An attorney representing a downtown hoteliers group says public funding for the convention center hotel is not a factor in Portland hosting the NBA’s marquee midseason event.
BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
The attorney representing a group of downtown hoteliers says public funding for a convention center hotel not a factor in Portland hosting the NBA’s marquee midseason event.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver said at this year’s All-Star Game in New York that a lack of hotel space was the main impediment to Portland hosting its first event. Metro president Tom Hughes said to the Willamette Week that the proposed convention center hotel would solve that problem. But that project remains embroiled in a legal fight for whether it should receive public funding or not.
In response to Hughes, the lawyer representing a group of downtown hotel owners – Peter Watts – told WW’s Aaron Mesh that Hughes’ logic was flawed.
Watts points to a 2013 report in Forbes magazine that quotes a league executive saying an all-star game host city needs 6,000 rooms in four- or five-star hotels. Watts says even if Metro built the Hyatt, Portland would be at least 3,205 rooms short of that mark.
“Portland has less than half the total rooms required by the NBA, even after the hotel,” Watts says. “In my view, it’s intellectually dishonest for Metro to claim that we are one convention center hotel away from landing the all-star game. It’s simply false.”
