Convention Center hotel: Round 109
The Portland Development Commission has another report out about the White Elephant Convention Center hotel proposal. The PDC board will be taking it up on Wednesday. Check out the rosy financial projections on pages 9 and 10. Now there's some liars' budgeting at its finest.
And "HQ Hotel will be neutral or beneficial to competitor hotels." As the kids say, LMAO!
| Posted at 3:52 PM | Permalink |
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Comments (2)
I cannot believe how Ashforth can keep this thing alive. I guess he just has to find a stupid enough public employee to OK it.
I mean some of the assumptions (code for lies):
- A HQ hotel will be neutral or benefit competitor hotels (pg 2).
- Elimination of need for private equity investors (ie the taxpayer is on the hook for shortfalls - pg 3).
- Public investment funding = TIF (ha-ha), Hotel Occupancy tax (the hotel keeps the 15% room tax), METRO funding (another bond with a made-up title), enterprise zone tax abatement (they pay no prop taxes, which kind of screws the TIF) (pg10).
I gotta give Ashforth credit, he knows Bragdon looks out his window at the OCC spires and gets hotel envy with all of the other cities that pushed one of these on the taxpayers.
Posted by Steve | October 23, 2006 7:19 PM
I'm sure the competing hotels throughout the metro area will come out with contrary economic studies that refutes PDC's report. They better have at least two or more, and strong PR support.
Reality about the Convention Hotel needs to set in. If it is such a good idea then let free enterprise build it. Taxpayers both dems and republicans need to step forward.
Posted by lw | October 23, 2006 10:10 PM