Posted Nov 5, 2007, 5:16 PM
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Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Portland/Cascadia
Posts: 2,598
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Oregonian editorial this morning. Good they are sticking to the minimum 600 rooms in the context of this mysterious private sector "possibility". They also have a great editorial on the ag bill this morning -- sometimes the O surprises me.
Metro on the mezzanine
Support for a hotel from the city and county should push the regional government to figure out financing
Monday, November 05, 2007
Never mind the multiplier effect. In 2006, travelers of every variety -- international, national and within Oregon -- spent $7.9 billion in our state. That's how much they spent directly on hotels, restaurants and other goods and services.
And it's nearly 7 percent more than the year before. Last year was the third straight year of growth for the tourism industry, which now employs nearly 90,000 Oregonians. It's easy to sneeze at tourism-related jobs, and it's true that some are entry-level, modest or minimum-wage. But tourism also keeps many sole proprietors going (including outfitters, specialty retailers and B&B operators). When tourism is strong, these small businesses make a very decent living.
This is the crucial context, the backdrop, if you will, for a dramatic decision Metro will make this week on the Oregon Convention Center hotel. The project is critical if Portland is going to keep landing big conventions, which, in turn, keep a steady stream of tourists coming to our state. On Thursday, the regional government will decide whether to move forward with the hotel or drop it.
In the past few weeks, Metro has been scrambling to gauge the city and county's interest in the project, since they would, potentially, have a role to play in a revamp of hotel taxes to help pay for it.
In these back-channel conversations, tentative majority support for the hotel has materialized. How reliable it really is, though, in the absence of a reliable set of numbers for the hotel is anyone's guess. Still, the Metro Council should now go forward to obtain final figures for financing a publicly owned hotel project.
Meanwhile, a very intriguing possibility has emerged from the private sector. Clearly, if it's possible to get a 600-room hotel built privately without a huge public subsidy, that is ideal. The private developers should hasten to put exactly what they're willing to do in writing. But Metro shouldn't delay the next step in its investigation of the publicly owned model while waiting for this private proposal to take shape.
Hard to quantify, but not unimportant is the question of how a convention center hotel would boost the state's tourism industry. It would be worthwhile for Metro to explore that question more fully, too. Anecdotally, we know big conventions bring big dollars in, not only to the region, but also to the state. That's why Todd Davidson, executive director of the Oregon Tourism Commission, has testified in favor of the hotel project.
Visitors expand their convention weeks with pre- and post-convention trips. And those who come for a conference often return to visit other parts of Oregon. (As vital as tourism is to the metro region, some less populated areas in our state are even more economically dependent on it.)
No one knows yet if it makes sense for Metro to build this hotel, but many across Oregon are watching and hoping it does. They, too, await the numbers, knowing that where the future of tourism is concerned, a convention center hotel could have a multiplier effect on their own bottom lines.
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