The
hotel's departure dealt a financial blow to the city, which was already seeing tax revenues plummet during the dot-com bust. The
hotel was bringing in close to $1 million in annual hotel-tax revenues -- money that went directly into the city's General Fund and helped pay for basic city services. The community outcry was loud. Developers and business leaders used the episode to rail against the "Palo Alto process" and blamed the city for chasing away a valuable asset. Land-use watchdogs, neighborhood groups and other critics who had castigated Hyatt's
residential proposal lamented the loss of a valuable community asset and to this day demonize the development that came to occupy the site -- a 185-townhouse community called Arbor Real. The renewed interest in hotels is arriving just as rooms