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