CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is applauding the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by six Harpers Ferry residents against the state secretary of Economic Development to stop the reconstruction of the Hill Top House.
The residents challenged the constitutionality of the Tourism Development District, which was passed in 2020 to encourage large tourism development projects in the state’s smallest towns.
“We are pleased that the court found the act to be constitutional and backed a January decision from the Jefferson County Circuit Court,” Morrisey said in a press release. “This project has been delayed long enough by forces who are opposed to the state’s economic progress."
Morrisey
Kanawha Circuit Judge Maryclaire Akers signed an order March 29 dismissing the case.
"With this ruling, the Mountain State can finally move forward with a vital commercial development that will increase tourism and create needed jobs and tax revenue in the Eastern Panhandle. Let’s help West Virginia reach her full potential.”
The Tourism Development District Act allows the state Department of Economic Development to take over responsibility of managing and regulating at least five tourism development projects in the state. The developers are relying on this statute to invest $150 million in the reconstruction of Hill Top.
Morrisey says the act is a reasonable and constitutional way to create new and greater sources of revenue and relieving unemployment in small communities.
However, the plaintiffs in the case – five Harpers Ferry residents – say the act is state intervention in what should be a municipal issue. They say it targeted Harpers Ferry.
Town leaders and the developers have not always agreed on how to move the project forward, and the matter has caused a divide in the small historic town where the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers meet. It also was the site of John Brown's raid in 1859
The Hill Top House Hotel, which has a nice view of The Point where the rivers meet, has a storied history. The Lovett family built the hotel in the late 19th Century. It has hosted visitors such as President Woodrow Wilson, Mark Twain, Alexander Graham Bell and W.E.B. Du Bois.
Developer SWaN Hill Top House Hotel purchased the hotel in 2007 intending to rebuild the deteriorating property. But, the project languished for over a decade as friction increased between the developer and certain town residents.
In 2019, an election in Harpers Ferry changed the makeup of the town's leadership. Afterward, the new town council began working with SWaN and executed certain street sale agreements that were necessary to enable the project. The following year, the Legislature passed the Tourism Development District Act.
Akers' order says the plaintiffs failed to state a claim that could make the Tourism Development District Act invalid, and it says the plaintiffs couldn't support their legally deficient claims.
Kanawha Circuit Court case numbers 20-C-20 through 20-C-24