Losing Seaside Shilo … and other Oregon icons

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

The famous Seaside Shilo Inn will be sold in a few weeks.

At the same time, it was announced that the company that owns many of Oregon’s top brands, Sortis Holdings, is facing financial troubles.  Sortis specialized in buying locally popular brands (Sizzle Pie, Water Avenue Coffee, Rudy’s Barbershop, Bamboo Sushi, and Ace Hotel).  Now all of them are heading into a fiscal storm.

For Shilo Inns and Ace Hotel, having a local hotel in Oregon is tough.

The 2008 recession hits hotel very hard.  In the following 12 years (2009-2021), Oregon politicians passed a lot of taxes and many bills raising labor costs — making it one of the highest taxed and highest labor cost states in the nation.  The state jacked up the hotel tax and it was followed by many local hotel taxes.  Then came the pandemic, where Oregon chose to remain closed longer/under restrictions than some 45 other states.

Here is a Taxpayers Association taken photo of Seaside’s main street, Memorial Day 2022.  Most of America was open, Oregon wasn’t.

For a long period, coastal hotels were forbidden to have any guests who did not live in the county where they reside.

The end result was no guests whatsoever.  Here is the Seaside Holiday Inn.

Governor Brown even put up fences along the public beaches. By the way, while politicians told people not to travel, Gov. Brown and many others flew to Europe, Hawaii and Mexico.  (The Taxpayers Association did an image where it showed an actual Oregonian scaling a fence, soon to be arrested, to access a public beach and super-impose Governor Brown on her expensive Europe travel junket).

Governor Brown further hurt travel by using ODOT signs telling people not to leave their city.

Then came inflation.

The top three sectors to be hardest hit by inflation were gas, meat and hotels.

So as pandemic rules eased, many hotels and restaurants were hit with an entirely new problem of inflation.

Many will dismiss the Shilo downsizing to their unpaid tax debt, among the highest in the state, or the controversy around Sortis Holdings strategies for their hotels, yet ignore the larger reality that the environment for Shilo and Sortis works against local hotels.

Other high-profile hotels, Dossier, The Duniway and the Hilton Portland Downtown, are facing closures.

The Hilton Downtown hotel was mercilessly vandalized for two years by the Portland riots (Photo: Hilton left)

The Oregonian ran this headline:

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