Convention center hotel approved; Bankers Trust to lead lending consortium
KENT DARR Nov 10, 2015 | 5:24 pm
2 min read time
413 wordsAll Latest News, Banking and Finance, Real Estate and DevelopmentBankers Trust Co. will lead a group of eight community banks in the $75 million construction loan for the Iowa Events Center Hotel in downtown Des Moines. The banks will participate in what has been called “byzantine” financing of the project even though there is no guarantee of the source of another $20 million in gap financing for the $111 million project.
“They are determined to do what is needed,” Jennifer Cooper, vice president and manager of commercial real estate for Bankers Trust, said following a meeting Monday of the IEC Hotel Corp., the nonprofit board that will oversee the 330-room hotel as a placeholder for Polk County and, to a smaller degree, the city of Des Moines. The board voted 6-1 to approve a development agreement for the construction and financing of the project.
Former Iowa Insurance Commissioner Susan Voss cast the lone “no” vote, saying that she had not had enough time to read the raft of documents covered the by the vote — in some cases legal documents that were more than 100 pages — after receiving them on Friday.
The Des Moines City Council voted unanimously Monday evening to approve the agreement and the Polk County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 today to approve it. Voss said her dissenting vote should not be perceived as a lack of support for the project.
At present, the $20 million is expected to be covered by a loan from a controversial federal program that provides permanent visas for foreign nationals who invest at least $500,000 per person in economic development projects. Polk County Administrator Mark Wandro said the vote on what he conceded was a work in progress was necessary in order to submit an application for approval of $20 million in financing from a federal program that could expire Dec. 11. The hope is that applications approved before that date will receive funding, regardless of the ultimate fate of the program.
The future of the 
program is in doubt, and as a result, there are currently no investors for the convention center, the founder of a Rock Island company that processes applications for the federal program told the Business Record last week. However, Coope, of Bankers Trust, noted that Polk County has pledged that, if needed, it will provide the $20 million by refinancing Iowa Events Center debt.
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