Winthrop Hotel / Quigg Press Conference

In the few minutes I have before heading to the dentist, I thought I’d share a few things from this morning’s Winthrop meeting at Tully’s.  Here’s the short and sweet of it:

• The general consensus was that this project is going to take everybody with will and resources to pull it off.

• The project hopes to be a model for afforadable housing.  While the Winthrop currently has 170 residents, the goal is 250 new units throughout the city.

• Coast Hotels is a potential partner and negotiations are ongoing.  Coast is responsible for such projects as the Benson Hotel in Portland as well as the Paramount in both Portland and Seattle.

• Several significant local investors have come out in favor of the project and will be putting their money into the game.

• The name for the Quigg & Co. group is to be the Citizens Hotel, LLC to reflect the origins of the Winthrop.

• A lot of people have already come together to make this work.  They still need a lot of work.  Do you have local art that could be used in the hotel?  Artifacts from Tacoma’s history in your living room?

This is exciting and it was good to see such a great turn out this morning.  I’ll summarize a bit more later.

Update: The Tacoma Daily Index has a story “here”:http://www.tacomadailyindex.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=88&cat=23&id=735680&more.