Proposed City Projects Yay or Nay?
Establishment: PGE Park, New Hotel, Etc
Location: Portland
Okay, none of the projects above are restaurants, but they will all have food outlets of varying scale upon completion.
For the record, I’m against the new minor league stadium (we’re still paying for the PGE Park renovations) and think both the MLS team AND the Beavers can just play where they already do. Though repairs to the MC are a good idea.
I’m actually FOR a convention center hotel, since it’s construction jobs now, lots of hospitality jobs later and Metro’s an excellent employer (for its permanent employees). Plus if its all city owned, all the revenue comes back to us. Instead of The Nines, where basically we pay for it and Sage keeps all the revenue. And we’d attract convention business we currently can’t compete for.
It just needs to be a truly world class hotel (and no, having pretentious art in your lobby doesn’t make you world class)–but more of a mid-range product (like a Hyatt). Currently most of our hotels are either old, shabby passe chains or overpriced faux boutique dumps.
Opinions? Oh and remember conventioneers will go to other restaurants and bars around town, so yes, even if you’re a small hole in the wall, you will benefit.
Since you posted this on Shameless Restaurants, I’d like to address what it’s like to work for the “food outlets” run by MERC, a subsidiary of Metro.
Putting in a new hotel will not help the Food Service Workers at the OCC. Working for Aramark is ALWAYS a bad idea, but there is nothing like the shenanigans that go on in the city venues. Why the city renewed their contract last year is a mystery, given the incredibly poor quality of the food and service. Lots of hospitality Jobs? What difference does it make if you are constantly mistreated by the management, have to meet A-list and B-list criteria with the A-list (preferential staffing) being loaded with workers who refuse to work due to dubious claims of “disability” leaving the remaining workers to do more than their share of work, and the obnoxiously patrician head of human resources (Patty Lutrell) is so busy selectively enforcing policies against employees she has a personal like for, and cheerfully inflating policies against employees she has a dislike for to run people off. This, coupled with her legendary ass-kissing of and spying for uber-sleazy GM Brandon Coffey seem to prevent her from actually solving any real problems whatsoever. Couple that with the gross incompetence and political shenanigans of UNITE/HERE, the employee union and you have a real mess.
Still, I had one of my best shifts ever, there, a few years ago. A supervisor/manager named Michelle transferred to California a few years ago, and spent her last day TRASHING the management and operation of OCC. She was particularly venomous to Deb Dow, who she was covering for that day. It was actually pretty funny to hear her parting rant, since she never seemed to be much different from the others. In addition to the comments above (some of which came from concessions supervisors) she had some pretty choice words about Napoleonic manager of Expo and OCC, Ed Strong, who basically runs the place.
Maybe if MERC ever wakes up and takes a look at the MANY problems at it’s venues run by Aramark, (which also include Keller, the Expo Center, et al) a hotel might help. Till then, I see no point in it, and the resources could be better spent elsewhere.