News Column

Here's the real story on that new hotel

On the Town

By phil stanford

The Portland Tribune, Aug 17, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (11 Reader comments)

As you may have noticed, the Metro Council currently is holding meetings to decide, as if they haven’t already, whether to build a 600-room convention center hotel at an expense to the public of at least $150 million.

And why would the Metro Council want to do such a thing?

Well, because when the Portland Development Commission brought the subject up with the City Council last year, the council told them to get lost.

Or, as Mayor Tom Potter put it at the time, “If it’s such a good deal, why doesn’t private enterprise do it?”

Good question, actually. If the hotel had a chance of being a moneymaker, do you think for a moment that the people in the hotel business wouldn’t be falling all over themselves, trying to get in on the action?

And if, on the other hand, it didn’t, why would the city want to put public money into it?

Now that you mention it, I’ve never seen a public statement by any of the convention hotel’s supporters predicting that it would even break even – so what kind of business deal are we talking about here, anyway?

• • •

According to these same people, the reason for putting a 600-room hotel across the street from the convention center on MLK is that it will bring lots of new convention business to town.

Just as, you may recall, they told us several years ago that doubling the size of the convention center itself would accomplish those ends.

And if that didn’t exactly turn out as planned – well, you wouldn’t believe all the studies they’ve got to prove that a big, shiny convention hotel, built largely at public expense, will do the trick now.

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