In early 2017, Mortensen Development will break ground on the Hyatt Regency Portland at the Oregon Convention Center, a LEED-certified 600-room hotel at the corner of NE Holladay Street and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard that will serve national convention clients, exhibitors, sponsors and planners and is expected to create jobs, boost the region’s tourism economy and leverage private community investment.

Metro, in partnership with the city of Portland, Prosper Portland, and Multnomah County, is leading the effort to develop the Hyatt Regency Portland and ensure that it benefits the region’s diverse population by creating jobs and economic opportunity.

With $150 million of the total $224 million project cost coming from the hotel developer, the Hyatt Regency Portland marks a massive private investment in the Lloyd District. More than 80 percent of the public sector’s investment in the project comes from a $60 million Metro revenue bond that will be repaid with taxes paid by hotel guests. The balance of the public investment includes $10 million in state lottery funds, a $4 million grant from the Oregon Convention Center’s reserves, and Prosper Portland’s contribution of land, valued at $11.9 million..

Prosper Portland will develop and own an adjacent parking garage to serve hotel guests as well as the general Lloyd District.  The project is expected to boost the Oregon Convention Center’s business significantly, increasing the facility’s annual economic impact by $120 million.

A headquarters hotel was included in the very first plan when the Oregon Convention Center Urban Renewal Area (OCCURA) was formed in 1989. Goal 1 of the OCC URA Plan is “to maximize the regional job potential of the Oregon Convention Center” by recruiting “at least one headquarters hotel in the immediate vicinity of the OCC.”

The Oregon Convention Center Urban Renewal Advisory Committee (OCC URAC) considered the headquarters hotel a primary component of redevelopment efforts, and the hotel has been included in every major plan for the Lloyd District since the urban renewal area was formed in 1989.

Local officials worked for years to attract a developer to build the hotel. In 2004-2006 Prosper Portland analyzed the feasibility of a privately built and operated headquarters hotel, concluding that an appropriately-sized, 600-room headquarters hotel would not be profitable for a private hotelier without a minimum of $39 million in public subsidy. Prosper Portland determined that it was not able to provide such direct public subsidy to a privately-owned hotel, given the range of public goals to be achieved within the district.

Stalled by concerns about lack of taxpayer and political support, high interest rates, a highly complex public-private deal structure and an unprecedented recession, the project then weathered years of opposition and litigation before its path to completion cleared in early 2016.

According to independent analysts, the hotel will achieve these project goals:

• Create 3,000 jobs (2,000 construction jobs and 950 hotel and hospitality jobs)
• Attract five to 10 new mid-sized conventions to Portland each year
• Boost annual hotel business by 70,000 to 110,000 new room nights
• Increase convention-related tourism spending to $600 million per year
• Generate $5.6 million in new state tax revenues and $4.7 million in new local tax revenues annually

Hotel construction and operations will follow local requirements to ensure firms employing and/or owned and operated by women and minorities are put to work.

Learn more: www.oregonmetro.gov/hotel