June 05--Offering tax incentives to incoming businesses can be a good form of public/private partnerships. If plans for a four-star hotel near El Paso International Airport become finalized:

-- The hotel owners would get a 40-year lease and a variety of incentives and rebates on property taxes, hotel occupancy taxes and sales and mixed-beverage taxes for 10 years. -- The city would have a new major hotel and would lease about 80,000 square feet that would provide jobs in the retail, restaurant and bar industries.

These are projects that make El Paso a better draw when out-of-town organizations decide where to hold conventions or trade shows.

Two other major examples of tax incentives here are the Fountains at Farah shopping center now under construction in East-Central, and in 2006 when a group of investors, led by El Paso businessman Jim Scherr, took on the DoubleTree Hotel project. That high-rise had been dubbed the Baghdad Hotel because of its dilapidated look along Interstate 10 in Downtown.

Plans for the new airport hotel call for 220 rooms, most likely a Westin property.

Construction costs are estimated at $42.5 million. Besides all-amenities room service, the hotel will have a full-service restaurant, bar, pool and up to 18,000 square feet of meeting space.

Adjacent to the hotel, plans call for speciality retail stores, national restaurant chains not now in El Paso, art festivals and other entertainment.

It will be a

good addition to Airport Boulevard, which already has several hotels to conveniently service those who travel here by air for business or other activities.

But there is still a need for more hotel rooms Downtown, and preferably a hotel that can serve as a convention site and work in conjunction with the convention center in providing needed square footage.

Recall that prior to listing items for the $700,000-plus quality-of-life bond election, Mayor John Cook said he preferred such a hotel over a multi-purpose arena. The city decided on the arena. It, and many other items plan for around the city, passed by a 3-1 margin.

Cook noted that other cities have such convention-type hotels that have all-amenity rooms on the top floors and retail, restaurants and large meeting rooms on the lower floors.

Nonetheless, the announcement of a four-star hotel in the airport vicinity is a major positive for El Paso.

This is an age where providing tax incentives is a good way to bring in new business that will more than pay its fair share when it comes to providing jobs -- and still a good amount of tax money to the city.

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