Print edition: 
Whatever the wording on the Americans for Prosperity petition targeting the Ambassador hotel project, the real question for Wichitans is whether they want downtown to amount to a few points of pride surrounded by decay and inactivity. Wichitans’ clear and urgent answer should be “no.”
The $22.5 million project will transform the old Union National Bank building at Douglas and Broadway into a 117-room boutique hotel, as it pays tribute to the Dockum lunch-counter sit-in that made civil rights history on the site.
AFP’s Wichita members began collecting signatures Friday to try to force a vote on the developers’ ability to use $2.25 million in hotel guest tax revenue over 15 years — the only part of the complex deal with the city that is legally subject to a protest petition and, if successful, a public vote.
Many people surely will sympathize with the AFP activists’ preference for development paid for by developers, with no help from public incentives and tax dollars.
That’s how it would work in an ideal world.
But reality prevails in downtown Wichita: To happen at all, redevelopment often needs to be a public-private partnership serving the public good of a revitalized downtown.
The Union National Bank building is a prime example: If it could be developed without the use of public tools, it wouldn’t still be empty after 12 years. In conjunction with the Ambassador hotel plan, the city plans to spend $7.5 million to build a public parking garage and urban park next door.
With its protest, AFP is telling potential developers that if they seek to do a project downtown and need to make use of available public tools, they should be prepared to pay for a $50,000 special election, plus a public campaign to argue their side.
That message will only further deter downtown development.
If the guest-tax provision is undone by voters, the Ambassador project won’t unravel, developers say. But it could be harder, and take longer, for the independent, upscale hotel concept that’s proved successful in Tulsa, Fort Worth and Oklahoma City to find success here.
Wichita has a plan for downtown, thanks to Mayor Carl Brewer and an impressive army of believers from the public and private sectors. And it’s working, generating Eagle headlines nearly every week about real-estate transactions and new businesses to go along with the crowds increasingly assembling downtown for concerts and events. In keeping with the downtown plan, the Ambassador project was vetted by a public-private evaluation team.
To oppose the Ambassador project is, in effect, to oppose downtown redevelopment, and to sanction more years and decades of boarded-up storefronts, idle office buildings and vacant lots in the heart of the city.
Besides, Wichita already had a referendum on downtown redevelopment in last spring’s municipal elections: In all but one race, voters opted for City Council candidates who strongly favor downtown redevelopment. There is no need to revote now.
Wichitans should just say “no” to the naysayers, and endorse not only the Ambassador but downtown’s sure and steady rebound.
