As county officials prepare to decide how to spend increased revenues from hotel room and car rental taxes, there could be competing visions for projects.
Lane County’s Board of Commissioners on Tuesday voted to increase the countywide transient lodging and car rental taxes by two percentage points each to generate more money for tourism-related projects.
Effective, Jan. 1, the transient lodging tax on hotels and similar overnight lodging will be 10%, and the car rental tax will be 12%. That will generate an additional $4.25 million a year to support tourism-related facilities, though county officials haven’t yet decided how they will spend it.
The tax increase first came up during discussions on how to fill a funding gap to construct a multiuse facility at the Lane Events Center that would serve as a new home for the Eugene Emeralds. The minor league team must find a new home by 2025 at the latest because of new Major League Baseball standards.
Commissioners heard from people supporting the funds going to build the multiuse facility and new Ems stadium, many of whom argued the team is an asset to the community.
“I’ve watched the impact of this team and what it’s done to the community,” said Ken Brown, who runs The Hope Project. “They give back as much as they get.”
But officials also heard from people who want an indoor, multisport facility, arguing a year-round facility would bring in more tourism dollars and fill a gap in the community.
“Baseball does not generate much occupancy. By comparison, we have a single volleyball tournament every January that fills nearly all 4,000 of our area hotel rooms for three nights,” said Michael Fear, the general manager at Tru by Hilton. “We need that kind of business.”
The board has gotten a lot of feedback on both projects, Commissioner Jay Bozievich said, and there’s a clear common ground.
“It seems that everybody agrees on one thing: We need to have some kind of investment in our tourism industry here in Lane County,” he said.
Staff stressed the money isn’t yet committed to any one project and Tuesday’s decision only authorized the increase.
“Appropriation of any funds would be determined by the board in a separate process at a future board meeting,” said Lorren Blythe, the county’s interim direction of operations.
Months of discussions about potential multiuse facility, stadium
County staff and consultants have been working with the Emeralds since the end of 2021 to see if it’s feasible to build a stadium at the events center.
MLB is requiring the Emeralds to find a new home by 2025, but the University of Oregon would prefer the team figure things out by 2024, General Manager Allan Benavides told county officials earlier this year. The Emeralds are currently playing home games at UO’s PK Park.
Officials most recently gave staff the green light to condense the contracting process for a possible multiuse facility, unanimously approving an exemption from the normal public contracting process to instead use a design-build method for the proposed facility.
Staff said a design-build process allows for addressing potential design confusion early and lets the county consider expertise and cost rather than just going with the lowest cost, as would normally happen during the procurement process.
Read more:Officials approve condensed contracting process for Emeralds’ proposal at Lane Events Center
Based on early analysis, the project could cost between $60 million and $80 million.
The county has identified around $20 million in upfront funding — $10 million from the Emeralds for construction costs, another $3 million from the team for equipment and $7.5 million from the Oregon Legislature — and is working to find more as well as reallocating $600,000 in existing transient room tax funding.
That leaves a funding gap of $3.1 million annually if construction costs $60 million and a gap of $4.8 million annually if it costs $80 million, the staff memo reads.
An…
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