I am amazed by the rhetoric of some of the hotel supporters who claim to be “pro-Dallas” who argue that we MUST have a hotel or our city will die…. Really? So, we haven’t had a convention center hotel, our convention business is on the upswing and doing better than publicly-owned hotel cities like Houston and Denver, yet our city will be ruined without a hotel? I seem to recall our city was also going to fail without a toll road in the Trinity Park. How’s that working out?

If we’re going to play “who loves Dallas more,” then a fair argument can be made that hotel proponents who claim the sky will fall without a city-owned hotel are actually anti-Dallas. They see nothing beneficial or desirable about our city except huge, expensive projects (Calatrava bridges, Trinity toll roads, convention center hotels). They think so little of Dallas and what we have to offer that they desperately throw money at any unnecessary (but flashy) project just to convince people we’re a decent city. Whatever your position on the hotel, our city has much more to offer than the Mayor and others give it credit for, and we don’t need a hotel or any other massive, taxpayer-funded monument to excess to prove it.

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