A major hotel near the Oregon Convention Center that took years to plan, and millions of dollars in taxpayer support to build, is the latest casualty of the economic downturn from the coronavirus pandemic.
Oregon officials announced Wednesday that the 600-room Portland Hyatt Regency is cutting 181 hotel staff positions. The hotel layoffs coincide with similar news from a neighboring business: The Portland Trail Blazers announced that it, too, has been forced to lay off employees — though the basketball team provided few details.
The Hyatt Regency cuts point to the sweeping effect of the downturn through all facets of the so-called headquarters hotel. Layoffs include 21 room attendants, 11 housekeeping staff, at least 17 positions directly involved with events, 19 cooks, 12 bartenders and eight baristas.
“We were hopeful that the restrictions and associated loss in revenue would be temporary,” Hyatt Regency Portland General Manager Shane Nicolopoulos wrote in a June 19 notice sent to the state’s dislocated worker unit, and also to Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury.
“[I]t has recently become apparent that there will be longer-term revenue impacts as a result of the continued spread of the virus, extensions of various government-mandated ‘shelter-in-place’ and ‘mass gathering’ orders, cancellation of conferences and events and significant decline in travel, all of which have resulted in the sudden and unexpected effective shutdown of much of our business,” Nicolopoulos wrote.
Nicolopoulos called the cuts “painful choices that would have seemed unthinkable just a short time ago.”
Related: Newly Renovated Oregon Convention Center Unveiled
The Convention Center hotel officially opened its doors just last December, after what its champions at the Metro regional government called "decades in the making." The hotel benefited from a substantial public investment of about $74 million, according to Metro. The vast majority of that was $60 million revenue bond intended to be repaid by income from hotel guests. Metro said the total construction cost was $224 million, funded by Mortenson Development.
Meanwhile, there's little public detail about the cuts to Trail Blazer staff. The basketball team's home arena is just blocks from the Convention Center hotel.
“Due to the global pandemic, the Trail Blazers organization has been substantially impacted in our ability to host live events for the foreseeable future," team officials announced in a written statement. "As a result of these unprecedented circumstances, the organization has instituted a series of measures to prepare including a reduction in our full-time workforce.”
Officials with the Trail Blazers declined to provide details on how many people will lose their jobs. State officials said Wednesday they had not received a mass layoff notice from the Blazers.