Sacramento hotel owners are considering a plan to generate $1 million a year for the proposed downtown sports arena, officials said Friday.
The complicated, still-evolving plan is tied to a potential expansion of the Sacramento Convention Center.
Brian Larson, chairman of the Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau, said an expanded Convention Center could yield as much as $5 million a year in new hotel occupancy taxes.
Currently, the hotel tax goes mostly toward renovations of properties like the Convention Center and the Community Center Theater. Members of the City Council have swatted down proposals to earmark some of the hotel tax dollars to the proposed arena.
But the plan floated by Larson, by increasing the pool of hotel tax dollars, could make $1 million a year available for the arena without harming other projects supported by the hotel tax.
"We're trying to expand the pie," he said.
He added that officials are still trying to devise a funding plan for an expanded Convention Center.
City officials are trying to put an arena funding plan in place by March 1, the deadline set by the NBA, or risk losing the Sacramento Kings. The hotel money would be a small part of the package. The bulk of the $387 million would come from a proposed quasi-privatization of city-owned parking spaces.
© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.
Call The Bee's Dale Kasler, (916) 321-1066.
• Read more articles by Dale Kasler
What You Should Know About Comments on Sacbee.com
Sacbee.com is happy to provide a forum for reader interaction, discussion, feedback and reaction to our stories. However, we reserve the right to delete inappropriate comments or ban users who can't play nice. (See our full terms of service here.)
Here are some rules of the road:
• Keep your comments civil. Don't insult one another or the subjects of our articles. If you think a comment violates our guidelines click the "Report Abuse" link to notify the moderators. Responding to the comment will only encourage bad behavior.
• Don't use profanities, vulgarities or hate speech. This is a general interest news site. Sometimes, there are children present. Don't say anything in a way you wouldn't want your own child to hear.
• Do not attack other users; focus your comments on issues, not individuals.
• Stay on topic. Only post comments relevant to the article at hand.
• Do not copy and paste outside material into the comment box.
• Don't repeat the same comment over and over. We heard you the first time.
• Do not use the commenting system for advertising. That's spam and it isn't allowed.
• Don't use all capital letters. That's akin to yelling and not appreciated by the audience.
• Don't flag other users' comments just because you don't agree with their point of view. Please only flag comments that violate these guidelines.
You should also know that The Sacramento Bee does not screen comments before they are posted. You are more likely to see inappropriate comments before our staff does, so we ask that you click the "Report Abuse" link to submit those comments for moderator review. You also may notify us via email at feedback@sacbee.com. Note the headline on which the comment is made and tell us the profile name of the user who made the comment. Remember, comment moderation is subjective. You may find some material objectionable that we won't and vice versa.
If you submit a comment, the user name of your account will appear along with it. Users cannot remove their own comments once they have submitted them.
About Comments
Reader comments on Sacbee.com are the opinions of the writer, not The Sacramento Bee. If you see an objectionable comment, click the "Report Abuse" link below it. We will delete comments containing inappropriate links, obscenities, hate speech, and personal attacks. Flagrant or repeat violators will be banned. See more about comments here.