Turning Crowne Plaza into a Shelter Wouldn’t Cost Millions, Engineer Says

Turning the Crowne Plaza Hotel near Moda Center into a homeless shelter wouldn’t cost anything like the $149 million previously estimated by Multnomah County because it wouldn’t have to be retrofitted for earthquake safety. That’s the opinion of John Tessem at DCI Engineers, which he shared in a Nov. 6 letter to Crowne Plaza owner Mark Hollander.

Earlier this year, County Commissioner Sharon Meieran proposed putting a $25 million down payment on the 241-unit hotel and turning it into a permanent shelter. Other county officials were skeptical, especially after an opinion by the county’s facilities division that earthquake retrofits would break the bank.

In his letter, Tessem says he examined city code and spoke with an official at the Portland Bureau of Development Services to determine that mandatory seismic retrofits would not be triggered by Meieran’s proposal.

Among other things, the occupancy load would not be increased beyond the code’s threshold, Tessem said. Nor would the cost of improvements be high enough. Meieran said Tessem’s study proves buying the Crowne Plaza would be a good use of the millions pouring into county coffers from Metro’s supportive housing services tax.

“Contrary to the hastily convened and superficial evaluation of my proposed project by the county, the conclusions in the DCI report were reached by meticulous analysis over time by a dedicated structural engineering firm with direct involvement of a city BDS planning official,” Meieran wrote in an email.

County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson says: “The Crowne Plaza proposal not moving forward had nothing to do with the seismic costs and everything to do with the lack of board support. Commissioner Meieran proposed inadequate funding to purchase this building but said that she knew of partners ‘extremely supportive’ about the opportunity. Those partners never materialized.”