Public Money Folly

The DC government raised hotel and restaurant taxes to pay for the Taj Mahal of convention centers, an $850 million building that not only created a permanent traffic nightmare on New York Avenue but requires $180,000 per year just to clean the glass facade, paid for by DC tax payers. The theory was that conventioneers would pump so much money into the DC economy that the DC Taj Mahal would be an ATM machine. But it hasn't worked out so well.

The Washington DC convention center is a total disaster.

Nearly four years ago, city officials opened the $850 million Washington Convention Center with a string of superlatives. The largest publicly financed project ever built in the city, they said, would attract more than a million visitors a year, fill hotels and set off an economic boom.

Instead, DC convention attendance is dropping, the surrounding neighborhood is yet to be transformed by the promised new development, and conventioneers are filling fewer hotel rooms than expected.

Even worse, the new convention center is drawing fewer conventioneers than the old decrepit razed facility did in its peak, if you can believe that.

But DC wants to double down on its bet and build a tax payer-financed hotel. The cost would be about $550 million and would require a $135 million tax subsidy financed by District tax payers.