Margaritaville Hotel - Madison

[Suesbal]

Does Madison need a change in latitude and attitude for Margaritaville to come?

[geoffdaddy]

It was never coming. It was a ruse to get the city "a little pregnant" on the development at the ballfield, nothing more.

[Madmom2000]

Originally Posted by geoffdaddy

It was never coming. It was a ruse to get the city "a little pregnant" on the development at the ballfield, nothing more.

Well it sure worked!

[dijkstra]

Originally Posted by Madmom2000

Well it sure worked!

I wouldn't go as far as to say that. It was fairly well known that they were just blowing smoke and it was very very unlikely it would happen. Other businesses aren't going to base their decision on a development on a possible Margaritaville hotel. Even now it would be a stupid place for Margaritaville to build. There are probably 50 places on their list of desirable locations that would make far more sense.

[Big Grumpy]

I think Breland and the city of Madison legitimately tried to get the Margaritaville folks to consider Town Madison but went about it the wrong way. The city crafted a development agreement with Chance Partners to get them to negotiate with the Margaritaville team. That agreement had some pretty significant financial incentives included if a Margaritaville hotel ever got built. The total outlay was somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 million, paid out over a five/six year period. The only tie these folks had to Margaritaville corporate is that they had jointly worked on the same project in Tuscaloosa and maybe one other one in another city. Seems like the city of Madison would've been better off just offering some incentives to Margaritaville directly rather than working through and incentivizing a third party company.

I'm sure some are doubting the existence of any such agreement. Well, I've actually seen the development agreement and have a copy of it somewhere. The fact that it exists confirms that there was some effort put forth to bring a Margaritaville hotel to Town Madison. The telling thing though is that no Margaritaville folks were in attendance at the original announcement or quoted in any articles. The only person present for the announcement and quoted in multiple articles was Judd Bobilin, CEO of Chance Partners. To this day the Margaritaville folks have continually refused to confirm any plans for a hotel in Madison. I've reached out to their development team multiple times and have always been told that they wouldn't confirm a hotel development in Town Madison.

[btcaub]

There was a property manager for Town Madison on WAFF a few days ago stating they were still looking to land a large “destination” type property for Town Madison. His quote was they were “talking to many people, and all are very interested Ed in the property….”