Hoteliers may sue over Ole Asheboro project
GREENSBORO — Controversy over a proposed downtown hotel intensified Saturday as project skeptics raised the possibility of a lawsuit against local government and hotel supporters considered a protest march against the doubters.
Local businessmen and hoteliers Dennis Quaintance and Mike Weaver alerted Greensboro and Guilford County officials late last week they’ll sue if both governments don’t release a variety of public records involving the Ole Asheboro Hotel project and the stimulus-program financing behind it.
Meanwhile, backers of the hotel — including Guilford Board of Education member Deena Hayes — are mulling a march Feb. 1 outside the new International Civil Rights Center & Museum to protest Quaintance and Weaver’s questioning of the project, saying it has racial overtones.
Not so, Quaintance said.
“As citizens, we just expect transparency from local government and that hasn’t been the case here,” Quaintance said of the hotel project. “We’re not mad at anyone. We’re not out to get anyone ... We just want the records from city and county government to be out in the daylight. We want to know the stimulus programs are being administered properly.”
The multimillion-dollar project, backed by ownership groups from Greensboro and elsewhere, would be partly paid for with special bonds for “recovery zones” included in last year’s federal stimulus act.
The bonds are funded privately, so local taxpayers would not be on the hook if the project failed, at least not directly.
But the hotel’s qualification for the stimulus program required approval from both the Greensboro City Council and the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, which gave their approval recently in separate votes. Some members of both boards now say they were not fully informed before the votes.
Hayes, who also is a member of the museum’s board of directors, said discussion about a demonstration of some sort began Friday. The march’s theme would be linked to Quaintance and Weaver’s ownership of the Proximity and O.Henry hotels which, she said, are benefitting from the museum’s opening.
“This is very symbolic of what the whole movement is about,” she said of the potential march and the museum’s history. She added that she has heard widespread support for a demonstration during the museum’s opening week.
The museum will be formally opened Feb. 1 on the 50th anniversary of the day four African-American students from N.C. A&T began a sit-in at what was then the F.W. Woolworth lunch counter, at the time reserved for white customers only.
The 1960 protest, which ultimately succeeded in changing the store’s policy, is a seminal event in the national civil rights movement.
Weaver said he learned about the potential march in a conversation Friday with Melvin “Skip” Alston, chairman of the county Board of Commissioners, one of the museum’s founders and a real estate broker in the Ole Asheboro Hotel project.
“He (Alston) said, 'I’m really concerned about the effect your opposition to the stimulus funding, or your questioning of it, might have on the civil rights museum,” Weaver said. “I said, 'I don’t understand.’ And he said, 'There are a bunch of citizens who are talking about a civil rights march in front of the museum.’”
“I said, 'You’ve got to be kidding.’ And he said, 'You can stop it (the march).’”
Alston said a protest rally at the museum opening would be bad for downtown and the city as a whole, so “I said why don’t you just have it at our hotel?” Weaver said.
Efforts to reach Alston for comment Saturday were unsuccessful.
Weaver said the potential march has not dissuaded him from questioning the funding of the eight-story, 200-room luxury hotel proposed at Davie Street and February One Place.
He and Quaintance both said their skepticism is fueled by knowledge of the hotel industry, the murky nature of information about the project made public so far, and concerns about the damage it could do to downtown’s recovery if it were to fail.
Hayes said the fact that the hotel would be a for-profit venture in which individuals stand to make money does not negate the fact that minority interests are being overlooked by critics. For example, owners would include the Ole Asheboro Neighborhood Association, representing a primarily African-American neighborhood heavily involved in plans for an earlier version of the luxury hotel at a different location.
Hayes said the entire Ole Asheboro neighborhood stands to benefit from the revised, relocated project. Critics are simply looking to maintain the power of a few families and monopoly interests, she said.
Weaver and his family’s charitable foundation have been key supporters of the museum project, which stalled for years after the Woolworth store closed in 1993 and it was first discussed by Alston and several others as a potential museum.
During the 1960s, Weaver was among the first Greensboro property owners to integrate his rental complexes. He has been honored by the local chapter of the National Conference for Community and Justice for his efforts in that and other actions against bigotry.
Greensboro City Attorney Terry Wood said the city received a letter midweek from the local Hagan Davis law firm, requesting a large amount of information on behalf of Weaver and Quaintance within a day. On Thursday, their lawyer, D. Beth Langley, filed a petition in Guilford Superior Court to file suit in the matter within several weeks.
Wood said city government is still trying to respond to the initial letter.
The amount of information requested was too much to pull together before the court
filing, but “we’ll give them whatever they’re entitled to,” Wood said.
Hayes said a decision about the protest march could be made today.
Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com
Contact J. Brian Ewing at 373-7351 or brian.ewing@news-record.com
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