This is the September report on the February One Place Parking Deck-Westin Hotel Complex and there is not much to report.
City Manager David Parrish said Tuesday, Sept. 17, that he had just had a face-to-face meeting with the developer Greg Dillon and he expected to sign the contract to start construction any day.
It sounds like good news, except Parrish in June said the essentially the same thing, except for the face-to-face meeting part. In June, Mayor Nancy Vaughan said she thought the contract might have already been signed. Parrish said it was not but he expected to sign it in a few days and construction could start in a week.
On Monday, July 8, Parrish said that he had been out of town for the July 4 holiday and the contract might be in his in-box awaiting his signature and construction could start later in the week. He said all the substantive issues had been worked out and he didn’t know any reason the contract wouldn’t be signed in days.
At the August 20 City Council meeting, the resolution to allocate funding for the February One Place-Westin Hotel complex was pulled from a resolution at the last minute with no discussion or explanation.
Before that meeting when Parrish was asked about the progress on the project he said that he expected the contract to be signed and construction to start by the end of the month.
This is Friday, Sept. 20, and because both Parrish and Vaughan have repeatedly promised to get in touch with the Rhino Times as soon as the contract is ready to be signed, and there has been no word and no return phone call, it appears another week has gone by without a contract to build the February One Place Parking Deck-Westin Hotel Complex.
This City Council at its first business meeting in December 2017 approved the funding to build the February One Place-Westin Hotel Complex. There were easement issues that cost the city about an additional $1 million to clear up and that wasn’t done until August 2018. At the time, the City Council was told that it had to settle the easement lawsuit because going to court would hold up construction. But now, over a year after the easement issues were finally settled, there is still no contract between the City of Greensboro and Dillon to build the complex.
In 2018, the projected opening date for the Westin Hotel was March 2020; no new projected opening date has been announced, but there is no way the February One Place-Westin Hotel Complex is going to be built in six months.
As to why the contract, which was reportedly ready for signatures in June, has not been signed, nobody who knows is saying.
