By day, she's a dean at Escambia High School. Her night job is as a member of the Pensacola City Council.

And if Jewell Cannada-Wynn ever wants a third job, she could be a newspaper headline writer.

"The Clash of the Hotel Titans," was the title she suggested for last week's battle over who would build a new hotel at Pensacola Gulf Coast Regional Airport.

But that headline would cover only part of the story.

There's more — lots more — showing how politicians react to business leaders as the economy ebbs and flows, and how numerous questions were raised about this major deal.

• Staffers let down the City Council, yet the gaffe boomerangs into a benefit, with higher lease fees for the airport.

• Once again, the city finds itself in a controversial land deal.

Ten years after the city bought the so-called Trillium site, the 28-acre tract of waterfront remains uninhabited except by transients, and is nowhere near ready to be the community maritime park envisioned by so many.

On South Ninth Avenue, city land was set aside for an office-residential development after council members used a grading system so complicated that some admitted they didn't know what they were doing. And the council, which constantly touts downtown Pensacola, can't find a buyer for 16 Palafox Place, an office building it owns in the heart of downtown.

• The council faces a dilemma, given barely a week to read and digest a thick contract and urged to make an immediate decision, the way a pushy salesman demands to know, "What would it take to put you in this car today?"

The airport deal had been under negotiations for 20 months, so people have a right to feel sore that the contract went to the council almost on the eve of the deadline for applying for a Hyatt Place franchise.

Worse yet, the council did something like this just a few years ago, when a cement company made a take-it-or-leave it offer for a lease at the Port of Pensacola. When the company demanded a decision the same night it presented the bid, the council gulped and took the deal. Now the port has some revenue but limited options for 20 years.

• Some of Pensacola's top business operators say the airport is giving away much too much in the deal, but the council must decide whether to honor its commitment to hotelier Julian MacQueen, who proposed the deal.

• The controversy matters not just to the city but to the entire Gulf Coast, because air travel is vital to the economy and to Pensacola lifestyles.

And more business at the city-owned airport is good for residents, too. The airport, which neither gives money to nor gets money from city taxpayers, relies on a variety of revenue. With money from new sources, such as a hotel, the airport can cut the share of costs for airlines, which in turn makes more airlines willing to offer flights involving Pensacola.

New appraisals appear

These were some of the back stories as Cannada-Wynn's "Clash of the Hotel Titans" reached its spot on the City Council at 8:50 p.m. Thursday.

Two more appraisals mysteriously had surfaced since Airport Director Frank Miller announced Monday that an appraisal had pegged the 11-acre site as worth $6.4 million, the basis for setting terms in the lease.

City Manager Al Coby apologized, as did Miller, the airport's director for 20 years. Miller said one appraisal had been misfiled and he did not know why the other appraisal hadn't been discovered until Tuesday. On the bright side, the additional appraisals bumped the land's value up to $7 million, and MacQueen agreed to the higher rates.

This did not please Councilman Sam Hall, who had demanded Miller resign even before hearing his explanation.

"It's either deceit or gross negligence," Hall said.

But other councilmen who have known Miller longer jumped to his defense.

"His reputation is impeccable," Jack Nobles said. "To question his integrity is unconscionable." "They made an honest mistake," Mike Wiggins said.

Wiggins wanted to delay a decision until the council's Dec. 11 meeting so the public could digest all the facts about the proposal. But other members insisted on pressing ahead.

Wiggins did, however, raise an idea which his colleagues should promptly enact: A policy that gives the council a window of at least 30 days before deciding such matters.

Council snubs offer

Critics of the plan came out firing.

Builder Jim Cronley offered the city $10 million for the lease. As proof of his intent, he stood before the council and waved a certified check for $250,000.

"I will offer you almost twice as much" as the original appraisal, said Cronley, part of a group that owns two Airport Boulevard hotels and plans to build a third.

A colleague, Dave Cleveland, backed him: "This could all have been avoided with a request for proposals (RFPs)" from other developers.

Ah, that's easy to say now, but the record shows Cronley and his friends nixed a 2005 effort by Miller to conduct a study to determine if an airport hotel made sense. This was less than a year after Hurricane Ivan turned the economy upside down, and Cronley's group was still building Homewood Suites, its second hotel near the airport.

They urged the council to cancel Miller's plan, and that's what the council did.

In hindsight, the council should have called a public summit meeting of top business leaders in 2005 and asked their advice.

Instead, the matter sat until 2006, when MacQueen told Miller he was interested in building an airport hotel. This sounded good because MacQueen, whose holdings include Pensacola Beach hotels and an upscale hangar at the airport, gets high marks for quality construction.

Miller's talks with MacQueen were standard business procedure. Other city agencies must make RFPs for major projects, but the airport and the port are exempt because they are businesses. They would be crippled if they couldn't sign a contract until they received an offer from one business and asked all competitors for a better deal. Few companies would do business that way.

In 2007, the council accepted MacQueen's request that the airport negotiate exclusively with him lest a rival make a bid. Council members encouraged him to keep negotiating.

Too good a deal?

But according to developers at Thursday's meeting, he negotiated too well — much to the airport's disadvantage. They said the airport was not charging MacQueen anywhere near the land's market value.

He has the site for three years before he has to pay rent. And the airport will provide hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of setup work free.

"This is the most lopsided deal I've ever seen," said Gregg Beck, a longtime commercial real estate leader.

"I just wish I had these opportunities," said Todd Snyder, who has developed several sites around Cordova Mall.

Others argued with Nobles over the value of the property. Nobles, a banker, insisted the market was depressed, but others said it wasn't as depressed as the appraisals made it seem.

Clearly, the city could have avoided this problem by hiring a knowledgeable, neutral adviser to make sure the airport got the best deal.

MacQueen had some defenders in the audience.

"We cannot kick sand in the face of people who want to invest their hard-earned money," said John Peacock, a financial adviser.

MacQueen was the final speaker, saying he acted in good faith and spent more than $100,000 assembling the proposal.

"My hope is you will deal (in) good faith with me," he said before the matter went to the council for a vote, two hours after the discussion began.

A majority of members were eager for the jobs and money the hotel will generate, and some felt an obligation to MacQueen.

The vote went 7-3 in MacQueen's favor, and the crowd of white-collar warriors left the room.

Postscript: Just as we began this story with Cannada-Wynn's suggested title, let us conclude with her observation.

"There's no place I've seen that can run businesses off as fast as the City of Pensacola," the soft-spoken councilwoman said.