Opinion: Why did city waste everybody's time and money on the hotel/conference center project?

Then several proposals had been requested and received from developers, who all had to spend thousands of dollars in order to prepare them. The city has selected two proposals for further investigations, engaging a consultant, paying them tenth of thousands of dollars to evaluate and select the better of the two. The consultant selected the hotel and convention center.

A committee (with three council-members on it) worked to prepare a letter of intent to be submitted to council's approval.

And now that after close to two years of "deliberations", the Council is prepared to vote for abandoning the whole project.

It begs the question: why have they wasted everyone's time and everyone's (including all taxpayers) money?

Robert M. Darvas Ann Arbor Professor Emeritus of Architecture, University of Michigan