Luxury Hotel Opens in Downtown Portland
At the end of October 2023, luxury hotel chain Ritz-Carlton opened its first Pacific Northwest location in downtown Portland. The developer, BMP Real Estate, calls it “one of the largest private sector developments downtown in Portland, and the most complex construction project in Portland’s history.” The most expensive penthouse, looking out on the whole city, sells at $9 million. A room service call can get a limousine chartered or reserve a golf tee. Owners use an exclusive entrance and a private elevator. The hotel has clubs, five-star restaurants, and an exclusive air freshener, “Rose City.” Some of the hotel’s restaurants are nods to the thriving Adler Street food cart pod that the hotel displaced.
Outside the walls of the hotel, Multnomah County - which includes Portland - reported a population of 2,610 chronically homeless people in 2023.
The Ritz-Carlton (this specific development is referred to as Block 216) did not emerge from a vacuum. In 2017, the Trump administration introduced ‘Opportunity Zones,’ tracks of land that developers got a tax reduction for investing in. If a developer held onto a property for more than 10 years, it would be tax-free forever. Because downtown Portland is an Opportunity Zone, development of the Ritz-Carlton is (nearly) tax-free. Ideally, the introduction of large projects in opportunity zones will build the local economy, but according to Lauren Armory of Portland’s Sisters of the Road, an activist organization focused on poverty alleviation, the taxes that developers aren’t paying “could go to our schools and housing services. There is so much talk about how people leaving Portland will affect our city funding, but nobody talks about the tax breaks offered to multi-millionaires to ‘build the economy’... Portland has more than enough vacant units to house everyone, yet many folks who were born here are being priced out. There is no assurance that residents of the Ritz Carlton will actually add anything of value to our economy, whether that be tax dollars or shopping at local/small businesses.”
But despite being nearly un-taxable, Block 216 has still incurred costs. In addition to permitting fees and the taxes paid by renters, Portland also requires that new developments include affordable housing. Despite initially promising to include affordable housing, developers then reneged and were penalized $7.76 million by the city. This fine will ostensibly go toward building affordable housing elsewhere. “Making the entire downtown of Portland an Opportunity Zone left it open for developers to take advantage of… The fact that the Ritz Carlton can pay its way out of city law to cater to its elite clientele is disturbing, and Commissioner Carmen Rubio's comment that paying the fine will still support the actualization of affordable housing in Portland feels misleading,” said Armony.
On the subject of the fine, the CEO of the development company, BMP Real Estate Group, said “I still think it’s outrageous that we have to pay anything.” According to donation tracker Open Secrets, Wyden contributed to the campaigns of both the speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives Daniel Rayfeild (D), and the Oregon Republican Party. The influx of money and investment has been trotted out as a political victory by Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler who claimed that it will lead to “one of the largest single investments in affordable housing in Portland,” according to Oregon Public Broadcasting.
The Quest could not reach developers BMP Real Estate for comment.