MASON CITY – Reportedly, Mason City mayor Eric Bookmeyer will go begging to the people of Mason City to approve a deal for a hotel in the downtown area.
As the voters are showing Mr. Bookmeyer over and over, this is a long-shot. Already, the voters put a bullet in his plan for them to raise their own taxes with a new levy. Last December, no one wanted his hand-picked crony on the council, and instead elected Paul Adams, a man who publicly vowed to stand up to the mayor’s bullying ways. After defeat after defeat, Eric smelled hog manure in the air and coyly announced he wouldn’t run for office again this year.
It is as clear as the Rocky Mountain sky that Eric Bookmeyer has zero credibility left in this town – but he wants you to believe him this one time. He has about 5 staunch supporters left: Three council members who owe their political existence to him (Janet “I didn’t smell any hog manure in rural Iowa” Solberg; Travis “run city hall like McDonald’s” Hickey; and Brett “I voted myself a tax cut” Schoneman). He also has Brent Trout still doing his dirty work likely because Eric already tried to get his job once and could call on his three council members to pull the plug on him. Last but definitely least, there is of course his virtual step-daddy John Skipper, who Eric controls like a ventriloquist controls a wooden dummy. Skipper reciprocates by protecting Eric with shoddy opinion pieces disguised as “news”.
The rest of us are merely waiting for Eric Bookmeyer to kick rocks out of the corner office and preferably out of town, hopefully before the end of his term. Maybe the Des Moines Register will help speed that up, who knows; stay tuned for that one.
At any rate, NIT has learned Bookmeyer wants the voters to OK his hotel deal with Philip Chodur’s G8 Development. He has had Skipper and Schoneman in the paper punishing the beautiful Gatehouse proposal, so as to shore up support for Chodur’s proposal. Now that he has financing set in place, NIT is told nothing stands in the way of Chodur building his hotel, anyway – and more power to him if he does. The voters, it seems, will have to pick which one is connected to the hallowed Renaissance project. City hall will make sure the Gateway proposal has to be checked off up to four times on the ballot to get picked; G8 will just need to be selected once on each ballot. Will there be a third option that says “none of the above?” The safe bet is that option would easily win.
The hotel part of the 5-point Renaissance is crucial, as that is the “private investment” end required to unlock state dollars. The rest of the $35 million deal is a lot of fancy TIF formulations, imaginary bonding dollars not yet approved by voters, and that public money from the state. In the end, if Eric’s dream is approved, we all pay, big time; Chodur gets a parking ramp worth $7 million free from the taxpayers. A New York real estate investor who got Southbridge Mall for a measly $1.5 million gets a $12 million arena – for free – plus millions in RENT payments from the taxpayers. Ouch. All this built on a fantasy of newly-invigorated mall – as Travis Hickey would have you believe – teaming with new bars, restaurants, shops, full of people leaving an arena where one hot dog and one beer will cost you $17.
Eric Bookmeyer keeps asking us to shoot ourselves in the foot. First it was a trash burning plant. Then a hog plant. Then a new tax levy. Some say the forces of good intervened and shot each one down. Now a downtown debacle that makes Jean Marinos’ putrid Northbridge deal look like a bargain (Mason City taxpayers still pays hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on Northbridge debt, which accomplished moving Fareway across the street).
As one citizen wrote to NIT this morning, this deal seems to make little sense and will likely harm existing businesses.
“MC officials have this naive market belief that ‘just build it and all will enjoy financial success’. I’ll bet there is NO market analysis worth anything that shows a market NEED not being met for a new 100 room hotel or a conference center that will cash flow while not adversely impacting existing venues in Clear Lake and MC.”
Never mind that Mason City has a wealth of nice hotels who already pay taxes here. What a sad state of affairs when the taxes actually paid by these hotels are funding, through those taxes, a rogue, free-lancing mayor out chasing a competing hotel. Bookmeyer has no mandate from the public to pursue this deal, no directive from the city council. He’s been chasing it for four years and spent countless thousands of taxpayer dollars in his pursuit. Soon, if history is a guide and the council goes through with another (costly) referendum, the voters will deliver another defeat to Eric Bookmeyer.
