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Show More Than Motel Needed Now that lUnintil'ul has put to bed the issue of a new shopping shop-ping niall, attention has turned to the Redevelopment Agency's Agen-cy's proposal for a motel-convention motel-convention center in our community. com-munity. T1IKRIU and the city councils coun-cils ol Hountiful and Woods Cross need to do a lot of homework home-work before moving in that direction. The convention business is a selling business, and these cities should first consider what thev have to sell. A hotel room, some meals and an auditorium will not alone induce convention traffic. traf-fic. Conventions are rarely all work and no play. Organizations Organiza-tions planning conventions thoroughly scout all of the attractions in a community before be-fore proposing it as a convention conven-tion site. THE SALT Palace Convention Conven-tion Center and the Salt Lake Valley Convention and Visitors' Visi-tors' Bureau officials agree that they first hae to market the Salt Lake community be-tore be-tore they can sell convention facilities. This is tough, even for Salt Lake, because they have no big-name entertainment entertain-ment palaces. Frequent articles in local papers have described the cities' proposal for a motel complex with several hundred rooms and a convention center to accommodate up to a thousand attendees. This prompts several questions. WHAT WOULD one thousand conventioneers, perhaps w ith spouses, do w ith their free time? What entertainment, enter-tainment, dining, cultural and sports attractions can we offer? If conventioneers were forced to go to Salt Lake for these activities, how would they get there? Do w e env ision a licet of taxicabs and rental cars standing by? Currently it is an $18 minimum round-trip cab fare between Bountiful and Salt Lake. Travel time is also a factor. Why would not an organization prefer to hold its convention in Salt Lake where members may walk to many theaters, the Salt Palace, Symphony Hall and restaurants, res-taurants, or get by with a three or four dollar cab fare? CONSIDERING a several hundred room motel: Relatively Relative-ly few hotels survive entirely on convention business or casual tourist drop-ins. How many tourists would have Bountiful as a destination? Probably not many. What occupancy level could we expect ex-pect from "off the highway" traffic? (In this community, family visitors usually stay with family; we rarely put up our relatives and friends in hotels). No doubt there would be-some be-some overflow from Salt Lake City LDS Conference visitors, and there may be an occasional event at the Ice Arena that may draw overnight guests, but these would involve very few davs indeed. COMMERCIAL travels are an important revenue source for most hotels. Do we have enough people coming into this community every day to transact trans-act business in South Davis County to maintain a viable "load-factor" in a several hundred hun-dred room hotel? It seems unlikely that we could attract people whose business connections are in Salt Lake, particularly when round-trip cab fare between the Salt Lake Airport and Bountiful is $24. Anyone with business in Salt Lake would probably overnight there. WE UNDERSTAND some developers have expressed an interest in building a motel on private property with private funds. A modest-size motel financed fi-nanced in this manner might well be justified. Bountiful and Woods Cross should not commit com-mit any entity to the development develop-ment of a sizeable block of land owned or controlled by these cities. Land acquired by the RDA for the development of a motel-convention complex should be disposed of or set aside for more realistic purposes. pur-poses. Perhaps our cities could devise ways lo induce new industry in-dustry and commercial enterprises enter-prises to settle here. This could enhance our tax base and pro-vice pro-vice the impetus for development develop-ment of more entertainment, dining, cultural and sport facilities, faci-lities, wich would (hen justify to some degree our yearning for a convention center, if we still want it. Robert W. Sharp |
