The council’s economic development committee has selected Matthews Southwest to build the new taxpayer-owned convention center hotel, provided that a written agreement to cover the project can be worked out in the next few months. Matthews originally was pushing a hotel site south of the convention center (the Eddie Deen BBQ location) as the site for the hotel, since it apparently either owns that land or has/had it under option to purchase. Now that Matthews could be developing the city’s project, it’s possible they’ll wind up in control of most of the available land both north and south of the convention center — probably a good thing for the city, since having one builder executing a master-plan of sorts around the center should result in better coordination of the various projects and a bigger bang for the buck for the city. This was Woodbine’s plan, too, given its apparent stranglehold on Reunion Arena, as well as ownership of the Hyatt, Union Station and other land in the area. Matthews has some experience building a convention center hotel (Toronto) and has always appeared to be a reputable operator with at least some interest in the city’s well-being (that can’t be said about every developer in Dallas), so I like the choice. I still think, though, that we’re going down the wrong path by building the hotel with our money, rather than working a deal where Matthews (or whichever developer) had some money in the deal, too.