A Hotel's Worth of Stimulus

Need an economic stimulus project? How about building a hotel?

Onondaga County is investing much of the money it will receive from the federal economic stimulus package in numerous construction projects throughout Syracuse and the county

One of these project that County Executive Joanie Mahoney and other county officials have proposed is to build an attaching hotel to the Oncenter Complex in Syracuse, which contains the Nicholas J. Pirro Convention Center, the War Memorial Arena and the John H. Mulroy Civic Center.

Mahoney tells us that it's about time that Syracuse had a hotel next to the only convention center in the area, as there are very few convention centers anywhere that do not have hotels attached to them.

Because of this lack of convenient accomodations, Mahoney says that the convention center has not been used to its full capacity over the years and believes that adding an attached hotel could stir up more frequent use of the facility, thus improving the poor economy.

This project, among others, is ready to get started as soon as the county receives money from the stimulus package, according to Mahoney.