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Re: MEA + $350,000= 0

From: JP -- venfl.com
Date: 05/09/08
Time: 09:37 AM

Comments

It wasn't Watts, he was jumping to somebody else's tune. MEA has since been bought out/merged with another company, but back when they first contracted with the city, one of their main offices was in the same Maryland home town that Aris Mardirossian calls home. Their initial contract with the city coincides with roughly the same time frame that Mardirossian bought his condo here. Mardirossian was the main money man behind the attempt to bring the Marriott on the Beach to the Venice airport. Top that off with the secret meetings that Marty Black was having with Mardirossian reps during the first half of 2006 and that he denied took place when I first started asking about them (Black kicked me out of a press conference in mid-2006 just before I blew the Marriott deal out into public consciousness, anyone remember that? -- funny that the Herald-Trib didn't blink at any of those secret confabs or have even bothered to look back, cuz obviously this is all Ed Martin's fault).

That's one set of huge coincidences. I'm convinced that MEA's sole purpose was to set the stage up for the Marriott deal and that the charrettes were a public con job designed to make the public think that the Marriott was their idea all along.

That all went bust and now Black is holding a bag with busted seams -- of course he blames this council and the movement behind them for being stupid and not sharing the vision.

Fred Watts is not the villain, just another victim with a gun to his head. I like Fred, I've always gotten straight answers from him, even when some of those answers were uncomfortable. Look just a bit higher up on the food chain from Watts for the villain.