Portland has a history of piling on subsidies to support subsidies. Depending on who you talk to, it either subsidizes rail transit to support subsidized high-density developments or it subsidizes high-density developments to support subsidized rail transit.
Like so much of Portland’s government-funded infrastructure, the twin towers of Portland’s convention center have no structural function but exist–at who knows what cost–solely because they are pretty. Wikimedia commons photo by Cacophony.
Now it is about to decide to build a subsidized hotel in order to support a subsidized convention center. Advocates imply that the hotel will pay for itself, but the truth is that an $80 million subsidy to Hyatt will come mostly out of taxes paid by other hotels in the city. Hyatt will pay another $120 million, getting a $200 million hotel for 60 percent of the cost.
