The Burnside Blog
Does Portland Really Need A Convention Center Hotel?
I’m no expert in hotel economics, but it appears that the hotel business has boomed Portland over the last few years. From the debut of the Ace Hotel (89 rooms) on Valentine’s Day 2007, to the renovation of Hotel Fifty (139 rooms), Hotel Modera (174 rooms) and Cornelius Hotel (66 rooms), to the rehabbing of the upper floors of the Meier and Frank Building into The Nines (330 rooms), to the complete gutting of what was definitely downtown’s ugliest building into a 16-story Courtyard Hotel by Marriott (256 rooms), hotel projects have seen a good bit of love from investors in the past couple of years. And it’s only fair to mention that some hotel projects, like The Nines, have been equally loved by city coffers.
Tomorrow, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects will seek initial design advice on a 23-story, 600-room Westin Hotel that spans two blocks adjacent to the Convention Center. Metro, Portland’s regional government, is spearheading the $150 million project, and it’s slated to be built on two blocks of donated land for which PDC paid $12 million. If done right, it could be a huge boon to the Lloyd District.
But, is it a good use of public funds?
Should Metro be in the hotel business?
Lastly, if a high-rise hotel adjacent to the Convention Center were such an opportunity, wouldn’t a private developer build one?
By ryan on Wednesday, April 02, 2008 at 09:54PM PDT
I doubt a developer would propose building a privately funded hotel until a definitive decision is made on the publicly financed one.
By ben on Wednesday, April 02, 2008 at 06:27PM PDT
Convention centers and and their companion hotels in mid size cities are inherently not profitable, which is why they are usually subsidized. But they are worth building to bring people (and money) into the city. Portland can’t compete with cities like Seattle, Salt Lake, or Denver because we don’t have a convention center hotel. As much as we’d like them to, convention planners don’t want to make their guests travel over a river to get to and from the hotel.