And here I was thinking I’d only see Jordy Tollett again on some kind of Houston: Where Are They Now? special, preaching the benefits of the three-martini lunch. Perhaps not. According to Kristen Mack, Tollett is hot to get his old job back:
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.
Mayor White didn’t really go one way or the other on this (although we already know how he feels), but it seems like Jordy’s having trouble taking a not-so-subtle hint. All the language being used (“new blood,” “fresh approach”) indicates that they want someone, well, new and fresh. The Chron article also points out that he’s bound by an agreement not to apply for the job, so even though he does have big friends on the council and on the board, I don’t really see this happening. I’m sure there’s a guest-who-won’t-leave-the-party metaphor to be made.
On the other hand, if not Jordy, then who? Stephen Perry was something of a pipe dream, since he’s pretty heavily involved in rebuilding New Orleans. The original goal was to have someone in by April, but now the word is fall. I guess, like Jordy, we’ll just have to wait and see.