Our Heart's in Kalamazoo, but Our Hand's in the City's Pocket

 

TURN UP THE REVERB

by

The Florence Detective

According to google definitions: Reverb is created when a sound occurs in a space, sending sound waves out in all directions. It is also the name given to a “project” spearheaded by Eugene Sak to remodel and reopen the old “Downtowner Motor Inn” at the corner of Court and Alabama Streets in downtown Florence. If anyone notices that this sounds familiar, it is. But we are not in summer reruns of city council meetings. This is a repackaged proposition that has been brought before the council twice already. Once for the city to pay for $70 million of the project and another time for the city to pay $9.5 million. At the work session for the 06/04/2024 meeting of the Florence city council, Mr. Sak stated the “Reverb” by Hard Rock Hotel is to employ 140 employees of the entity “PCH hotels” under the direction of the Retirement Systems of Alabama. It would be one of only 2 destination hotels that will be built in a city with a population of under one million people. The sound waves that were generated from this “sales pitch” before the council had occurred before. It was rerun programming.

If you did not attend the meeting in person, or even if you did, and did not go online or in the door at 3:30 pm instead of the usual time for the work session of 4 pm you missed seeing and hearing Eugene Sak give the first of his proposal. When I went online, thanks to an instant message on my phone from someone who was at the meeting in person, the last part of Sak’s speech was all I heard. It had a “twist” from his previous “spiel”. Sak said THIS TIME what he proposed to the Florence city council involved, “no risk, no commitment of funds, no forwarded funds, no capital outlay, no contribution by the city "of any kind. What he was asking for was a “15-year commitment to rebate taxes that are earned by this hotel and its operations” He went on to quote the usual “third party” economic impact study showing hundreds of millions of dollars would be generated by this project. These seem to be the same studies that are done whenever taxpayer money is involved to show that funding a tourism project is worthwhile. Jimmy Oliver seemed so excited you could tell he could barely stay in his seat.

From this point there were several representatives from different entities who addressed the council. As David Carson put it in his remarks from the public at the end of the meeting: “the gang of guys in suits” The first one to come to the podium was Steve Forsburg from the “Reverb” division of the Hard Rock hotel chain. He explained that the Hard Rock corporation was looking to locate “Reverb” hotels in areas with a rich musical heritage like Florence. He said he had been to the previous meeting where Eugene Saks had asked for funding before and went straight to asking for questions. (cut to the chase) Michele Eubanks asked where the other hotels would be located, and he said Atlanta. Atlanta? Mrs. Eubanks stated that Atlanta was very different from Florence. To this he said they had several recording studios in Atlanta. They have several EVERYTHING in Atlanta, but it certainly is not Florence. (The last sentence comes from yours truly and NOT Michele for the record.) She did question the placement of the hotel and his touting Atlanta as comparable. She further stated that the recording industry in Atlanta was primarily of artists who were living in the area and recording now, not to mention the obvious differences between the type of tourist that is attracted to the two different cities. 

At this Mr. Forsburg stated they were planning other sites also with musical heritage like Kalamazoo, Michigan. What? Evidently, they have a Gibson guitar factory in Kalamazoo.* Forsburg did seem to stumble a bit in that reply. He went on to say that Kalamazoo had under one million people to which Ms. Eubanks replied that we do not have 200,000 here in the “Shoals” with the entire area lumped together. Do you think the rest of the council, especially Jimmy Oliver, was listening? Nobody else on the council asked this gentleman any questions. He sat down.

Michele Eubanks asked the only other questions except for a few from Kaytrina Simmons to any of the “gang in suits” as they came to the podium. What seemed to be the case with this proposal from the others from Eugene Sak is the city will give a tax rebate of 50% to PCH properties for the next 15 years or 5 million dollars whichever comes first. This seems to be much more agreeable than the other two. It seems like this group wanted some answer immediately concerning their proposal. But it was Michele Eubanks who did not jump immediately. And it wasn’t as if she and the council did not seem pushed. Despite all the “urgency” requests, Mrs. Eubanks and Kaytrina Simmons appeared to be the only two who wanted to be able to study the proposal more and be able to get input from their constituency. Jimmy Oliver seemed incredulous. What was there to discuss? For someone who had seemed leery of this proposal the first and second time it seemed like third was charm for Oliver. The bottom line to this whole presentation from Sak and “associates” was to see if it was worth the time to pay lawyers to draw up an agreement with the city. What was there to lose? The parable of the old woman and the snake comes to mind.

The council meeting itself was not very eventful. The fire chief had a display of the new stations for District 2. He also had a list of the improvements that all the stations needed and when he was through it sounded like he wanted new stations in every district. Well, it worked for building for lawnmowers. After that it just seemed like more of the same from the department heads. Request for taxpayer dollars bouncing off the walls.

* Kalamazoo, aka 'Zoo, has just under 75K in population. It's generally considered to be a beautiful city.