Approve hotel deal

Construction on a Palm Beach County convention center hotel in West Palm Beach has languished since 1996, so taking just a year to settle the most recent dispute over ownership of the land seems like fast-tracking.

Last week, city commissioners approved a deal with the county and CityPlace Partners that should end legal conflicts and finally clear the way for breaking ground. The deal calls for the county to pay CityPlace $10 million for the Okeechobee Boulevard site and Ocean Properties -- the Delray Beach company the county selected to build the hotel -- to pay another $750,000. West Palm Beach will receive $700,000 from both CityPlace and Ocean but, more important, the city gets a concession from the county to build 104 condominiums with a taxable value of at least $32 million. It appears to be a reasonable compromise that balances the needs of the three parties -- West Palm Beach needs to protect payments on city-backed CityPlace bonds -- and ends the dueling lawsuits that arose from CityPlace's assertion that the land was worth $5.5 million more than the county believed.

With the deal, the county would be closer to getting the full return on the $84 million investment in the convention center. Without an on-site hotel capable of accommodating 400 conventioneers, the center cannot reach its potential as an economic asset. CityPlace developers blamed years of unfulfilled promises and delays in starting the project on recession, market changes and 9/11 -- excuses county commissioners did not buy. The deal removes CityPlace from the picture and turns control over to Ocean, a company with a record of building many large hotels despite the sometimes unfavorable conditions of the past decade.

Even with the settlement, there is no guarantee that construction will begin soon, or at all. Certainly, however, the prospects for cooperation between governments never has looked better, and neither have the incentives for getting the hotel built. The public can be grateful for that much, at least.