By Khalida Sarwari
The Santa Clara City Council on Tuesday voted in favor of establishing a 2 percent hotel tax to generate revenue for the proposed stadium for the San Francisco 49ers next to the Great America theme park.
The council voted 5-2 in favor of establishing a community facilities district, which would include the participation of the eight hotels within the vicinity of the theme park. Councilman Will Kennedy and Councilwoman Jamie McLeod dissented.
Guests of hotels in the district would be required to pay an additional 2 percent tax on their bill. The tax would not affect the city’s 9.5 percent transient occupancy tax.
Establishment of the district was approved by the hotels involved, assistant city manager Ron Garratt said. The hotel owners voted on acreage, Garratt said. Collectively, they own 46.5 acres.
The hotel tax would start with the first game at the stadium, either July or August 2014, and would continue for a period of about 40 years.
The tax would be used to generate an estimated $35 million of the $937 million needed for the 68,500-seat stadium. The 49ers and the National Football League have agreed to raise $493 million and another $330 million would be generated by the Santa Clara Stadium Authority. The redevelopment agency is expected to contribute $42 million, Garratt said.
The eight hotels in the vicinity of the proposed stadium make up 70 percent of the city’s 3,800 hotel rooms.
The hotels within the community facilities district are the Hyatt Regency, Santa Clara Hilton, Santa Clara Marriott, Avatar Hotel, The Plaza Suites, Embassy Suites, Biltmore Hotel and Hotel Sierra.
The stadium proposal will go before voters in the June 8 primary election. If the vote passes, the hotel tax will go into effect when the stadium opens. If the proposal is not approved, the community facilities district will be terminated.
The council on Tuesday night also approved 7-0 to certify the environmental impact report for a new 3-million-square-foot Yahoo campus. The campus would be constructed in three phases over a 20-year time period, Garratt said.
The project, headed by San Francisco-based development company TMG Partners, has been 10-years in the making, Garratt said. The idea is to take the nine individual properties and have them aggregated into a single 46-acre site, which would include 13 six-story buildings and a two-level underground parking structure.
The proposed site for the campus is a third of a mile away from the proposed stadium in the city’s North Bayshore area off of Tasman Drive, Garratt said.
“It’s an exciting project for us,” Garratt said. “We love it when we see a major Fortune 500 company want to build their corporate campus in town.”