'If he's going (with just apartments), then we've really lost out.' 'No one wants to lose hotel spaces,' Langfelder said afterward. He said in the meeting that no additional zoning was required. Rajabi's plan is to have 200 government-subsidized apartments in the building with no hotel or retail space. The San Antonio, Texas-based Rajabi said while he has 'liquid' to not let the Wyndham go to the bank, the problem is years of deferred maintenance on the property. Rajabi insisted several times during Tuesday's meeting that he had limited options in the face of struggling occupancy numbers and a bank note due Aug. Mayor Jim Langfelder said the city would circle back with Al Rajabi, who bought the Wyndham in a foreclosure sale 2019, to see what could be done to retain its current value. 'There will be fallout for sure (without the Wyndham),' Dahl said. In that period, downtown alone has 56,000 room nights booked. Scott Dahl, the director of the Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the city has 26 conventions with peak room nights, over 300 rooms, from 2023 to 2025. The variance needed seven votes to pass because not enough members of the Springfield Planning and Zoning Commission supported it earlier. The zoning variance would have allowed for 320 studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments and 80 hotel rooms. See also: Hoogland businesses leaving Illinois no name change expected for Springfield arts center The plan to sell the Wyndham to GoodHomes, which had plans to install a penthouse observation deck and food court, ended in a 5-5 vote Tuesday. The possible disappearance of 370 downtown hotel rooms would put the city in a lurch as conventions appear to pick up after the COVID-19 pandemic. The current owner of the Wyndham, Springfield's tallest building at 30 stories, insisted its hotel rooms would go away as a result of the vote. The future of the Wyndham City Centre as a hotel could be in doubt after the Springfield City Council Tuesday rebuffed a zoning variance for a New York-based company to buy the downtown hotel.

The Man Who Took Trips by Roy Ald