Last week the Metro Council unanimously approved two resolutions in favor of subsidizing a Headquarters Hotel near the Oregon Convention Center in Portland. The original idea behind the Convention Center was that with the right package of amenities, people would come to Portland and spend money eating and shopping when not attending meetings. When the Convention Center didn’t generate the hoped-for revenue, it was expanded. When occupancy rates still dropped, Portland officials started planning a hotel.
Other cities have tried this strategy, and it hasn’t worked. Subsidized convention hotels elsewhere have had disappointing results. Not only have they not increased convention business significantly, but they haven’t made their occupancy projections, either. Now those cities are saddled with money-losing convention centers and money-losing hotels.
In 2007, the Portland Development Commission (PDC) rejected the only hotel proposal that didn’t require government subsidies. The Grand Ronde Indian Tribe offered to build a hotel with private money if they could include a casino. After the PDC turned them down, a tribal spokesman said, “We refuse to raid taxpayer dollars for any project.”
The core functions of government are to protect our lives, liberty, and property, not to provide our entertainment and build convention venues. Instead of throwing more taxpayer money at the Convention Center, Portland officials should consider the advice of management guru Peter Drucker, who warned: “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
Steve Buckstein is founder and Senior Policy Analyst at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.
