A rendering the Hyatt Regency hotel proposed for the area north of the Oregon Convention Center.
Metro Council President Tom Hughes asked state lawmakers Friday to dedicate $12 million in lottery bond money for the Oregon Convention Center hotel project.
Hughes was testifying before the Capital Construction subcommittee of the Legislature's Joint Ways and Means Committee. He told lawmakers that the project, to build a hotel near the convention center to serve as a headquarters for convention organizers, would bring $180 million in new revenue to the state.
Metro has been negotiating for months on a funding package for the proposed $193 million, 600-room Hyatt Regency hotel, planned for the blocks north of the convention center.
Hughes said the funding package, as currently proposed, would include $110 million from the hotel's developers, $4 million from the Portland Development Commission, $4 million from Metro and, Hughes hopes, $12 million from the state.
The other $63 million, he said, "comes from monetizing the transit lodging tax that would be collected at that particular hotel," which likely means selling bonds that would be repaid by diverting that Hyatt's lodging taxes directly to repaying those bonds.
In exchange for the public financing, Hyatt would keep a large block of rooms available for large conventions looking to book expositions in Portland.
Hughes pointed out that the Legislature already used lottery money once on the convention center, helping pay for an inflation-adjusted $30.4 million of the original construction cost of the convention center.
"That project, by the way, has created about $4 million to $5 million a year in personal income and corporate income tax revenues that go back to the state," Hughes said.
But the convention center, he said, is still not complete.
"We are about the only city of our size in the United States that competes for national conventions that does not have a hotel," Hughes said. "These hotels cost additional money because you have ballroom space that replaces rooms, and you also block 500 of those rooms several times each year for conventions.
"There isn't a single convention center hotel that I'm aware of in the United States that has not had some kind of public involvement in it," Hughes said.
House Speaker Tina Kotek, the co-chair of the subcommittee, wondered whether the Portland Development Commission could be more involved than the state in the project. Kotek, a Portland Democrat, is a former member of the citizen advisory committee for the Oregon Convention Center urban renewal area.
"Should we ask for a bigger commitment from the city?" Kotek said.
"I'm probably the wrong one to ask," Hughes said, "but I think the urban renewal funds that grow out of that urban renewal district have pretty much been committed."
Sen. Richard Devlin, D-Tualatin, asked whether a state-level contribution could come from a source other than lottery bonds. He pointed out that the state only has about $150 million in lottery bond money available.
"Are there roadway improvements, or transit improvements that are the cost of building that hotel, that if they could find a different way for those to be paid, could make up a portion of the state's share?" Devlin asked.
"Fortunately or unfortunately, the infrastructure necessary to support this hotel has already been put in place," Hughes replied. It's possible, the Metro Council President said, some money could go into the facility's parking garage, but most of the capital off-site improvements are already done.
Kotek and Devlin's questions marked some of the only comments from the dais at Friday's hearing, in which groups from across Oregon asked for state support for their projects.
After Hughes' testimony, Oregon City Mayor Doug Neeley and Metro Sustainability Center director Jim Desmond asked for $5 million in state support for the Willamette Falls public access project. That money, Desmond said, would prepare the site for redevelopment.