Hamilton County to consider development agreement for 700-room convention hotel

Hamilton County commissioners heard an update Oct. 21 on the proposed headquarters hotel for Cincinnati’s Convention District and were told a three-party development agreement among the city, county and developer Portman will be before the board Oct. 30.

The presentation by Katie Westbrook of 3CDC and Reid Scott of Portman detailed the project program, a proposed financing stack and public protections. "We are anticipating about $1,200,000,000 being invested into this relatively small section of Downtown Cincinnati," Westbrook said, and Scott described the hotel as "a 700 key convention hotel with about 63,000 square feet of meeting space." The developers said the hotel will be branded a Marriott and connected to the convention center by a sky bridge.

The nut of the plan is public financing to support roughly $117 million in revenue bonds, a $50 million city loan and other public pieces of the capital stack. Scott outlined expected public instruments and private contributions, including a $48 million state grant, an estimated $37 million benefit from a mixed‑use development tax credit, about $117 million…