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Official Convention Center Documents Posted Online
Lancaster First is making available a collection of official documents and agreements which govern the hotel and convention center project.
This includes all publicly-released studies of the project, the agreements which control the construction and operation of the convention center, along with other relevant documents.
Links to these documents, along with a brief description of each, are available by clicking here.
OUR MONEY: Misused and Mismanaged
An Investigative Series by NewsLanc.com
Published with the permission of NewsLanc.com
A bevy of consultants, paid well over $3 million, with their invoices hidden from the public's view, methodically and systematically over-billed and submitted unsubstantiated bills over a four-year period to the Lancaster County Convention Center Authority while the executive director and board members condoned and participated in the waste of public tax dollars.
A search of thousands of documents, perhaps as many as 100,000 individual line items, obtained under the Pennsylvania Right-to-Know law, reveals that, primarily over a four-year period, the Lancaster County Convention Center Authority board paid millions of dollars to consultants who billed up to $350/hour, some for work they never did.
Beneath the surface, however, virtually unseen by the public, various out-of-town consultants were hired, sometimes without a contract, sometimes with vague open-ended contracts, and were paid after board members unanimously approved bills, sight unseen, month after month and year after year, without requesting documentation for the charges.
As politicians and the Penn Square Partners, with their vested self interest to protect, constantly pushed for the $170-million hotel/convention center, the media and the public were being manipulated by a $600,000 propaganda campaign, paid for from tax revenues and orchestrated by public relations firms and consultants.
CLICK HERE to read Credentials of NewsLanc's LCCCA investigator
Daniel Logan: Million dollar Convention Center mystery man
When Daniel Logan was initially hired in March 2003 as a consultant to the Lancaster County Convention Center Authority, it seemed simple enough. He was to analyze the proposed convention center's operating and marketing plan.
A glowing resume, submitted to the Authority by Chairman James O. Pickard, claimed that Logan was involved in various Philadelphia convention and tourist related projects between 1993 and 1998. It was less clear, however, what Logan had been doing in the five years before he was signed on by the Authority.
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Contrary to members' assurances, LCCCA negligent in spending
There were times, over several years of public meetings of the Lancaster Convention Center Authority, when various board members and the executive director claimed they were keenly aware of their fiduciary responsibility in handling tax dollars. In reality, after a careful and meticulous check of years of records, there was little justification required of consultants who were paid millions of dollars for work allegedly done for the Authority.
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$15,000 assignment evolves into $1.1 million plum
Virtually unknown to the public, in the summer of 2004, Penn Square Partners recommended to the Lancaster County Convention Center Authority that each agree to spend $15,000 to bring in a couple of high-powered, out-of-state consultants.
For Penn Square Partners it was an inexpensive investment. For the Authority, however, that $15,000 would eventually drain more than $1.1 million of tax dollars to another consultant over a 22-month period.
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CC Consultant paid $407,000 plus vague expenses
The hiring of Robert C. Hazard III by the Lancaster County Convention Center Authority was, at best, a footnote in a far more significant meeting.
The bulk of the lengthy meeting was consumed by concern that Penn Square Partners was going to drop out of the project. They had found an $8 million shortfall in what they were able to invest in the new Convention Center project. The word was that if the Authority couldn't find another $8 million Penn Square Partners were going to pull out.
That dire news may have been good news, however, for Hazard. The Authority never again discussed the issue in public. Whatever happened to solve it was done out of the public's eye.
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Another LCCCA questionable expenditure
During this NewsLanc investigation, a review of thousands of documents often revealed things happening behind the scenes that were never made public.
There were times when set dollar amount contracts also grew. One was with as E4 Exchange of Lancaster.
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What CC market studies actually revealed
Now that reporter Jim Sneddon's research has established the wasteful and highly questionable expenditures of millions of dollars of Convention Center Authority funds, NewsLanc will now examine the history of the Convention Center Project and report upon the sponsors' disingenuous representations, falsehoods, and connivances over the almost decade long evolution of the project.
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It is NewsLanc's contention that the reports were at times concealed, made public at the very last minute prior to pivotal votes, observations ignored or misrepresented, and alarms disregarded by the Convention Center Authority and Sponsors.
CLICK HERE to read more
What Ernst and Young said about the CC Project
A Feasibility Study predicts the financial results of a proposed project, so the author's credibility over the years depends upon outcomes and, if their methodology strays from professional standards, the firm may be actionable when its findings prove excessively wide of the mark.
In contrast, a Market Study simply describes what is happening with projects throughout the nation and regionally, makes assumptions based upon industry wide experience, comments on the local market place, but makes no prediction of financial viability.
In short, authors of market studies have no skin in the game! Thus the Ernst and Young Study of July 19, 1999 runs to 134 pages and is an excellent primer for someone interested in the state of hotels and convention centers nationally and regionally, but only makes brief comments about the nature of the local market and contains at least one glaring omission.
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Contrary to reports, 2002 Market Study rejected CC Project
The 2000 PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) Market and Economic Analysis report envisions a much smaller convention center than was actually built. The 2002 update considers a convention center of the size eventually built and recommends the 2000 concept of almost half the size “should continue to be used.”
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PKF Feasibility Study recommended “an alternate use for the Convention Center Project site”
Despite countless misrepresentations to public officials and the public by sponsors of the Convention Center Project, the only actual market feasibility report was ordered by the Lancaster County Commissioners from PKF Consultants, Inc. and received in May, 2006.
The PKF study concluded by recommending “either a downsizing of the project or an alternate use for the site.”
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Convention Center genesis
The story of the Lancaster County Convention Center begins with an obscure law called the “Third-Class County Convention Center Authority Act” that was passed in the Pennsylvania legislature and signed by Governor Robert Casey on December 27, 1994.
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Bon Ton’s closing left historic Watt & Shand Building empty
By 1995, downtown Lancaster city was several decades removed from its sparkling prime of the post-war 1940s and ’50s. As the second millennium approached, the city still had not recovered from the wholesale demolition of its historic downtown retail district on the 100 block of North Queen Street during the 1970s and subsequent failed development.
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Stevens & Lee, not just another law firm
Stevens & Lee seemed a natural choice for the role of solicitor for the new Authority. The Reading-based firm had drafted the original enabling legislation, the 1994 Convention Center Act, allowing “Third-Class” counties to tax local hotels and motels to finance and construct convention centers. Lancaster County had just imposed this tax.
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One of the firm’s major clients is High Industries, a regional steel giant, and the parent company of a partner in the private hotel part of the Lancaster project In fact, the Chairman, CEO, and President of the Stevens & Lee firm, Joseph M. Harenza, was himself the registered lobbyist of High.
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Our Apologies to Stevens & Lee
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A Center is Born
Local business and political leaders concluded in the 1990s that something substantial, strategic, and coordinated must be done to resuscitate the faltering heart of the downtown Lancaster economy.
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The Dream Team: Penn Square Partners
The “small local group of owners” mentioned in the Winterbottom report, negotiating to buy the historic Watt & Shand/Bon Ton building “at a fair price”, were three of the 12 founding and executive committee members of the Lancaster Alliance - S. Dale High; Jack M. Buckwalter; and Rufus A. Fulton, Jr.
The powerful triumvirate - all three respectively the Presidents and CEOs of the county’s largest industrial business, High Industries; its monopoly publisher, Lancaster Newspapers, Inc.; and richest bank, Fulton Financial Corp. - was about to name the new company, Penn Square Partners . . . and it would be the start of something really big.
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LCCCA Board membership for suspect period
CLICK HERE to read a list of Convention Center Authority board members during the events described in this series of articles.
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