Gaylord Hotels Halt Plans in the San Diego Area

Company pulls out of Chula Vista project
By Tanya Mannes and David Washburn
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITERS


A redevelopment deal that would have erased decades of failure to build up the Chula Vista bayfront – and made the city a big player in the national convention business – is dead.

Citing an inability to reach an agreement with local unions after more than a year of negotiations, Gaylord Entertainment said yesterday that it will no longer pursue a plan to build a $1 billion hotel and convention center on the city's long-vacant bayfront.

The Tennessee company's decision marked a stunning reversal of fortune for a deal that Chula Vista Mayor Cheryl Cox just months ago called “the most realistic and realizable plan for the bayfront that I've seen in more than 30 years.”

While Cox and other city officials joined Gaylord in blaming unions for the deal's demise, local labor leaders, along with Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego, said the company's intractable negotiating stance and Cox's poor leadership led to its unraveling.

Cox said Gaylord CEO Colin Reed called her yesterday afternoon from Nashville to tell her the news.


Read more of this story in the San Diego Union-Tribune