"Is the demand sufficient today? Perhaps not," Don Mazziotti tells GlobeSt.com. "But I would certainly expect at the end of recession to see the beginning of a convention center hotel facility."

The PDC owns enough land around the recently expanded Oregon Convention Center to develop an 800-room hotel, says Mazziotti, including the dirt beneath the Inn at the Convention Center, a run-down former Best Western hotel across MLK Boulevard from the Oregon Convention Center that it acquired last year for $5.2 million. Mazziotti says the only reason the PDC hasn't already put out a request for proposals is the economy.

"There's no shortage of interest; we have been contacted and continue to be contacted by hotel developers who are anxious to do something across from the convention center," says Mazziotti. "We have not issued an RFP because want to make certain that we don't have a negative effect on market."

According to a city-funded report by Strategic Advisory Group LLC that was released this spring, the ideal hotel would have 800 rooms (500 set aside for conventions) and be connected to the convention center by a pedestrian bridge. Mazziotti says such a hotel would run in the neighborhood of $160 million.

Until it's time for the RFP, the city has Wright Hotels operating the Inn at the Convention Center on a three-year contract. Wright Hotels was interested in the job because it owns a neighboring, 170-room former Holiday Inn hotel that it recently announced it would be making some cosmetic improvements to the property, re-branding it as a Red Lion hotel and planning for an eventual expansion by as much as 350 rooms.

The hotel sits across NE Halladay from the city's hotel and, like the city's property, is located across MLK Boulevard from the convention center. Wright Hotels GM Frank Finneran tells GlobeSt.com that one option is to add a 24-story tower on the south side of the site that could hold as many as 350 rooms, given current floor-area-ratio and height restrictions. "We're not sure that's exactly the right idea," says Fineran. "But it's one idea."

It is possible, says Finneran, that a new tower could be operated in tandem with a new hotel on the Inn at the Convention Center site to create the 800-room hotel the PDC is seeking. "All this is just conceptual," says Finneran. "No T's have been crossed."

Just as Mazziotti said, however, Finneran says the problem with all this right now is the economy: "Right now, given no new incremental increases in demand, there is no financial demand for any of what we just talked about."

Instant Insights /

Portland Closer than Ever to Netting Convention Center Hotel

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