Hotels In Portsmouth Nh

Lending Drought Slows New Hotel Plans in EMEA

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(Mark Your Calendars:  RealShare Hotels 2011 , September 15 in New York City)

LONDON-There will be an increase in hotel development completions in Europe in the next two years, but the pipeline for new projects will be cleared out after that because of a lack of financing, according to Portsmouth, NH-based Lodging Econometrics . In its Spring 2011 Europe, Middle East and Africa report, the company also details that many of the projects in the Middle East are also suffering from lending dry-up.

Patrick Ford , president of the firm that measures the hospitality industry, tells GlobeSt.com that the Europe hotel pipeline will almost empty out by 2012. “There won’t be many replacements in the pipeline for the next seven quarters,” he says. “There will be projects in the planning stages, but they won’t be cued up to go because financing is still not readily available.”

More than one quarter of the hotel projects in Europe are being built in the United Kingdom, about 208 properties out of the total 790 projects in the pipeline. The United Kingdom is the fourth largest hotel pipeline in the world, following the United States, China and India. Russia is the 10th largest.

Some of the properties going into the United Kingdom include three Hilton Worldwide projects, including a 206-room property in Leeds, a 157-room project in Bournemouth and a 146-room property in East Sussex. Other chains are active in Europe, including a Marriott International venture with Spanish hotel group AC Hotels to rebrand 86 hotels in Spain, Portugal and Italy as AC Hotels by Marriott.

NH Supreme Court debating Portsmouth hotel signs

The Court is hearing a dispute between neighboring Portsmouth hotels over whether the local Zoning Board improperly granted a variance for the Residence Inn to put an illuminated sign on the side of its building 50 feet off the ground. The Sheraton across the street says the code bans illuminated signs more than 20 feet up, and that the Residence Inn hasn’t earned a variance. Dinan reports on the minutia that the Court will have to parse.

“The sign will be there no matter what,” he again told the court. “The question is where and the ZBA said 4 to 1 we want it on the parapet wall.”

Springer told the court the hotel was “designed to violate the ordinance” by including the parapet and its size does not make it unique.

“Our hotel, which is right next door, is a big property,” he said, adding that the Hilton hotel is also in the same neighborhood.

“I think the marquee signs are reasonable,” said Springer. “But I don’t think the illuminated parapet sign, when it is the only one in the city, or in this area, is reasonable.”

Springer told the court the city banned parapet signs because “they don’t want the clutter and they don’t want it above the roof line.”

Such are the ridiculous consequences of micromanagement by Zoning Board. The New Hampshire Court System, which is constantly complaining about a lack of adequate funding for itself, is now second guessing the decisions of a group of local officials, who have the power to decide the size, local, and type of sign that a hotel owners can put on their own building.

And it’s not enough to write such details into local codes. The Zoning Board also grants itself the ability to ignore the code, pretty much whenever it wants to. The Sheraton argues that this variance was arbitrary and unfair, but the nature of local zoning boards is arbitrary and unfair. Local busybodies meddle in the commercial development of their cities and towns, all with the paternalistic assumption that every hamlet would devolve into Atlantic City without them to temper the whims of capitalism.

Such nanny-state, or nanny-city, interference would be annoying but tolerable if local officials would actually hold themselves to the standards they set. Instead, zoning and planning boards routinely ignore the law, granting waivers for businesses they want to come to town while putting up illegal roadblocks to McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, or some other unfavored business that they oppose. Fighting these petty dictators takes time and money, and adds incredible uncertainty to businesses looking to add jobs.

Additional urgent deficiencies, 1918, hearing before subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations ... in charge of deficiency appropriations for the fiscal year 1918 and prior fiscal years. Sixty-fifth Congress, second session

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