The Wichita City Council now plans to approve a hotel plan that involves taxpayer’s money being given out to local developers for a hotel to be built at Douglas and Broadway.
This is the same City Council that has been cutting programs for needy people and has approved just about every plan local developers have wanted. It’s as if the city government was just a banking partner with the developers except they are using the taxpayer’s money for private business.
The Douglas Place plan is for a 117-room, building that will cost city tax payers $150-a-night. This project was approved Tuesday night, although many local residents came out to oppose their money being used for private investments, according to The Wichita Eagle.
The City Council voted 5-1 Tuesday morning. The Hotel will be located in the old Union National Bank Building. That is the site of the historic 1958 Dockum sit-in.
It was one of the first such sit-ins in Kansas where black people tried to sit at a lunch counter in the Dockum Drug Store. White people threw stuff at them and tried to humiliate them for trying to eat at a white’s only dinner.
Whether such an historical site should be turned into a simple hotel is questionable. The site is a major historical land mark for the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
It is also ridiculous to expect the people of Wichita to pay their money to a land development deal at a time when joblessness should be priority one. The city has more important things to spend money on than partnering up with private developers.
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