Roosevelt Road - Is a hotel a good idea?

One topic that everyone seems to agree on is the need to rejuvenate our Roosevelt Road corridor. At the Candidates Forum, a question was asked seeking specific ideas for improving that district. With just 60 seconds to answer (that was the format), I could not give a very comprehensive answer, but I did mention an idea that I believe is worth looking into: A hotel/convention center.

In my opinion, the main categories for evaluating the idea are:
Demand
Tax Revenue
Economic Impact (i.e. the affect on other businesses in the area)
Character of neighborhood
Draw on community services

Demand – According to a member of local tourism board whom I spoke with recently, there is tremendous demand in the Oak Park/Forest Park area for convention and block lodging. She indicated that she routinely turns away groups that looking are for blocks of rooms totaling 50 to 200 and convention space that can accommodate over 100 people because there is no one around here that has that type of space available. The main reason for the demand is our location. McCormick Place has made a decision to only go after the mega conventions (i.e. Auto Show, etc.). Oak Brook and Rosemont are really the next places that offers convention space, and many consider tham too far from Chicago. So, in the end, there are many moderate sized groups that are looking for blocks of rooms and/or convention space for their groups in a close-in suburb, like Forest Park.

Tax Revenue – Hotel and convention space is generally taxed a very high tax rate. If you don’t believe me, just look at your hotel bill next time you travel. We all want Roosevelt to be a large source of tax revenue, this could be a way.

Economic Impact – When you put a hotel up with, say 100 rooms, you probably have approximately 125 people staying at full capacity. 100 or so more people per night located within our retail district could be a great shot in the arm for existing businesses and a draw for others who may or may not have considered Roosevelt in the past.

Character of neighborhood – This is an important issue that would need to be discussed. A hotel could potentially change the character of the Roosevelt Road corridor. I am not sure if this is a change we (by “we” I am talking about the collective residents of the Village) would embrace or not.

Draw on community resources – Any time you put a large concentration of people into an area, you are going to end up drawing more demand for public resources, especially police patrol. This is something that would require significant input from our Chief of Police, among others.

Other consideration – A hotel would probably want to have some sort of a trolley that would take guests to the blue line and back. It may be something to look into having the Village create a trolley system that includes the hotel, as well as Madison Street and some off-street parking location. We could require the hotel to pay into a fund that would operate this. This idea could also be pitched to the Main Street Organization.

All and all, I think that a hotel/convention center could be a fit somewhere on Roosevelt. However, we would have to be very careful about the type of hotel, etc. to make sure that it has the desired economic impact and limits the negative impacts that large developments like this can have.

What do you think? As I have said in the past, I think that campaigns are best if they are dialog, rather than a monolog. So, please feel free to post you comments.