In today’s editorial:
Be all of this as it may, the new luxury hotel does not involve the types of high-paying jobs that economic incentives are supposed to target. But it would generate 168 new hotel jobs, 200 temporary construction jobs and another 102 “indirect jobs.”
According to figures provided by Greg Dillon, the Washington, D.C.-based principal developer of the project, 67.9 percent of the jobs would pay less than $30,000 per year but all would pay more than a living wage for this area. One of the local investors, Randall Kaplan, said Wednesday that the hotel also would pay nearly 19 percent higher salaries than its local peers. So, while the pay of the Wyndham employees wouldn’t be lucrative, it would be very welcome all the same in a county in which the poverty rate has crept up again over 20 percent.
And that’s the most compelling reason to say yes to this proposal.
Evidently the N&R believes the hotel will improve the odds of a poor kid gaining some upward mobility, which is a tough bid here in Gboro. At least that’s what the Harvard researchers say.
