At the end of a lengthy city council meeting, council member Kandace Hinton cast the deciding vote against designating a vacant property in her own district as an “economic revitalization area.”

Local investment group Transcend LLC had selected the property, located on the northwest corner of I-70 and US HWY 41, as the proposed site for a new Marriot extended stay hotel.

According to a report given to the council by Richard Shagley, legal council for Transcend, the project would have represented a $12 million dollar investment in the community, leading to new jobs with an annual payroll of $540,000.

At the heart of Hinton’s objection was the possibility of a 9 year graduated tax abatement that would have resulted in the developer paying a lower percentage of property taxes towards the beginning of the project, saving the company approximately $1.1 million dollars over nine years.

She also expressed concerns about the relatively low wages being paid to the employees in the proposal from Transcend, to which Shagley replied that the wages were consistent with the hotel business nationally.

Also voting against the project were council members Todd Nation and Tammy Boland. During the meeting Nation stated that he felt the property was a prime location that did not need an incentive for development.

In response, Shagley pointed out that the property had been vacant for years and that numerous other projects throughout the city, with prime locations, have previously received tax abatements and public funding from the city council.

Tammy Boland quickly followed up by commenting that “this city council did not approve those abatements,” and expressed her concerns with the council’s inability to hold developers accountable if they did not meet abatement requirements.

Throughout the meeting Shagley repeatedly mentioned a similar abatement given to La Quinta Inn development and he reminded the council that his clients were not asking for money up front, which may have been a reference to the council’s recent unanimous decision to approve $3 million dollars in ARPA funding for Gibson Development to build a hotel at 7th and Wabash.

Although a majority of the council voted to approve the ordinance, it did not meet the five vote threshold for approval due to the absence of council member’s George Azar and Amanda Thompson. Voting to approve were council members Curtis DeBaun, Jim Chalos, Cheryl Loudermilk, and Anthony Dinkel.