Progress Report on Saline Hotel: Seven local officials toured site last week, Mayor Brian Marl provided personal update

Saline Mayor Brian Marl on site of Best Western Premier hotel construction site — This January, Mayor Brian Marl reviewed Saline Best Western Premier hotel blueprints inside building structure currently under construction. © 2020 d2 Saline, All Rights Reserved. USA

During the first full week of this new year, Saline city officials were conducted on guided tours of the Best Western Premier hotel building currently under construction at Eastgate. [1-4]

Schedules were set last month well before the holidays, with two dates made available to ensure accommodate access by all those interested.

The Tuesday, January 7 group included Council Member Janet Dillon, City Manager Todd Campbell, and Assistant City Manager and Community Development Director Mike Greene. Mayor Brian Marl, returning Council Member Jack Ceo, and newly elected Council Members Kevin Camero-Sulak and Jim Dell’Orco went through the site on Thursday, January 9. [5-7]

On Friday, Saline Journal met with Mayor Marl one-on-one for an arms-length assessment of progress.

Offered the opportunity to cast his own overview, highlights, he opened by talking about fundamentals. “The entire fire suppression system is installed now. The electrical infrastructure is in place. It’s not glamorous or sexy. But it’s meaningful; corners aren’t being cut to show progress at the expense of making sure that things you hope you’ll never need will be there, right, and working, in case they are needed for safety.

One of the things that stood out to me since I was last there in July or August was what I saw when we were on the second floor. Plywood is in place between the rooms now — so you can really see, sense dimensions. Drywall has been delivered, so it’s ready to be installed.

At the same time, this progress sits against a number of opening dates anticipated by project leadership. Spring of 2019. Last May, General Manager Mark Kuykendall told Saline Journal to look for an official opening that would accommodate overnight guests around the start of this current school year. [8,9]

All such dates have long passed. Among them, a number of critical, quite vocal gathering places on social media.

Our mayor was pointed in his evaluation. Returning to a concern articulated at several points in his joint “Coffee Hour” with Commissioner Shannon Beeman last month, he zeroed-in on the severe lack of skilled labor in Washtenaw County. The impact is widespread, and causing serious damage throughout this area. The hotel is simply where its impact is most visible. Evidence of wallboarding on site, awaiting installation, reinforces this arguement: It’s not for lack of necessary capital or materials that is holding up progress.

“It’s holding up a variety of projects in our area,” he revealed, citing specifics by name. “It’s a huge problem. That’s not just my opinion. That’s not just Saline. Governor Whitmer has been talking about this and she’s been making it a priority since she took office.” [10,11]

There was a mass exodus during the economic crisis of 2008. Michigan was hit especially hard. People working in the skilled trades left and they never came back. Affluent communities, including Saline, place a value on mobility; we know that we need lawyers and accountants — and we do.

But we also need plumbers and electricians and pipe-fitters and sheet metal workers. Affluent communities haven’t been doing a very good job of telling their students that this is honorable work, that these are respectable positions. That you can earn six-figure incomes doing things you enjoy and that you do really well.

That you won’t be saddled with the sort of enormous debt that come with going to college to prepare you for careers in other kinds of work.

These are answers that Mayor Brian Marl would clearly rather provide in person or during phone calls with constituents. He said exactly that here. At the same time, he feels that it is part of his job to enage with those on social media — to the extent that “it’s productive.

There’s a larger issue here online. People will say things that they’d never say in person; there’s a certain meanness. It’s not exclusive to this project. [13]

So I limit my interactions to where I can serve my constituents by being productive, by clarifying, by answering questions, or by going out and getting answers to questions and getting those answers out there, to the extent that it’s my responsibility to do so as an elected official.

There’s a quote from Winston Churchill that I really like and I think it applies here. ‘You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.’ [14,15]

Boiling this down to the essential question, then: What is his view of work accomplished since March 2, 2018 and his January 9, 2020 walk through? When should the community anticipate seeing the first guests book rooms for the night, dine in the hotel resaurant, have the opportunity to attend functions in its ballroom space?

“I’m very pleased with progress,” he began. “I wish it was open now. But it’s headed in the right direction. It’s a safe, well kept construction site that appears appropriate for work crews; however, it wouldn’t be appropriate to open that up for anyone to walk through, for their own safety as well as liability.

Tours are time consuming. They take time away from other work. So it was important to provide scheduled access for government officials on behalf of our community. It was particularly great to include new Council Members who weren’t intimately involved in concept to construction. I’m an outlier, having been through the building four times.

I’ve also been involved in construction projects, personally. Construction isn’t =linear. Sometimes you can’t schedule anything downstream until one item gets done. And if that sub-contractor needs to re-schedule by a month, it’s not like the entire schedule moves by that same month: It’s often the case that those downstream skilled trades have other commitments that come after their original commitment, and they won’t be available again until several months later.

In my case, I was just remodeling a house. I didn’t live in the house when the work was being done. The house was in excellent condition; I just wanted to change some things. This hotel is order of magnitudes more complex, from scratch.

A lot of other people in our community have gone through what I’ve gone through. They understand.

Mayor Marl then said that the subject of anticipated opening date had been discussed, that Mr Kuykendall had said that the current target is “‘second half of 2020.’ July or August, I assume.

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