Cincinnati Backs Convention Center Hotel with 30-Year Property Tax Exemption

A city-backed $40 million loan and three decades of tax exemptions are headed to a new full-service headquarters hotel planned for Cincinnati‘s Central Business District, according to city business disclosure records.

City records list multiple ordinances tied to the project, authorizing a $40 million loan from the city’s Urban Development Bond Fund to developer Portman Holdings, an Atlanta-based firm, and its local entity Cincinnati CH (OH), LLC, represented by Reid Scott.

The hotel is planned for 240 W. Fourth St. and 251 W. Fifth St. in the Central Business District, with Hamilton County named as a co-signatory on the development agreement.

What the city is giving up—and what it gets back

The incentive package covers two distinct tax breaks, each lasting 30 years.

First, improvements to the hotel property at those two addresses were declared exempt from real property taxation under Ohio Revised Code Section 5709.41—a public-purpose designation that shields the building’s assessed value from the tax rolls for three decades.

Second, lodging transactions at the hotel are exempt from City of Cincinnati lodging taxes levied under Cincinnati Municipal Code Chapter 312 for the same 30-year period. Instead of flowing into the city’s general fund, those payments will go into a newly created Fund 406—the “Convention Center Hotel Lodging Tax Equivalent Fund”—to help finance construction of the hotel itself.

Streets, alleys, and a pedestrian walkway

The physical footprint of the deal reshapes the surrounding block.

The city agreed to vacate portions of West Fifth Street and all of Home Alley—the passage running between W. Fourth and W. Fifth streets—to accommodate the hotel and a connected parking garage.

That garage involves Whex Garage LLC, an affiliate of 3CDC (Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation), led by Steve Leeper.

The plan also includes an elevated, enclosed pedestrian walkway linking the hotel, the Cincinnati Convention Center, and the Whex Garage.

A separate ordinance authorized the city to purchase property at the southwest corner of W. Fifth Street and Elm Street and provide a grant of up to $4 million to renovate the Whex Garage as part of the broader convention district buildout.

For residents and property owners downtown, the project means significant construction activity along Fourth and Fifth streets, the vacation of Home Alley, and a reshaped block in the Central Business District.

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