The director of Metro's Visitor Venues Department still hopes for a development agreement by the end of March, with negotiations between Metro and the development team having a "good meeting" last week.
Teri Dresler, the director of the department that oversees Metro's Oregon Convention Center, said her team "found quite a bit of common ground" with the negotiating team from Mortenson Development, which is proposing to build a 600-room, $198 million Hyatt hotel just north of the convention center.
The negotiations on the development agreement – which spells out costs, architectural details, timeframes and other specifics – are ongoing amidst the swirling winds of uncertainty about a proposed Multnomah County referendum on part of the hotel's finance plan.
The finance plan calls for Metro to issue $60 million in bonds toward the hotel's construction costs, with the bonds to be repaid through room taxes paid by Hyatt visitors. In exchange for the finance package, the Hyatt would keep 500 of its 600 rooms open for potential large conventions, be open to having a union work force and meet other criteria.
Opponents of the project's finance plan, mainly downtown hoteliers, are pushing to have a Multnomah County referendum on the plan, hoping voters will overturn the decision of the Multnomah County Commission. Multnomah County says the commission's decision isn't subject to a referendum; the case is contested in the courts.
The referendum "doesn't add any more urgency than we already have to get it done," Dresler said. "We were still very optimistic about getting this development agreement negotiated and signed so we can move forward."
Where there were areas of concern, they were about semantics, she said. "I consider those pretty much non issues," Dresler said.
Finer details remain to be discussed.
"There will be all kinds of discussion about what the design will look like, and all those things have price tags," she said. "Those discussions are still a little bit into the future from where we are right now. But there's the size of rooms, the size of meeting areas – all of those things are going to be discussed."
The sides are set to meet again in three weeks.
"We're eager to get back," Dresler said.