…In spite of last week’s report that Greensboro developer Roy Carroll was backing out of a plan to build a hotel near the city’s $35 million downtown baseball stadium, which is set to open this spring.
Mayor Jay Wagner tells the Enterprise:
“Obviously, we would love for Roy to do projects in High Point, and we’d love to be able to partner and work with him any way we can,” Wagner said. “I don’t think this closes the door on Roy Carroll investing in High Point. Obviously, as a businessman, he’s been very successful in Greensboro, and we would love for him to choose to invest in downtown High Point. We need local developers to be willing to jump in and start projects. I’m very hopeful they will do that.”
Now it doesn’t say this in the article, but it could be that Carroll clashed with the city’s chosen master developer for the project. High Point University president Nido Qubein–who has a hand in everything in HP–weighs in:
Qubein said Carroll has been ready to break ground on a downtown hotel for a year. He said he recruited Carroll to come on board with the understanding that his company would be developing the project on its own.
That changed with the master developer method the city employed.
“He is committed to building a hotel next to the stadium, as long as he owns it and controls it. He’s not changing his mind,” Qubein said. “I don’t want Roy to come off like he’s a bully and that he pulled out of High Point. I think the essence of the story is, Roy has done nothing but step out and step up to support the downtown development of High Point.”
Stay tuned—these things take time.