TOLEDO – On Tuesday, Sept. 9, Lucas County Commissioners had a split two-to-one vote on appropriating funds towards the downtown hotels in which the county has a $38 million stake.
That $38 million has gone into the Hilton Garden Inn and the Homewood Suites, connected to the downtown convention center, The Glass City Center. And on Tuesday, Lucas County Commissioners voted to appropriate what Commissioner Pete Gerken called a $1.5 million “emergency fund” for the hotels.
“We have to protect the money that we have in it [the hotel], and it’s our job to protect our money,” Gerken said.
Clarifying the use of the funds, Gerken referred to the $1.5 million as available funds to ensure the hotel stays open during an upcoming event schedule at the convention center.
“We’re not cashing a $1.5 million check and handing it to anybody tomorrow,” he said, adding that the funds would act as a reserve balance “in case we need it.”
Gerken said the hotels had struggled getting off the ground after COVID and that, at present, the hotels were in a lull, not in dire need.
But Gerken believed this was a crucial moment where the hotels would begin to return on their investment. During the regular meeting and when speaking to the press, Gerken held a list of events to take place at the convention center, booked years in advance, and said these events would provide stability to the hotel investment.
All three commissioners agreed on providing contingency funds, but the commissioners diverged on the amount that should be set aside.
The allocations were split into two amounts with two separate votes. One vote was for allocating $500,000, which all commissioners approved. The other vote was for adding another $1 million, which Commissioner Anita Lopez did not agree with.
“I believe we need to do a little bit more fine tuning on where those dollars will go,” Lopez said.
Supporting the hotel was important to Lopez, “We need to secure those future conferences that are coming to our area, but I don’t feel comfortable right now, based on the financial statements and the projections that the [$]1.5 [million] is necessary at this time.”
Regardless, Lopez was overruled by Gerken and Commissioner Lisa Sobecki’s votes for the full $1.5 million to be set aside for the hotel.
“This is taking the time to do it right,” Sobecki said of preparing money in case of an emergency. “Today we’re not going to be taking long for government to work. Government will have done the work and been proactive,” she said, and explained that allocating these funds ahead of time could save money in the future by allowing the hotel to act decisively instead of rushing a decision.
When asked why, Frank Kass, the majority owner in the hotels, hadn’t put up the money for the rainy day fund, Gerken said Kass had already invested in the upfront construction costs, riskier costs leading up to this point. But Gerken said that he was confident Kass would continue to support the hotel as long as the county was invested in it, and that he thought the hotels only needed a year and a half to two years to begin to flourish.
