEDA board vote done, the sooner we can break ground. Thank you in a advance for a prompt response.”

In response, Mr. Chodur told Mr. Masson, “Joshua, We are in full compliance with the PSDA.  If people are pressuring you, it because they want this project to fail.  The City at this point is not in compliance.  The City has not done the things that are required under section 3.1. We are out signing contracts for services which at this point the City has not done it’s part to make sure that the service providers get paid for services. Development requires that a certain order is followed in the completion of tasks. Until plans are to the construction document stage where all costs are calculated, underwriters can’t underwrite and they certainly can’t underwrite when the City and the State have not full filled their obligations within the PSDA. The last time we had loan approval for the project and a USDA guarantee. There is no reason to believe that Live Oak and USDA will not again approve the project.  Live Oak was burned by the City at the previous site.  They were assured by Brent Trout that the project would be given back to G8. Based on the assurance they brought their whole team on  their corporate jet to Mason City.  Everyone spent a great deal of time and money.  Here we are a year later trying to move forward again in an orderly manner.  We are 5-6 months ahead of where Gatehouse would have been at this point. With the $150,000 they received, they should have had a franchise and schematic design approval from Hyatt.

At the very most, the costs incurred for what was done should have been around $30,000, not $150,000.   Everyone needs to do their job.  We know how to do our job and we have great local partners for the construction and hotel management.  We are receiving none of the State grant money.  The State and the City need to do what is required under the PSDA.  Robin Anderson, Delena Barz, and Elizabeth Allison need to benched.  Their underhanded self serving dealing have put this project in jeopardy for far to long. Why they still hold the positions they do is beyond comprehension.”