Chad McWhinney’s argument was insulting. Just like Grand Station, he wants taxpayers to subsidize his development.

By tempting the council by saying a large manufacturing firm might want to rent from him if he uses the $12 million (already taken from public debt) to improve his own properties is insulting. This is why Metro Districts are so dangerous. Expecting a public good to be paid when the public’s money is controlled by private hands is absurd.

One project has nothing to do with the other. Loveland cannot grow until that intersection is fixed. McWhinney is making Loveland into a 3rd world city by improving only his properties with the money while letting the public infrastructure deteriorate.

Even if he could lease to a company that provides jobs it doesn’t help if everyone else with a job who needs to travel through the I-25/U.S. 34 interchange are now even more delayed getting to work.

Loveland taxpayer’s only now have 25 years to pay back the $120 million of public debt created by McWhinney. If we don’t get any public projects for it but instead improve only his personal and corporate properties than we are screwed.

McWhinney can sell (and has in the past) the land once our tax dollars go towards improving it and increasing the value. In other words, he has an exit strategy to take that value and cash-out. We will be stuck with the debt.

Loveland’s City Council needs to realize he is only using tax dollars to compete with surrounding developments. As with the Embassy Suites, the council gave him $80 million for a parking garage and he still couldn’t lure Emabassy Suites away from its current location where it is paying full taxes to our city. Had McWhinney succeeded, the city would have lost millions of dollars in future revenue Embassy Suites will now pay because it isn’t stuck in subsidized Centerra.

If a manufacturer places jobs just outside or inside Loveland the economics are the same. They will hire people from all over the general area. But if the money to improve the I-25/U.S. 34 interchange is instead used to help McWhinney improve another property and pay his internal lobby staff to draw that company to Centerra, we still don’t get all the tax revenue but the city does have to pay all the costs of services – police, fire, ambulance etc….

The question has nothing to do with jobs or regional transportation improvements. The question is regional transportation improvement or McWhinney’s pocket to compete again with adjacent property developers.

That choice should be easy!

Which is why, according to well-placed sources, said newspaper is circulating the financial drain. Apparently Ed Lehman runs his finances much like the McWhinneys and his plans for a grand facility in Berthoud are grinding to a halt because they are over budget and behind schedule, and the bank holding his growing debt is getting understandably nervous.

People who live and work in Loveland know Lehman and the McWhinneys to be who and what they are, and give them no consideration.

Neither should you, “DN”.

They are starting to cut services to the community but continue giving McWhinney even more. I hope the next person injured on the I-25 and US34 sues Loveland and the McWhinneys.

Taking out over $80 million of public debt while promising to fix that intersection while diverting it instead to only improve properties owned by McWhinney is a crime in my mind if not an excellent civil action by an injured citizen.

Chad McWhinney is a welfare baby as far as I am concerned. Has he ever put his own inherited wealth at risk? Hammond built the Embassy Suites with money he earned the old fashioned way – he earned it. McWhinney is still trying to build a hotel with our money and the council doesn’t have the &%## to stop him.

Gene Peilin is a goofball and doesn’t have any clue about what he is doing. At least half the loveland city council needs to be shown a rocking chair and be given a warm glass of milk. We need real professionals and not a bunch of boss hogs on city council.

It takes a lot of chutpzah for Chad McWhinney to continue milking the Metro District of our tax dollars to subsidize his failing business. And it takes a lot of ignorance or corruption for those people on council to allow him to continue doing it.

Anyone remember the $80 million Council approved for McWhinney’s hotel parking garage at Grand Station? Well, he tried to lure Hammond and Embassy Suites with it and failed. Now, Loveland has the new Embassy Suites where ALL the taxes go to the City of Loveland instead of 42% going to Chad McWhinney’s slush fund (you guys call it a Metro District).

Jay Hardy’s comments in the paper are laughable. They never “lent” $7 million to the Metro District. They billed it for work “already performed” for the district.

McWhinney is stealing our taxes while failing to build anything of value for this community as promised. How come everyone is so calm about it? Is Loveland nothing but a community of lemmings?