Yeah, I'll bet that the publicly-financed amount will change due to negotiations. How long will we wait before the "negotiations" state that the city pays for everything, and Hyatt gets all of the rewards?

As far as I can tell, Jack, you are reading it right. Two separate buildings, two adjacent sites, two separate but related variations on he Marriott brand.

Two opportunities to screw over Portland's schools with yet more Urban Renewal funding.

Cute how the in house Metro flack goes from $10 million and change to $ 36 million andchange in public subsidies without any coherent explanation.

'Git a rope.

"would likely come from a combination of cash from the Portland Development Commission and from Metro."

Yeah cash. Like the kind one gets with a cash advance on a credit card.
Or worse the kind of cash one used to able to get from a stated income equity loan against imaginary home equity form a creative appraisal.

"Can't imagine where it will finally wind up."

In either of these pockets:
- Gerding-Edlen
- Ashforth (or whatever he's calling himself now)
- Schlesinger
- maybe Homer

One more thing worth remembering (if you're a hotel owner in town here):

"A one-time, $10.3 million payment from taxpayers and a waiver of local hotel room occupancy taxes."

That's like 15% of room revenue.

We just had an empty hotel burn to the ground, so we need to build another empty hotel.

in exchange for Hyatt keeping 500 rooms available for booking by large conventions

"Large" conventions don't want to come to Portland because (a) it's a pain in the rear to get flights here, (b) the convention area isn't located near anything awesome (see San Diego for an example of the opposite), (c) the weather sucks for a good % of the year. But, yeah, otherwise Portland is a GREAT convention city!

Oh, and if the hotels REALLY thought that large conventions were lining up to book here as soon as we build a large hotel, they would have..wait for it...built a hotel already.

Portland is like the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California. Wealthy but naive and gullible, bilked for years by corrupt contractors.

The Hyatt Regency will be the upscale empty hotel, while the Hyatt Place will give non-existent convention goers a more affordable option. Same thing happened in Denver- huge Hyatt went up right next to the convention center, with more affordable stuff going up across the street. Off season rates on Priceline are amazing at the nice Hyatt- like 60-75 bucks a night.

This whole deal just reeks! The private investors are just laundering off shore money big time!

Doesn't Metro have something better to do, like fix crumbling transportation infrastructure? And serve the residents of its district, rather than wealthy out-of-state developers and greedy corporations?

Oh, I must be living in a fantasyland...

Doesn't Metro have something better to do, like fix crumbling transportation infrastructure?

Nope. It is crumbling by design.

Too late - It's a fait accompli (read the O tonight). And you chumps actually thought they'd spend money on schools - Something that would make us competitive.

BWA-HA-HA.

Only 118 days left to fast track more.
This isn't stopping, I wonder what else is on their list to do.

There's a reason why large conventions won't come to Portland. It's called LAS VEGAS - has everything Portland has (and more) except the wet, crappy weather.

We have so many examples of Convention Center Hotel failures. Take Tucson's example to energize their large convention center. It's now a $270 Million dollar hotel hole with nothing built and now in court with graft investigations. And they have good weather and waiting for Portland's streetcars to be built for their all-ready laid tracks. Portland's fingers are all encompassing.

Hey, those big conventions will be headed our way when the new casino in Wood Village rises like a pimple on the body politic in east county. Meanwhile, I've run into more vendors and visitors coming away from the Convention Center and wandering bewildered through the area along MLK, Grand and the Rose Quarter, with nowhere to go and leery of "suspicious people."