Portland, Ore., Portland, Ore., Convention Center Hotel Looks Better in new View

. October 14, 2008

By Ryan Frank

The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.

PORTLAND, OR, November 23, 2005. Portland heard from its second expert on convention center hotels in a month on Tuesday. This one wore glasses with a rosier tint.

The city's tourism boosters brought in Thomas Hazinski of consulting firm HVS International in Chicago to provide counterpoints to a decidedly downcast expert who visited last month. Hazinski didn't endorse a Portland hotel, but he presented a more upbeat outlook than the city's previous expert visitor.

Heywood Sanders, on an October trip paid for by local hoteliers, gave Portland leaders plenty of reasons to steer clear of a convention center hotel. His study, published in January, riled tourism officials nationwide for questions it raised about the merits of public investment in convention center expansions and the hotels built to support them.

The Portland Development Commission, the city's urban-renewal agency, has started talks with developers who want to build a 400-room hotel next to the Oregon Convention Center. A team led by Ashforth Pacific of Portland has proposed a $144 million, 23-story Westin hotel. The commission has planned for 15 years to help build the hotel. Today, the Portland Oregon Visitors Association says the city has missed out on millions of dollars in convention and tourism spending because it lacks a large hotel near the center.

Hazinski and Sanders' visits have come as the Portland City Council and development commission have tried to figure out whether taxpayers' investment in the hotel would be worth the cost.

The Portland Oregon Visitors Association and the Metropolitan Exposition Recreation Commission, which operates the convention center, paid for Hazinski's trip. They're paying him $2,500 a day, plus expenses, for three days of work, Hazinski said. In two days in Portland, Hazinski was scheduled to do four media interviews and talk to tourism leaders, Mayor Tom Potter and Metro. Hazinski, whose client list includes a long list of cities, has followed Sanders with visits to two other cities.

Like Sanders, Hazinski gave a lecture at Portland State University, on Tuesday. He didn't endorse Portland's quest for a hotel, but he gave a far more optimistic picture than Sanders did. Hazinski didn't do original research focusing on Portland. But based on his one-day review of existing studies, Hazinski gave Portland mixed projections for a hotel. There's clear demand, he said. About 80 percent of the convention center's purportedly lost convention business is caused by a lack of the hotel, the highest figure he said he's seen. That equals 250,000 lost hotel nights a year. Portland also is a relatively inexpensive and attractive place for conventions. And it faces growing competition from cities that possess convention center hotels.

But Portland faces challenges, too. The market isn't as ready as other cities that recently built hotels, Hazinski said. Its hotel room rates and occupancy are lower than other cities. The figures make private financing impossible, and any government funding hasn't been defined. A convention center hotel would need to attract leisure travelers to boost its bottom line, he said. But it would be across the river from the shops and entertainment that travelers most want to be near.

For his part, Sanders, a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, contends that cities have rushed to build or expand convention centers and hotels as demand for the space has declined. Tourism officials say Sanders' research is flawed. Hazinski says Sanders akes "cheap shots" and wrote a report in response. But Sanders sticks by his research. "The issue becomes: Do these hotels do what the consultants have long purported they will do? And the simple answer to that is no."

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