On Friday, the Chronicle‘s Kristen Mack speculated that the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau’s inability to fill its top job could open the door for the return of Jordy Tollett:
The Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau has not been able to fill Jordy Tollett’s spectator shoes after six months of searching.
It extended an offer to Stephen Perry, the president and CEO of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau, last Friday. He turned it down.
Now the search committee must regroup.
There’s at least one person who is interested — Tollett.
“You don’t know what that would mean to me, to be able to return and sell the city,” Tollett said. “It was my life. I lived and breathed it every day for 35 years. It’s all I’ve ever known.”
Mayor Bill White made it clear it was time for Tollett to move on by insisting the board search for new blood when Tollett’s contract expired. Rather than reapply for his job, Tollett stepped down from the position in January.
Tollett, ever the dealmaker, views this week’s events as an opening. And even though he has “no knowledge that they are even interested in me,” he wants back in.
“Jordy wants the job back. Of course he does. He doesn’t like the way everything went down when he lost his job,” said Don Henderson, chairman emeritus of the board, who along with the current chairman Doug Horn, has been running the bureau’s daily operations until a replacement is chosen.
“I was one of those guys that did not want to begin this search. I wanted Jordy Tollett to remain in the job. I lost that vote. So now it’s a question of where do we go from here.”
It doesn’t sound like Mayor White is clamoring for the return of Tollett, which pretty much renders the speculation moot.
While it’s always easy to write about the colorful Tollett, this seems more like a case of wishful thinking on Tollett’s part than any sudden change of heart by the mayor who effectively removed him.
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