The residents of the Portland region are lucky to live in one of the most inspiring, beautiful and exciting places in the United States. From wineries to mountains, from the Columbia River Gorge to the Oregon Coast, from excellent restaurants to world-renowned breweries, the Portland region is truly a national treasure.
These attractions and amenities have led to record room rates at downtown Portland hotels, where 90 percent of rooms are booked nightly in the summer months.
That's why dozens of conventions call on Portland, and Metro's Oregon Convention Center, every year. More than $430 million is pumped into the region's economy annually because of the Oregon Convention Center, supporting more than 4,000 jobs.
But for all that, the Portland region is underperforming. One of the key reasons the Portland region doesn't do as well as it should is because it's hard for convention organizers to make hotel arrangements near the Oregon Convention Center. There just isn't enough hotel space near the center to accommodate large conventions. Even the NBA All-Star Game has passed over Portland because of a lack of a major hotel near the convention center.
A partnership of Metro, Mortenson Development, the Schlesinger Companies and the Hyatt Corp. are working to address that by supporting development of a $198 million, 600-room hotel just north of the Oregon Convention Center. Hyatt would own and operate the hotel, and would hold 500 of those rooms for conventions interested in coming to the region.
Convention center hotels are more expensive than normal hotels. Holding open hotel rooms for conventions makes hotel management more challenging. Including and operating amenities like large ballrooms, required for a convention host hotel, costs money. And it's important that workers have a voice in their future, which is why any convention center hotel must be open to being a union workplace.
To make sure that all of these amenities – important to supporting the convention industry – are in place, the region has agreed to a finance plan with the hotel's developers. Since room taxes in the Portland region are normally used to attract visitors to the city, the region agreed to have room taxes for guests at the Hyatt pay for $60 million in construction bonds used to help pay for the hotel.
Using the past as precedent, Metro had financial experts look at how that financial plan would work. They found that even in a decade like the 2000s – with a significant slowdown in tourism followed by one of the worst recessions ever – the hotel would still generate enough room tax revenue to pay off the bonds. No other taxpayers would have to pick up the tab.
Metro hopes to break ground on the hotel in early 2015, with opening two years later.