Isaac Laquedem

Metro released the Convention Center Hotel study. Let's see the rest of the plan

A few days ago Metro released the market impact study for the proposed Convention Center hotel.  (Here's the Oregonian story reporting that happy fact.)  The study, performed by a firm nondescriptly named Strategic Advisory Group, says that the Oregon Convention Center would attract more conventions if a 600-room headquarters hotel were built across the street.  I read the study with great interest.  Its reasoning seems sound and the methodology is better than what I expected.  I was also impressed with SAG because it included one hotel project, Detroit's, in which it concluded that there was not enough demand to justify building a convention center hotel.  (Beware the consultant who always gives the same answer.)

The consultancy's website includes a list of eleven convention center hotel projects that it's worked on, which you can read by following this link.  One of them is the Portland project, which SAG describes in these words:

The City of Portland desired to increase it marketability within the convention and tradeshow industry. With a recently completed expansion of the Oregon Convention Center, those charged with marketing and booking the facility continued to face obstacles in attracting many key, high-impact events. Would-be customers of the Center and visitors of the City frequently vocalized the need for a larger, first-quality hotel adjacent to the OCC. Therefore, the City of Portland, the Portland Oregon Visitors Association (now "Travel Portland"), and later the Portland Development Commission engaged SAG to create a Headquarter Hotel Strategic Plan and help realize the project. The project involved understanding and defining the market, customer needs, and required hotel
program; assessing the impact of a new headquarter hotel on the existing hotel market; quantifying the economic impact on the OCC and the community; estimating the hotel's cost and financial feasibility.

SAG's description includes this juicy bit:

SAG's Plan did detail a need for a new hotel but also described other necessary steps Portland would need to take to truly maximize its penetration in the industry.

Why is this a juicy bit?  The study that Metro released is only part of what SAG did for Metro.

The study that the Oregonian links to doesn't include the list of "other necessary steps" that Portland must take to "maximize its penetration of the industry," that is, to get more convention business.  SAG told Metro.  Metro should tell us.

Washington smokes out marijuana users

When Washington voters last month legalized the recreational use of marijuana, I can't have been the only one struck by the delightful irony that they did so seven years after they voted to make many public places, and some private homes, smoke-free. 

Isaac translates Jack into Plannerese -- fo' shizzle

Much as I enjoy what Gizoogle does with my language, its words are not those of the languages that I usually speak.  One tongue that I do speak fairly fluently is Plannerese, and it occurred to me that, had I the time, I might build an engine that could translate ordinary text into Plannerese, and specifically into the metropolitan dialect of Plannerese spoken in this area.  I then read one of Metro's Opt-In surveys, and found to my delight that a ready stock of Plannerese phrases awaited me, vetted by the masters.

Until I build the translation engine (Planoogle?  UGBoogle? Processpool?) I will have to translate by hand.  Consider this recent passage from Professor Bogdanski:

It's time for a moratorium on all things streetcar in Portland.  But given that the incoming mayor has been pimping streetcars for a living around the world, that isn't going to happen.  And so onward toward bankruptcy we march.  It's too bad that the voters don't get as worked up about gross financial incompetence as they do about fluoridated water.

The first sentence is hard to convert to local Plannerese, as it runs counter to the Received Plannerization, but the others are easier.  I render it thus:

A pause in expanding the streetcar network is one of a number of options for the region to consider as we strive toward multi-modal connectivity.  The incoming mayor has supported streetcars in the public and private sectors and construction should resume.  The fiscal and qualitative practicability of an integrated streetcar-centric transit network is less well understood than the social and community benefits actualized by the network.  As borne out by surveys, the community values streetcars and their attendant matrix of social, economic, and lifestyle availabilities almost as much as our region's historic commitment to clean, pure water.

Do these two paragraphs say the same thing?  Of course not; that's one of the joys of this strange and wonderful tongue.  Actually, I'm not sure that the second paragraph says anything, which means my translation might be pretty close to the mark.

Scary, isn't it?

Rental elephant born at Oregon Zoo

The elephant just born at the Oregon Zoo to Rose-Tu belongs, not to the Zoo, but to a California elephant rental company called Have Trunk Will Travel, according to this report from the Seattle Times.  Have Trunk Will Travel owns Tusko, the sire of the baby elephant, and contracted Tusko to the Zoo for breeding, with the Zoo to own the first, third, and fifth babies and the company to own the second, fourth, and sixth.  A spokesman for the Zoo says that the baby elephant will stay at the Zoo, but under the contract that's not the Zoo's decision to make.   Here's the contract.

The Zoo is running an election to give the baby elephant a name, at least while it's living at the Zoo.  Whether her owner will agree to follow the election results hasn't been answered.

Isaac gets Gizoogled

Concerned that my stilted 19th-century language might leave the Laquedemitasse unable to communicate with his peers, Mrs. Laquedem recently pointed me to www.gizoogle.net, a service which translates Google pages, and anything found by Google, into dialect.  I had it translate the front page of this blog.

Most complete sentences aren't quotable -- actually, they are quotable, but not printable -- but some of my headlines would pass muster with the Federal Communications Commission.  For example, Gizoogle renders the headline of my last post as "Governor, itz time ta bust a cap up in tha bridge, not build it."  From studying how Gizoogle translated my recent posts, I did learn that there is no hip-hop word for neodymium.  I did, however, learn many other words that are new to me, but not, apparently, to the Laquedemitasse.

Governor, it's time to kill the bridge, not build it

At today's Oregon Leadership Conference, Governor Kitzhaber said that it's important for Oregon to allocate $450 million (another two Sellwoods) toward the Columbia River Crossing project by March 1.  So reports Willamette Week, which also says that Governor Kitzhaber expects as soon as next month "to resolve the Coast Guard's concerns that the bridge designed will result in a bridge too low for marine traffic" (WW's words, not the Governor's).

As the proposed bridge is too low for existing federal and private marine traffic, there are only two ways to resolve the Coast Guard's concerns.  One is to build a higher bridge, even if that makes light rail on the new bridge impracticable; the other is to scare away the businesses that send ships and equipment under thexisting bridges now.  Put differently, one approach ticks off TriMet (but saves the region about $1 billion); the other costs jobs and blasts a hole in our maritime industry.

I await with great interest the Governor's choice between jobs and trains.  A better choice, and one he's unfortunately just boxed himself out of, is to declare that no more public money should follow the $150 million already wasted on this project.  The $450 million of state funds that Governor Kitzhaber wants to spend on the CRC would be better spent -- if it has to be spent on highways -- on improving the roads we already have.

The fact that $150 million has been spent pursuing the chimera of a perfect replacement bridge is not a reason to spend more.  It's a reason to stop now.

It's time to kill the CRC.