A new effort to establish a convention center in Portland is getting underway. Boosters say with the city’s economy growing strongly, fueled at least in part by summertime tourists, the time is ripe to create a strong off-season draw as well.
Last March, longtime city development advocate Steve Hewins quietly established a nonprofit to lead a new effort to build and operate a convention center in Portland. With pro bono legal help from the powerful law firm of Preti Flaherty and 60 presentations to potential supporters of the project, and even some potential opponents, he says he’s now going public with a proposal to the city council.
Hewins, who now serves as director of both the state innkeepers association and the restaurant association, says a convention center is the only piece of major infrastructure the city lacks, while its amenities are equal to most other cities that do have a convention center.
“Why it will work now is because Portland has changed so much in the last 10 years, with the addition of all the hotel rooms, with the addition of a major airport with every major airline flying there, the fact that Portland is on the front-burner now for a lot of people all around the country,” he says. “The timing is good.”
Hewins imagines a purpose-built facility of 150,000-200,000 square feet capable of handling as many as 5,000 people. Price tag: $150 million or more.
“And that’s really looking at what other cities have done of Portland’s size, roughly,” he says. “Those kinds of monies are not going to be simple to find. But a convention center itself is a public entity, it is not a private structure, so we’d be looking at the state, the federal government, perhaps some private investment as well, maybe even some other private foundations that would be interested in that type of development.”
He warns that city taxpayers have enough on their hands, with investments needed in essentials such as education and public transit. And he acknowledges that Gov. Paul LePage can be a tough sell when it comes to spending state money on Portland. But Hewins also says a convention center’s cost would come back many times, as the city and state boost off-season and work-week tourist visits, bringing in tens of millions of new tourism dollars.
It’s not a new idea, of course. Since the 1980s, as many as four different convention center trial balloons have been floated, and popped. But the city’s tourist economy is at one of its hottest moments in recent memory, with cruise ship visitors topping 100,000 for the first time just last week.
The idea is winning some early support in City Hall, including from the chairman of the city’s economic development committee, David Brenerman.
“A city that’s sought out by people throughout the country and even throughout the world, as a place to visit, I think it’s time now to seriously consider how we construct a convention center, and where it would go in Portland, which is another source of controversy I’m sure,” he says.
Hewins says he has six potential sites in mind, all of them on the city’s peninsula to take advantage of its walkability and concentration of restaurants and hotels, and also to avoid creating a new transportation challenge between the peninsula and the rest of the city. Options do not include repurposing the struggling Cross Insurance Arena, which Hewins and Brenerman both say is not suited to the city’s current needs.
The big next step, Hewins says, is finding money for a formal feasibility study, then he hopes, for construction and ongoing operations.