Its approval will prompt PDC staff to prepare a request for qualifications for the $150-million project that will be issued Sept. 15. From the responses, which will be due Oct. 31, the PDC will select the most qualified and request formal proposals. The proposals will be due in April 2004. If a bona fide privately financed proposal is received, negotiations for a disposition and development agreement would occur during the second half of the year, with design occurring during 2005 and construction commencing in the summer of 2006 and being complete in the fall of 2008.
The preferred site for the so-called "headquarters hotel" is bordered by MLK Boulevard, Grand Avenue, Holladay Street and Oregon Street. The site is two blocks directly east of the Oregon Convention Center, on the city's light rail line. It currently holds the Inn at the Convention Center, a run-down former Best Western the city acquired last year for $5.2 million. If the site were ultimately selected, the existing hotel would be demolished. An underground walkway would connect the new hotel to the convention center.
In April, PDC executive director Don Mazziotti told GlobeSt.com that the only thing holding back a true convention center hotel in Portland 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," said Mazziotti. "We have not issued an RFP because want to make certain that we don't have a negative effect on market."
Meanwhile, 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 and could easily run the Inn at the Convention Center with existing staff. Hoping to attract more convention business itself, Wright Hotels has re-branded the Holiday Inn as a Red Lion and has begun planning for an eventual expansion of the property to 500 rooms.
Wright's hotel sits across Halladay Street 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 told GlobeSt.com this spring that one option for the hotel's expansion 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," said Finneran. "But it's one idea."
It's also possible that Wright Hotels would submit an RFQ to be the developer of the headquarters hotel and incorporate both its parcel and the city's parcel into the design for a headquarters hotel, said Finneran.
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