By the time it hit the open market, the site selections had already been done, so I actually can't say for certain that it was politics. It certainly looks that way, though. Does anyone really doubt that's the way politics works?
Regardless, this was modeled on the RTJ Trail concept anyway, which was never a good investment, but did increase tourism. Tennesee jumped on the bandwagon, as did a number of other states, but somewhere along the line, someone decided that they needed to make money, so the excel spreadsheet got juiced.
I'm surprised that there's private money in this thing. The newspaper downplays it, but they're the big loser here. The state is simply a bank foreclosing on its loan. The private company is the one that has lost the money to date.