Don’t plan to go to the new water park.
If you look up the Great Wolf Resorts on the web you will see that the water park is “Exclusive to resort guests”.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak
City of El Paso debt=$2,670,400,000, county and school district debt=$1,600,000,000. Total $4.27 billion. Your share $19,350
elpasospeak 
People DRIVE . .thru . . . El Paso to get somewhere.
A FAMILY will probably not stop and get a room.
Hotels are generally empty during the weekends here.
Business travelers are mostly the ones at the El Paso hotels and that’s basically only Monday-Friday.
You see those NEW 24 hour Emergency Centers built all around town. They are closing down . . .one by one.
Population + traffic count + income per household = NOTHING in El Paso.
The dopes that compile all that info have sold that info to out of town developers that have no clue.
Traffic count + population + income = NOTHING in El Paso.
Since this water park will not be by the airport, it will be waiting for families with “station wagons” to stop by.
(And those “station wagons” will be going as fast as they can to get to Tucson, or Phoenix or Austin.)
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As I said at the beginning of this latest idiocy, there is no way this kind of business can make it in El Paso. The locals simply cannot afford it, and we are not a destination for travelers, other than our kids (you know, the ones who went away for college and stayed, or the ones who simply left for a better opportunity?) occasionally coming home for some family social gathering, and they usually stay with relatives.
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I was wondering about all those urgent care places. Almost as many as mattress stores. (What is it about mattress stores in El Paso; do people sleep that much here?) I assumed that the investors paying for those centers know something the rest of us don’t, e.g., there is a plague on the way or something, the Dems are going to win in 2020 and universal healthcare will be a reality…
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Healthcare is crashing. I use Urgent Care now exclusively because getting into a doctor on less than a month’s notice is impossible. I tell them I’m not insured. Why? Because my insurance deductible is never met so there is no coverage for this type visit. But my insurance’s negotiated rate with them is $120 to walk in the door. If I pay cash and don’t show an insurance card the fee is $80. My insurance will be even worse next year because my grandfathered plan is ending. Both sides of Congress have blame on the mess we are in.
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The resort would have at least 350 rooms that will start at $250 a night, which includes access to the waterpark.
“A couple two- or three-night stay here is an inexpensive kind of ‘staycation’ that you can take advantage right in your backyard,” said City Manager Tommy Gonzalez.
3-DAYS… $750 PLUS $193.13 H.O.T. AND SALES TAX… $943.13 TOTAL… WHAT A DEAL!
Oh, and the state portion of the sales tax (and their portion of the sales tax from all the businesses surrounding the hotel within 1,000 feet), as-well-as half of the H.O.T. go back into the coffers of the hotel, no property tax since the city will be leasing them the property (where’s the tax benefit to ANY of our taxing entities?), a state tourism grant of $4 million a year for ten years that if there is a disquaification for that grant, El Paso as a city is on the hook to make up for that grant, and the increase in value to properties in the area assuring that THEIR property taxes will go up.
Where are the benefits to El Pasoans in the big picture? Oh yeah, 385 jobs that will be the same caliber typical low paying jobs that we already have. Great work Tommy Gonzalez!
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Wow. . . $250 a night plus the HOT tax !
OK, now taking bets on how long it will be before the $99 per room SPECIALS and 10 cent hot dog nights and live bands 5 days a week to get people to come in.
My thoughts are: “If you don’t know who your customers are and where you are going to find them, you have no business being IN BUSINESS !”
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One article I read said that the Great Wolf Lodge could bring 500,000 people to El Paso per year. That’s a really rosey outlook because with 350 rooms, that would require every room to have 4 people in it 365 days a year.
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Oh, just looked at their web site !
I’ll take the Family Package for $450 per night and THEMED with a poster of Smokey the Bear on the wall !
And the kids will have access to flat screen TV’s where they can play video games all day !
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee !
(plus the HOT tax of course . . so that’s about $650-$700 per night.)
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Didn’t you see that the HOT is not going to be charged to them?
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I still haven’t made it to Top Golf
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Once all this is done, you don’t have to wonder what Gonzalez’s future employment plans might be.
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Only “Guest” who STAY at their hotel, okay, okay “Resort” will be ALLOWED in their water park. An “Average stay” is $250 per night. So one night, two nights would pretty much blow-off the “Average” El Pasoans vacation “budget”. I can drive to Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Texas Coast, Phoenix, Las Vegas and spend the night for about HALF of that. Why would anybody that doesn’t have family HERE, want to stop, stay HERE?? And after all the Mayor’s, Silly Councils tax INCREASES on US to pay for their new “WE want this”, who would have the “Average” $250 per night, PLUS to stay there??. This CON, SCAM by the Mayor, Silly Council brings in ONLY a $1,000 per YEAR for land rent.. And of course we all know THEY are making another give-away land “Deal” with the Foster organization. And the Resort pays NO taxes, water bill , NOTHING for 15 years. AGAIN, all on the backs of taxpayers, home owners in El Taxo. This town is already BILLIONS$$$ in debt and no way to pay that. Every City Council person that WE can vote OUT on 6 November, needs to be GONE.
