In downtown Portland, squatters broke into a vacant multi-story property. The area near Washington Center became a “problematic corner of downtown,” according to reporting by Willamette Week, with ongoing drug trafficking and other criminal activity. Anthony Effinger is a reporter at Willamette Week. He joins us with more on his reporting and what he learned about fentanyl use in Portland and the city’s efforts to manage the situation.
Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.
Geoff Norcross: Willamette Week calls the Washington Center “Portland’s most notorious property.” It’s a vacant office and retail space in downtown Portland that the city has come to view as a beacon for bad behavior. That includes a kind of pop up fentanyl market. Police cleared the building earlier this month. Here to talk more about what happened at the Washington Center and what it says about the city’s broader effort to fight illegal drug markets is Anthony Effinger. He’s a reporter with Willamette Week. Anthony, welcome to Think Out Loud.
Anthony Effinger: Thanks for having me.
Norcross: Can you describe what the Washington Center used to be like? What was in there?
Effinger: Well many years ago now, there was a bagel store, there was a wedding shop, there was a KeyBank branch, a big one on the corner of 5th and Washington, you may remember that, had the high curving windows. And then there’s another building just north of there that’s an office building that’s older and more historic. And that comprises the whole block. It was a pretty lively area. The Greek Taverna was near there, and there’s a very famous bar across the street. And now it’s completely empty.
Norcross: And what does it look like now?
Effinger: Well, right now it looks like a lot of plywood over the little alcoves and atriums around the building, of which there are many. And that was the problem with the building, it had sort of this open plan in a way. It had these atriums that were partially covered by upper floors so they were out of the rain, and then it had all these little nooks and crannies. And as it turned out, it was a great place to gather and get out of the rain and do whatever you wanted to do if you didn’t have any other place to do it. And that’s what happened. Once it was empty, it became a gathering point for people who were selling drugs and taking drugs.
Norcross: You said all these businesses were in there five years ago. What happened that started the exodus of businesses from there?
Effinger: Well I talked to KeyBank, exchanged some emails with them. They decided to consolidate that branch with another one further south, I think it is. So they left. I think the bridal shop closed. And I think it’s a story of what happened to downtown Portland during the pandemic, which is a lot of things closed. You walk around down there now and it’s like going down memory lane of all these things that were once open, like the little Spella coffee. That area has taken a particularly big hit. There’s been a couple of foreclosures right around there. I would say it’s suffered more than much of downtown, those blocks.
Norcross: The owner of the building is Menashe the family? What did you hear from them about what was going on in their property?
Effinger: Well, I reached out to them early on, and at first I didn’t hear a lot, but they have been more responsive to me and to the city lately. One thing that kind of got us going on this story is we heard chatter that they had not been paying their Clean & Safe dues, because this is part of a special tax district, the Clean & Safe district, you probably recognize the uniforms around town. And we had heard that they were not paying that special assessment, so that’s what got us looking at this. What I gather is that they had not been terribly cooperative with the city on trying to clean up this property, but now the city and the Menashes have struck a deal, and we saw the results of that deal about a week ago when the cops and the fire department went in from the top of the building to the bottom and cleared it all out, and made sure no one was in there, because there had been people inside the building all the way up. You can see graffiti on the top. And then in the KeyBank, the safe was covered in graffiti and the inside of the building is covered in graffiti.
So they cleared the whole building, and then in return the Menashes agreed to board it up. So they hired a board up firm.
Norcross: There’s such a thing?
Effinger: Oh yeah, that is the next story I want to do, I want to talk to these board up firms, because I imagine that business is booming, right? I mean, they put up a whole forest of plywood on this thing. If you look at it now, it’s just plywood, plywood, plywood all around. And unfortunately, that’s a real feature downtown now. It’s not just here.
So they’ve boarded up everything where anybody could possibly get in, except the little atrium in front of the Key Bank because that’s two stories high. And so you can still congregate under there.
Getting back to the Menashes, it’s been a battle of what is the city responsible for, and what are the Menashes responsible for? And I think it’s been a tussle between the two. And they are working together now, and we’re gonna see what happens.
Norcross: Before that deal was struck between the and the city and the building was cleared, there was a lot of stuff going on in the building, and one of those was the selling of fentanyl. Can you talk about that pop up market that happened there?
