PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — There’s a building boom for hotels in downtown Portland, but many are going up without on-site parking for guests.
One lot on SW 10th and Alder that is currently home to food carts will soon become a new hotel, Moxy, a Marriott brand. There will be about 200 rooms and no parking spots.
“We’re seeing 3-4,000 rooms coming to just downtown over a 3-4 year period, in that, the hotel products that are coming in are a lot of specialty brands, a lot of boutiques … ” said Steve Faulstick with Travel Portland.
This is a trend not only for Portland hotels but in many other major cities. It’s not just Portland pushing visitors to use public transportation.
City code also exempts buildings if the property is within 500 feet of a street with frequent transit that’s much of downtown Portland.
“I think you see for hotel developers, the investment to be in the parking business just isn’t as lucrative as to focus on the hotel part,” Faulstick said.
It also has to do with who’s going to hotels these days.
“A lot of hotels aren’t being built with big banquet rooms, a lot of meeting space, so the need to accommodate day parkers for events isn’t there fro a lot of new hotels coming in,” Faulstick said.
More meetings are being held in officers, restaurants and the Convention Center instead of hotels.