Columnist Jeff German: Injustice heaped on downtown motel

Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2003 | 11:02 a.m.

Forgive William and Juanita Wilson if they don't jump on the downtown redevelopment bandwagon.

They're focused more on their financial survival as longtime operators of the Koala Motel, which has the misfortune of sitting across the street from one of the county's biggest construction boondoggles, the unfinished Regional Justice Center.

If ever there was a case of a small business deserving reparations from an insensitive general contractor and a negligent local government, this is it. This is everything that's wrong with government.

For more than 15 years, the Wilsons were upstanding business people, paying their property taxes on time and working hard to make downtown a better place.

Business was good at the Koala Motel, 520 S. Casino Center Blvd., which earned a reputation as one of the cleanest lodges downtown. The Wilsons were taking in revenues of more than $350,000 a year.

Then construction started on the 17-story Regional Justice Center in April 1999, and as the project slipped months behind schedule and millions of dollars in the red, it began to take a financial toll on the Wilsons.

And no one in city or county government seemed to care about a couple who had invested their life savings in a business devoted to furthering downtown's stability. City officials said the Wilsons were the county's problem, and county leaders, preoccupied with bigger troubles on the construction site, made believe there was no problem.

You name the hardship over the last four years, and the Wilsons, who live in a modest apartment above the 48-room Koala Motel, have endured it.

Water main breaks, gas leaks, the sound of heavy equipment operating early in the morning and the frequent closure of Casino Center in front of the motel all have curtailed business.

So have the regular presence of moving vans, tractor-trailers, forklifts, backhoes and construction materials blocking the motel's entrance.

Through it all the Wilsons have been forced to lay off employees and turn their tourist-oriented motel into a haven for transient weekly renters.

Today the couple owes thousands of dollars in back property taxes and sewage fees and is on the verge of losing its $843,000 mortgage.

And the worst part is the Regional Justice Center probably won't be finished for another year, which means another year of agony for the Wilsons.

Where's the justice here?

The Wilsons estimate they've lost more than $600,000 in revenues since 1999, and now they want the county, which has been negligent in overseeing the construction project, to reimburse them.

County officials acknowledge that the Wilsons have a good case, but they're not ready to accept total responsibility. They're investigating the role of the general contractor.

The Wilsons, in the meantime, must continue to suffer while the bureaucrats play the blame game.

That's just not fair.

William and Juanita Wilson deserve to be paid for their hardships, and they deserve to be paid now.