Sunset Hills may be embarrassed again if it provides assistance for another development, a critic of a proposal for tax increment financing to redevelop the site of the Holiday Inn and Viking banquet center says.

The city received much negative publicity two years ago when the Novus Development Co. effort to convert the Sunset Manor subdivision and some nearby property into a large shopping center collapsed, Kathy Tripp, a subdivision resident and opponent of both projects, said recently. She was a major part of the neighborhood opposition to the Novus project.

Mayor John Hunzeker said the demise of the Novus project was the fault of the developer, not the city. Sunset Hills, he said, has had success when it granted assistance to other projects, notably the Sunset Plaza shopping center on the southwest corner of Lindbergh Boulevard and Watson Road and a shopping center on the southeast corner of the same intersection.

The Novus project would have been on northeast corner of that intersection. The hotel and banquet center are on the intersection’s northwest corner.

Tripp said when Hunzeker ran for mayor last year he promised to “get Sunset Hills out of the negative headlines.” That promise, she asserted, “obviously are not being kept.”

She questioned whether the Holiday Inn-Viking site qualifies for tax increment financing. “The Holiday Inn was built in 1972 and has extensive renovations in the past years. It defines imagination what health, safety and morals it has been decremental to,” she said.

Hunzeker pointed out that the motel is 35 years old. The lodging market has changed and the Holiday Inn may not be as attractive as it had been, he said.

The city’s request for redevelopment proposals said the motel “by modern standards is functionally obsolete. The hotel’s outmoded configuration and lack of modern amenities places it as at competitive disadvantage in the local hotel and conference market.”

The mayor also noted that a project at the motel-banquet center site would be of a smaller size and scope than the Novus one.

The city’s Tax Increment Financing Commission will meet at 6:30 p.m. next Wednesday at city hall, 3939 South Lindbergh Boulevard, to receive a report on whether the 8.18-acre site qualifies for the government assistance.

Alderman Franklin Hardy Jr., 1st Ward, opposes the hiring of PGAV as the city’s consultant on tax increment financing. He does not object to redeveloping the hotel-banquet center site, but questions the need for government assistance.

Hardy said PGAV was Sunset Hills’ consultant on the Novus project and also Clayton’s on the defunct project of Centene Corp. to redevelop a half block on the southwest corner of Forsyth Boulevard and Hanley Road. The Missouri Supreme Court earlier this year ruled that the Centene site did not qualify for tax increment financing and the health-care company moved its project to Ballpark Village in downtown St. Louis.

The mayor said “I don’t know of any other experienced advisor to help the city.”

Sunset Hills’ request for proposal said it was looking for plans that mainly call for office space and some related stores. Thus far three developers have picked up copies of the document. They are the Sansone Group, McEagle Properties and an unidentified group that sent a representative. Sansone already has a contract to buy the property and a preliminary plan that calls for two office buildings.

The deadline for responding is 5 p.m. Oct. 15.