{"id":345,"date":"2019-06-28T23:31:15","date_gmt":"2019-06-28T23:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/?p=345"},"modified":"2019-06-29T02:11:05","modified_gmt":"2019-06-29T02:11:05","slug":"william-jordan-analysis-the-line-hotel-missed-local-hiring-benchmarks-may-still-receive-46m-tax-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/345\/","title":{"rendered":"William Jordan Analysis: The Line hotel missed local hiring benchmarks, may still receive $46M tax break"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was originally posted to the Adams Morgan Listserv on May 9, 2019, as message #51069, groups.yahoo.com\/neo\/groups\/AdamsMorgan\/conversations\/messages\/51069<\/a>
\n This was a claw back deal. I don’t really understand the weak leadership on this.
\nWilliam
\n The Line hotel missed local hiring benchmarks, may still receive $46M tax break
\nBy Rebecca Cooper \u2013 Senior Staff Reporter, Washington Business Journal
\nMay 8, 2019, 1:53pm EDT Updated May 8, 2019, 2:06pm EDT
\nTwo members of the D.C. Council are calling foul on a city department\u2019s approval of a $46 million tax abatement for the Line D.C. hotel \u2014 despite the fact that the project did not meet some of the legal requirements to receive that tax break.
\nCouncilwomen Brianne Nadeau, D-Ward 1, and Elissa Silverman, I-At large, wrote Monday to Attorney General Karl Racine to determine whether the city\u2019s Department of Employment Services had the authority to approve a payment in lieu of meeting some of the requirements for the tax abatement.
\nThe agency said that it was approving a $600,000 payment from the Line’s team \u2014 to be paid in $150,000 increments over four years \u2014 into the city\u2019s resident job training fund as \u201csubstitute compliance\u201d for not meeting some of the employment requirements for the abatement. Specifically, the hotel only employed 273 D.C. residents during construction, rather than the 342 full-time-equivalent construction positions it was supposed to employ, according to information provided to Nadeau and Silverman by DOES, cited in the letter.
\nThe hotel also did not have District workers account for more than 51% of total construction hours, and did not reserve all construction apprenticeships for D.C. residents, according to the lawmakers.
\n\u201cGiven that all the provisions outlined in the law were not met, we assert the Line Hotel is not eligible for the tax abatement,\u201d the councilwomen wrote in the letter.
\nWe\u2019ve reached out to the hotel’s owners and will update this story when we hear back.
\nThe Department of Employment Services certified to the Office of the Chief Financial Officer that the project was in compliance \u2014 if it paid the $600,000 for job training. The first payment has been made, but OCFO spokesman David Umansky said the abatement has not yet been processed.
\n Arne Sorenson has been CEO of Bethesda-based Marriott International since 2012. He’s shown here in 2016, when the Washington Business Journal named him its CEO of the Year after the Starwood acquisition closed.
\nNadeau and Silverman argue, however, that DOES has reached beyond its purview \u2014 which is to assess compliance with D.C.\u2019s First Source law \u2014 when it certified the Line’s compliance with the tax incentive law.
\n\u201cWe are concerned that, in effect, the director is claiming the authority under the District\u2019s First Source law to waive unrelated sections of law and permit the Line Hotel to receive its tax abatement without meeting the legislated requirements,\u201d Silverman and Nadeau noted in their letter to the attorney general. \u201cTherefore, we would appreciate your legal opinion on the authority of DOES and\/or the executive branch of D.C. government to use First Source law to waive provisions of law unrelated to First Source.\u201d
\nThe Line received its permanent certificate of occupancy in July, kicking off the city audit that determined whether it met all of the provisions for the tax abatement. Line owners Sydell Group, Foxhall Partners and Friedman Capital have always pledged that they met all the requirements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was originally posted to the Adams Morgan Listserv on May 9, 2019, as message #51069, groups.yahoo.com\/neo\/groups\/AdamsMorgan\/conversations\/messages\/51069 This was a claw back deal. I don’t really understand the weak leadership on this. William The Line hotel missed local hiring benchmarks, may still receive $46M tax break By Rebecca Cooper \u2013 Senior Staff Reporter, Washington Business […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-housingarchive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}