Point. Sold. Match.

The Winthrop has sold. Officially. Prium has bought the property from AF Evans.

Interestingly, the news came from AF Evans, not Prium. I'm not quite sure if there's anything to be drawn from that, but that's the news.

Let the planning commence. We're still a year or more from the actual conversion, but we're moving in the right direction.

Thanks for the tip, Erik B.

Winthrop News

Read all about it in the Trib. $2 million for the Prium group so they can build some low income housing to start moving residents out before they begin the renovation. It sounds like an interesting process. More info to come, I'm sure.

Winthrop Hotel

Update on Exit133 ... not so good for Quigg, but perhaps there is hope yet. Definitely a setback, though.

Winthrop Hotel

If you've been following along on the Winthrop Hotel process like me, Exit133's report this morning is filled with mixed news. A deal fell through, but something new may be in place by Friday.

Keep it up, guys! Good luck!

Winthrop at 6:30 am

Big turnout this morning at Tully's on Broadway for the Winthrop meeting with Tim Quigg and his group of developers. Waaaay too early for me, but well worth being bleary-eyed.

Exit133.com and Kevin already posted on the meeting. What I found most interesting was the proposal to actually finish the Winthrop. Many may not know that a planned North Tower was never completed. Quigg & Company want to complete the tower with condos or perhaps more room. It's a fascinating piece of the project and a plan to not only renovate but expand the Winthrop is pretty awesome.

The other really great piece of the morning was the announcement that they want to create an additional 80 units of housing when the move the low-income housing out of the Winthrop. That would take 170 units and boost it to 250. The affordable housing advocates were well represented at the meeting, and I have great hope that the prospect of a new hotel (plus all the new jobs) plus the increase in affordable housing will make this project a winner.

The Virtuous Winthrop Cycle

I worked for a few years in the tourism business here in Tacoma selling our city to tourists and conventioneers. And one of the interesting things that I learned is that the new Convention Center can accomodate much larger conventions than we have hotel rooms for. (Actually, to be specific, we don't have enough hotel rooms within walking distance or on the Link. The hotels on Hosmer can be filled by the Convention Center, but few convention planners want to have to ferry attendees back and forth.)

This is one of the reasons the Winthrop is so appealing as a new hotel: it's right on the Link which makes it easy to become part of the convention business. With more rooms nearby, we can allow bigger conventions which in turn fills more hotel rooms in the area.

The next 30 days are going to be very interesting!

Bloggers, Unite!

I believe there were four Tacoma bloggers at last night's City Council meeting: myself, Derek at Exit133.com, Kevin Freitas, and Paul Ellis, who blogs for the BIA. By my count, that means that bloggers outnumbered the press 2-1.

Paul and Kevin both posted recaps of the meeting. Here's the Tribune's article. I'll just second what everyone else says: the City Council made the right choice to delay their vote by 1 week, and give AF Evans and Tim Quigg a chance to work together and provide both low-income housing and a 4 star hotel.

(The above picture was snapped today from the Bostwick Tully's across the street from the Winthrop.)

The Winthrop Deal - Tonight

Tonight the City Council meets to discuss a deal about the Winthrop. There will be some interesting discussions, I imagine, because the Council effectively has the ability to kill a proposal to turn the building back into a hotel.

Tim Quigg wants to be able to turn it back into a hotel, and wants to partner with Evans to build the low-income housing elsewhere in Tacoma. It's an interesting deal, and one that could really benefit everyone involved. Here's the Tribune. Kevin's on the case as well.