A look at hotel financials posted by Prosper Portland offers a glimpse into the deep nosedive suffered by hospitality operations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Inn at the Convention Center posted average annual revenues of $840,000 from fiscal year 2014-15 to fiscal year 2018-19. The past two fiscal years? An average of $60,000 – a 92.9 percent drop.

Prosper Portland owns the hotel and contracts with an operator. The massive revenue drop may have contributed to the hotel’s operator, Trek Ventures, a local company owned and operated by Mark Brennan, deciding to move on. Trek Ventures will cease operating the hotel at the end of its contract on March 31.

“As you might imagine, the bottom line is COVID has so changed the landscape,” Prosper Portland spokesman Shawn Uhlman said.

Meanwhile, Prosper Portland has reached an agreement with a new operator: Columbia Hospitality of Seattle. Prosper Portland’s board approved the switch on Wednesday.

The Inn at the Convention Center, at 420 N.E. Holladay St., is 53 years old and has 97 rooms in five stories. It is not to be confused with the 600-room Hyatt Regency Portland at the Oregon Convention Center, which opened in late 2019.

Prosper Portland (then the Portland Development Commission) acquired the inn in 2002, intending to demolish it to provide a site for the Convention Center hotel. Instead, the new hotel was built on another site nearby, and the agency turned the existing inn into an income-generating investment.

Brennan gave notice of his intent to not renew the operations contract in a July 2021 letter.

“Together through some very challenging times, we have been able to turn around the Inn and make it a profitable and respectable business in the Lloyd District,” Brennan wrote.  “… However, with the recent challenges facing the hospitality industry and the City of Portland, I feel that Prosper Portland needs to move in a new direction to meet and exceed its goals for the property.”

Matt Hagerman, executive vice president of Columbia Hospitality, told the board that much can be done to improve the inn’s operations. The inn currently leans on third-party bookings via online services such as Expedia and Hotels.com that typically take commissions in the 19 percent to 25 percent range, Hagerman said. An in-house booking service will save money, he said.

Columbia Hospitality manages 61 properties in eight states. In Oregon, the firm oversees only five properties in Cannon Beach. The company is in the process of adding a remote fishing lodge near Gold Beach, Hagerman said.

Columbia Hospitality was the only respondent to Prosper Portland’s request for proposals. The company’s agreement with Prosper Portland calls for compensation of:

• 4.5 percent of gross revenue or $11,000 a month (whichever is greater);
• 15 percent of gross annual profit in excess of a budgeted amount; and
• a monthly $8,000 shared services fee for marketing, accounting and other functions.

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