City to tweak $500,000 request for “retail and hospitality”

QUINCY — Mayor Mike Troup met Thursday with members of the local hotel, motel and hospitality industry to answer questions about what had been labeled a $500,000 request for “hotel development.”

The money, if approved by the Quincy City Council on Monday night, would utilize proceeds from the 1 percent food and beverage tax. Troup said he had a good dialogue with the hotel managers, adding the city will tweak the language.

“We believe a development downtown, west of Fourth Street, is needed,” Troup said. “It would help bring events to the Oakley-Lindsay Center, it will be a benefit to the redevelopment of the riverfront, and it would take us closer to 1,200 hotel rooms.”

Troup said Holly Cain of the Quincy Convention and Visitors Bureau was at the meeting, along with City Planner Chuck Bevelheimer and Director of Administrative Services Jeff Mays. Troup said this weekend’s pool tournament at the Oakley-Lindsay Center, which has 700 participants and many of whom brought families, is an example of why more rooms are needed.

Dax Fohey, president of the Quincy Hotel and Lodging Association and general manager of Town and Country Inn, said he thought the meeting went well. If food and beverage tax proceeds go toward events that put heads on beds, he supports that. But he said the initial impression that the $500,000 was going to help bring competitors to Quincy and that the city didn’t need 1,200 rooms … yet.

“The pool tournament is great, but it’s only one thing, and it’s really the first thing we’ve had here since COVID,” Fohey said. “If we had 10 events like that a year, then yeah, 1,200 rooms might be needed.”

“Now, if they were to put $500,000 toward two turf soccer fields, that would be huge,” Fohey added. “Just look at what turfing the baseball fields has done. Summer weekends are pretty full with teams coming in for tournaments.”

Fohey said Troup told the group that his plan is to basically “clean up” the property where the now-shuttered Welcome Inn sits at 200 Maine. The consensus of the group was that’s an acceptable use of the funding. The hotel was closed in July 2021 after the city condemned the property due to structural deficiencies.

Troup said a new hotel would be ideal for that location, but the city doesn’t control the property. He wants to see what next steps the current owner takes. Quincy Property LLC of Blue Springs, Mo., owns the Welcome Inn property.

“We want to work with a private developer on that project,” Troup said. “Should it come to that point, it would cost the city $1 million due to prevailing wage to demolish that property. It will be closer to $500,000 if’s done privately.”