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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 1, 2020)
January 1, 2020 Page 3 INSIDE L O C A L N E W S The Year in Review inside page 5 Photo by b everly c orbell /t he P ortland o bserver Tom Hughes, former Portland Metro Council president, speaks at the grand opening celebration for the new 600-room Hyatt Regency Oregon Convention Center Hotel in northeast Portland, with a diverse group of employees of the new hotel filling the stairs behind him. Arts & ENTERTAINMENT Convention Hotel Opens Equity was goal in construction; hotel staff hires M ETRO O PINION C LASSIFIED /B IDS page 8 pages 9 pages 10 by b everly c orbell t he P ortland o bserver When the Oregon Convention Center was constructed on the east side of the Willamette River in the late 1980s, hundreds, if not thou- sands, of African Americans were pushed out of their homes and businesses. Those neighborhoods will nev- er come back, but at a ribbon cut- ting for the new Hyatt Regency Oregon Convention Center Hotel, former Metro Council president Tom Hughes said there was an emphasis on diversity and equity for both in the construction of the 600-room hotel and hiring of local staff to run it. “We wanted to create an op- portunity for people who live in this neighborhood, many of whom were displaced by the construc- tion of the (Veterans Memorial) Coliseum and Convention Center and other places, that did away with a lot of housing that was in this area,” Hughes said. Hughes said he had been work- ing with Metro on “a diversity, eq- uity and inclusion program” when plans for the hotel began to take shape, and Mortenson, the con- struction company that built the hotel, was fully on board, he said. “Mortenson partnered with us on this even more than we’d ex- pect, with a program that attempts to move people through a pre-ap- prenticeship program by work- ing on several projects together, to eventually get experience and family wage jobs for the rest of their lives,” Hughes said. Hyatt Regency general manag- er Shane Nicolopoulos said that Mortenson was invested in the Community Construction Train- ing Program, a collaborative effort to increase access to trade careers for women and people of color. Mortenson spokeswoman Kel- li Amico said final numbers for people of color and women who worked on building the hotel will be available in January, but said the company “emphasizes diversi- ty and inclusion in all of its proj- ects.” Nicolopoulos said Hyatt held job fairs for residents of the Met- ro First Opportunity Target Area (FOTA), who have filled 41 per- cent of the hotel’s 300 jobs. “Leading up to the hotel’s opening, it was a priority for us to develop job and training opportu- nities,” he said. Metro’s FOTA was created in 1989 to give displaced residents priority for jobs at the Convention Center and was later expanded to other areas from which residents were forced to move. The new hotel, with three restaurants and 18 meeting rooms, along with the 11,000-square- foot Regency Ballroom and the 5,000-square-foot Deschutes Ball- room, is the first hotel to be built adjacent to the Convention Center, which recently underwent a $40 million renovation that city lead- ers hope will attract more business to the city. The hotel was designed by ESG Architects and achieved the high- est rating for Leadership in En- ergy and Environmental Design certification. Getting the hotel built wasn’t easy, Hughes said, and took “many, many, many years” and took the cooperation of both city and county elected officials. “There were 17 individuals who had to sign off on the financ- ing for this hotel and we got 16 out of 17 votes,” he said. Hughes also gave credit for the hotel’s completion to two former Portland mayors, Sam Adams and Charlie Hales, who kept interest c ontinued on P age 4