Effinger: My colleague Lucas Manfield and I started going down there and just kind of seeing what was going on. We saw open deals for fentanyl. We saw people using fentanyl, we talked to people who were using fentanyl. I was just actually down there two days ago, and some people had recongregated. And I said “have you seen the police here?” because they had a 24x7 patrol there for a while. And he said “no, we haven’t seen anybody. But by the way, you can do what we’re doing here, you can smoke fentanyl here, it’s legal.” That’s his take. And it is a citation for personal use under Measure 110.
Norcross: This is the voter approved measure that decriminalized possession of certain amounts of illegal drugs, you can legally smoke fentanyl in this building.
Effinger: You can get a citation, but yes it’s decriminalized. So that was his impression, and I think that was the impression of everybody that was there before in greater numbers. And the police, if you talk to them, they’ll tell you people there smoke fentanyl right in front of them. It’s a feature now.
You get into this question of decriminalization, treatment versus incarceration. We’re a lab for that right now. Oregon is a laboratory for whether or not this is working, and I do not have the answer to that.
Norcross: This was the big concern that a lot of people had when they were thinking about whether or not to vote for that measure, which was, what kind of behavior is it going to encourage?
Effinger: Yeah. And I think we’re gonna find out. I look forward to seeing some academic studies, some on the ground studies about whether or not this is helping or hurting us. The Economist just had a piece this week about Portland. They’ve been big on decriminalization for years, and I think they’re taking a look at us like a laboratory. And I think that right now they’re saying we’re not exactly passing.
Norcross: What’s going on in the broader neighborhood? You’re near Old Town, you’re near a lot of places there. How does what’s happening at the Washington Center reflect what’s happening in the neighborhood?
Effinger: Great question. The city has taken this approach trying to clean up small geographies, like the Inner Eastside. They went into Old Town and tried to clean that up. And what my colleague Lucas thinks is that what happened in Old Town is they cleared it, and then people went to 4th and Washington kind of in mass. And it was in mass, when it was going strong I don’t know how many people were out there, 50? 60? Every day we visited, there were that many. The fences that were around the property were knocked onto the sidewalk, and it was quite a scene. And so now they’ve done this big clearance at 4th and Washington. And the question is where do people go now? Because they’re gonna go somewhere? They have no other place to be. Unless they’re gonna go into shelters and those sorts of things, we just don’t know. But that’s the big question right now is where is it gonna go? But what we’ve seen so far is that people have kind of dispersed into the neighborhood,
Norcross: And so what’s the concern about those markets popping up somewhere else in the city?
Effinger: Well, you could have a repeat here. My question is, what makes a spot conducive to this sort of thing? And I talked to somebody who works in drug recovery, drug rehabilitation, drug treatment. What she said was everybody thinks these people are gathering because this is where the fentanyl is available, this is where the dealers are. But what she said is often people are gathering because there are other people using, and people who use drugs like this take care of each other, and they want somebody around in case something goes wrong
Norcross: So it’s like a safe use site.
Effinger: Yeah, exactly. That is exactly what crossed my mind when she told me this. It’s like this is kind of a de facto safe use site. Which they have in Vancouver BC, and which I gather are working pretty well. So again, this is another question I think we have to ask ourselves. If she’s right, then that’s what this is.
Norcross: It’s really hard to say, I’m sure. But is anybody talking about the future of this property? Can anybody envision a time when tenants might be able to move back in?
Effinger: Oh God. I talked to a developer downtown, a property owner, and I tell you he is just distraught. He just can’t imagine getting tenants into his buildings. He’s like “you don’t even know the depth of our angst about whether or not tenants are gonna return,” because they’re not. They’re still, from what I can tell, leaving. And we’ve got more for foreclosures to come. Buildings are going back to banks. And this was a combination of forces, right? The pandemic, tech companies letting everybody work from home. We had attracted a lot of tech companies to Portland after they kind of moved up from San Francisco. The riots downtown certainly didn’t help. And that’s what’s happening. And we’ve got to overcome all of that now.
So what’s gonna happen to this property? The Menashes bought it in 2014 for $9 million. They anticipated that somebody would buy it from them and develop it into something else. They’ve told me that they had deals almost done, but people got scared of Portland and backed out. And so now this thing is sitting there. I know some people in the city would like to see this be a gravel lot, get rid of the whole thing, start from scratch.
Norcross: Hmm. Remains to be seen. Anthony Effinger, thanks for this. I appreciate it.
Effinger: Thanks for having me.
Norcross: Anthony Effinger is a reporter with Willamette Week.
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