PDC Delays Release of Hotel Proposals

PORTLAND-Instead of releasing the five headquarters hotel proposals to the public Wednesday as expected, the Portland Development Commission released a statement postponing the action until next week. The submitted proposals, and a detailed evaluation process and timeline, will be made available by the close of business day, Thursday, Jan. 6, 2005, according to a statement posted to the PDC’s website. “We got pushed back because of the holidays,” a PDC spokesperson tells GlobeSt.com, adding that staff is still in the process of extracting from the proposals “proprietary information” that will not be made public until the selection process is complete. As well, she says PDC commissioners, many of whom are on vacation, must sign off on the materials that will be released.The request for proposals was issued Oct. 1. Proposals were due back Dec. 20. Last week, the PDC announced that it received proposals from five developer teams: Hines/Wright Hotels (Seattle); Faulkner USA (Austin, TX); Jones Lang LaSalle/Crestline/Schlesinger (Los Angeles and Portland); Ashforth Pacific/Garfield Traub (Dallas and Portland), and; Sustainable Equities LLC (Portland). The submitted proposals were required to provide detail on financing, design, construction and operation of an 800-room convention hotel within two blocks of the Oregon Convention Center. The hotel must have at least a 3.5-star rating, connect to the convention center and be up and running by 2009. In addition, the hotel must have the necessary environmentally friendly features to earn it a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating of silver or higher.Except the proposal from Sustainable Equities, all of the proposals came from firms that were pre-qualified through the RFQ process completed in September 2003. Seven developers were deemed qualified to respond as a result of the process. The two pre-qualified firms who did not submit a formal proposals were Ryan Cos. Inc. of Minneapolis and John Q. Hammons Hotels and Resorts of Springfield, MO.PDC staff is now conducting an initial review of the proposals and will prepare each one for review by the Headquarters Hotel Evaluation Committee. When released, electronic versions of the proposals will be made available to the public on PDC’s main website. After that, PDC officials say they will conduct a series of public meetings about the hotel in the coming months. The Headquarters Hotel Evaluation Committee will meet separately to evaluate each proposal. These meetings will not be open to the public. It is anticipated the PDC will approve the selection of a development team by June 2005 and then begin negotiating a Memorandum of Understanding with the preferred team and, eventually, a Disposition and Development Agreement.