Have spent much of my afternoon and night pouring over emails on the airport hotel lease. Frank Miller and his staff wanted a hotel on the airport property. That is very clear.
Didn’t matter that the private sector had built several hotels nearby. When he was approached by Julian MacQueen about building a hotel, Miller jumps on the idea and let the city council know that he would be exclusively negotiating with MacQueen. He had a willing developer – who cares about RFPs?
Huge red flag, but no one on the council objects – at least not in writing to Miller. Of course, staff is crafty. Miller and Bonfield don’t ask for a vote on exclusivity yet. They only let the City Council know about it as an information item. They say that they will only proceed if a study says it is financially feasible…in other words, if MacQueen says he really wants it, he will get it.
Site changes. Instead of a hotel, it expands to include retail and commercial that MacQueen will develop, too. Sweet.
Another huge red flag. The deal is much more than a hotel. Still no objections – but not sure the council even knows yet that the deal has expanded. No one is allowed to bid on the expanded development. MacQueen and Innisfree still have exclusivity.
Innisfree says their feasibility study says that hotel will work. We don’t see the study. It’s not given to the City Council. We don’t know if the hotel is only feasible if the other five parcels are part of the deal. Was a study really done?
City Attorney recommends MacQueen pay for exclusivity. That recommendation isn’t passed on to the City Council.
Frank Miller is driving this bus and definitely is controlling information to council. This isn’t anything new. Same thing happens at the Port of Pensacola.
Eleven months after Miller gives MacQueen exclusivity and Bonfield informs the council, the City Council approves an exclusivity agreement that gives Innisfree another 24 months to negotiate a contract for the lease. No fee is paid. Nothing is held in escrow.
From then, the focus of Miller and the City staff is get the deal done. When it comes before City Council, Miller and crew are working for MacQueen to get approval. They figure out how to rush the vote before the new council takes office. They meet with council members one-on-one, counting their votes prior to the council meeting. They don’t check to be sure that they have the right appraisal. They don’t ask any outside experts to review the lease – only attorneys.
They create a false sense of urgency with the Hyatt deadline. Yet in all the emails I read, I didn’t find one from Innisfree saying that if the deal wasn’t approved by Nov. 21 that the whole deal was off.
Staff worked for Innisfree like it did for CEMEX, Halcorp and now Pate Cold Storage. They didn’t work for the citizens. They didn’t work for the city council.
The City Council is to be manipulated or is seen as an obstacle to be overcome….not the governing body. Citizens like Jim Cronley, Allan Bell, John Griffing and others that objected are to be dealt with as political adversaries.
I found several emails where Miller had his staff looking for the transcript of 2007 council meeting to get something that Jim Cronley had said – I suspect to shoot down Cronley’s objections. Ridiculous.
Miller and his staff wanted the hotel deal to happen. They were willing to do nearly anything to get the City Council to approve it. They were successful. They duped the council.
Next up – Port of Pensacola and the amendment of the Pate Cold Storage lease.