That downtown Portland comeback? The grand reopening? The warm September day when we pause on a busy sidewalk and allow ourselves an unmasked sigh of relief?
The over/under is five years.
And of all the speculators I spoke to this week, the most incisive message arrived from Warren Rosenfeld, the president of Calbag Metals.
“The comeback,” Rosenfeld wrote in an email, “is dependent on when folks have confidence (the city) is safe and clean.
“Seems democracy’s oxygen is confidence. Confidence someone won’t run a red light. Confidence that currency is backed by the full faith and credit of the government. Confidence that our officials will faithfully carry out their duties.”
That is the crisis at hand in the city, and it is personal and disabling.
Solitude on Salmon Street
We’ve lost confidence that we can safely gather in the public square.
Confidence that the new City Council might grasp the connection between the disbanding of the Gun Violence Reduction Team and the surge of shooting in North and Northeast Portland.
Confidence that there’s an assistant district attorney and a jail bed warming up for each malcontent who roams the city at night, breaking windows and the spirit of small businesses.
In simpler times, Portland catered to young artists, great chefs, off-beat entrepreneurs, and the weird optimists who were content with a small home in a great neighborhood.
Now there’s a sense among the survivors downtown that the city only caters to the homeless, folks with a small tent, a mountain of trash, and not a dime to invest in the future of a county – roll on, Multnomah – where the tax rate has gone through the roof.
The lockdown at the Benson Hotel
Confidence – among lease holders, hotel owners, investment bankers, real-estate titans, payroll managers and other taxpayers – is hard to come by.
That’s what happens when there’s a vicious contagion in the wind and the White House.
That’s what happens when bored anarchists welcome Thanksgiving or the New Year by breaking every window within reach, without fear of accountability.
That’s what happens, Homer Williams says, when half the Baby Boomers go broke and the city and county have no comprehensive housing plan. Williams, who developed the Pearl and South Waterfront, has been uniquely focused for the last decade on the evolving demographics of the homeless and he’s convinced of this: “We are going back to flop houses. We are going back to SROs (single-room occupancy). We are going back to boarding houses. They’ll just have different names.”
Southwest Broadway at 3 p.m. on a sunny afternoon
That’s what happens when the new district attorney, Mike Schmidt, is forced into action five months early by his predecessor’s retirement, and promptly announces, at the peak of protest mayhem, that his office won’t prosecute charges of disorderly conduct or interference with a police officer.
Schmidt was worried about resources: “I know what my office’s success rate was on non-violent property crimes. I was in the office for Occupy. I remember how many of those cases we lost.”
He regrets he focused on free speech, not costly property crimes: “I had (former Gov.) Ted Kulongoski come into my office. He said, ‘It’s not that you’re wrong, but the next time you announce a policy, consider the order in which you say things. Maybe the first message is that if you’re breaking things and damaging property, we’re not going to tolerate that.’
“Like anyone,” Schmidt says, “I’m learning.” He knows he got off to a “tough start” with the Portland Police Bureau, but he believes he now has the trust of command staff.
Brian Hunzeker, the new head of the police union, assures Schmidt he doesn’t have the confidence of officers on the street.
“When Schmidt came and talked to the RRT (Rapid Response Team), he was giving us reasons to not do his job,” Hunzeker says. “I’m looking for a leader who runs into barriers while doing his job. To come up with excuses to reduce your responsibility? I believe that’s a failure. My thought was, ‘You’re not even trying.’”
Gone fishin' in the Pearl
Williams is equally caustic: “He absolutely contributed to the continuing problem with the troublemakers. Someone should get a recall petition going. And I gave money to his campaign.”
That’s what you hear downtown as downtown comes apart. Maybe Commissioner Dan Ryan is a fresh start on housing. Maybe the Benson Hotel will reopen in February.
But in a perfect storm, confidence is shaken. Money gets nervous. Customers stay home. Anchors come loose.
“Here’s my fear,” says Alex Fink, who grew up in this city and has kept Fink’s Luggage open on S.W. 12th Avenue through the pandemic:
“If Nordstrom pulls out? If Powell’s pulls out? If the Trail Blazers decide they want to pull out because we don’t have the restaurants downtown anymore and people are afraid to jump on the MAX? It’s another nail in the coffin.”
The coffin of civic pride.
-- Steve Duin
stephen.b.duin@gmail.com