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I stayed at one of these for a client meeting in the Midwest. Companies do book them for offsite meetings but they normally pick one close to their HQ. All our corporate HQs large enough to have these types of meetings have moved elsewhere. But what do you want to bet TommyG and Cabrera will be using tax dollars to have leadership retreats or team building events there once it is built? Other than that I think there will be a high empty rate unless they deep discount. The water park hotel in Albuquerque is reportedly not doing well. These things really need a cluster of surrounding communities with higher incomes to thrive. Yes, there is wealth in Mexico, but those folks will likely opt for So Cal, Dallas or Phoenix or Europe over EP for the family vaca. We really don’t have the strong middle class needed to keep this thing full.
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I would guess that by the time Great Wolf gets the loan they say they need, and completes construction, and then we can see what level of benefits El Paso actually gets from this project, none of the current members of Council or Court will be in office. And Mr. Gonzalez won’t be here either…
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This is another giveaway to the private sector which the city tries to justify by the claimed creation of a large number of jobs most of which will pay minimum wage and many of which will never materialize. The land swap and land lease with an option to purchase was all designed to reduce the amount of money Wolf has to invest and makes it even easier for the city to help Wolf avoid property taxes even longer than stated by the city. It is not the city’s business to invest so heavily in a private, for-profit business, while at the same time it can only re-surface 30 streets a year. It’s no coincidence that the Wolfe site is right across the street from the local developer owned West Towne Market Place that will benefit. Look at the developer campaign donations, then look at the council votes. Once again, developers win and taxpayers lose. The real kick in the ass here is that if the state comptroller decides that Wolf doesn’t qualify for state subsidies that have been baked into this scam, El Paso taxpayers will have to fork over an $40,000,000 in cash subsidies to Wolf over a ten year period. The Wolf project will not qualify for those subsidies because the entire premise of this project qualifying for the subsidies is wrong and the city knows that. They know right now that they’re going to be giving Wolf $40,000,000 more of your money, but they think by the time those checks start being written, you will have forgotten about it or will no longer care.
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Locals are allowed and we get to pay twice ++ once with our taxes and a second time when we visit.
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IF . . . . . . Great Wolf does NOT have to pay the HOT TAX, (or allows a way around it) and that puts the OTHER hotels at a disadvantage, price wise to the public, I’d suggest the other hotels could sue the city for this arrangement.
The city should not be allowed to disregard city law or ordinances for ONE company.
That’s like saying the city can allow only Ford pickups to run red lights.
Or, only Hispanics can park in no-parking zones.
ALLOWING an agreement to discriminate against the other hotels, the city should be liable.
If BOTH Great Wolf . . . . and. . . their customers are not charged the HOT TAX, (or a way around it) then the discrimination goes even deeper.
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The customer will be charged. Great Wolf will get the money.
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When you put it like that, one realizes just how really bad the Wolf deal is. They get to collect OUR money and keep it for themselves. Imagine if every business were able to collect sales tax and just keep it. If Wolf can’t make it on their own, they shouldn’t even be thinking about building here and it makes one doubt the viability of their business. Same with the Hunt Tower downtown that the Hunt family said they could not afford to build without giant tax subsidies that amounted to a large portion of the building cost. The Hunts can afford it, they have the money, they just want to take our money rather than play by the same rules as most of us.
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“The customer will be charged. Great Wolf will get the money.”
Sounds like there needs to be a Federal Investigation IMMEDIATELY !
The end result is. . . That Great Wolf will be their own Taxing Authority and keeping the money.
( Calling it a Local Hot Tax to the customer . . and then keeping it !)
Wooooooooosh !
When contracts are written to bypass the law,
the FBI should step in.
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Exactly. WE need an FBI Organized Crime Team, investigating El Paso Mayor, City Council, under R.I.C.O. Laws. Public corruption, Organized Crime. An FBI Section right inside City Hall.
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Couldn’t agree more.
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A percentage of the HOT tax was approved soley for paying for the stadium.
How is the city legally allowed to waive it or rebate it back to a hotel???
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This “if we build it they will come – and if not the taxpayers will bail it out” mentality has infested our city government but sadly most of the voters, by voting or not voting, will just let it ride.
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But the bad thing is, WE don’t get a vote. The corrupt politicians in El Taxo just do these MULTI-MILLION$$$ give aways, including MILLIONS$$ in TAX money and WE have no VOTE, no say. Just like the ball field that John Cook and his minions LIED about and shafted US with MILLIONS$$$ in debt that WE will NEVER be able to pay. Dee Margo, his clowns and another “Deal” will be no different. Lie, deny, deceive.
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