New data from Downtown Clean & Safe shows a growing number of pedestrians visiting Portland’s downtown. Compared to last year, the total number of visitors from January to August was up by 5.6%, making it the strongest year for downtown since the pandemic. But those numbers still have not caught up to what they were pre-lockdowns — and are still just half of what they were in 2019.
We’ll hear from various community leaders to hear how they view downtown. Todd Zarnitz is the president of the Northwest District Association. Sarah Shaoul is the founder and CEO of Bricks Need Mortar. Ryan Hashagen is the founder of Icicle Tricycles, director of the Steel Bridge Skatepark Coalition and an adjunct professor at PSU. And we get thoughts from community members, visitors and business owners we gathered on a recent visit to downtown.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Foot traffic is up in downtown Portland. According to recent data from Downtown Clean & Safe, there were 5.6% more pedestrians in the first eight months of this year than in the same period last year. That was the highest number since the pandemic, but foot traffic is still well below pre-pandemic levels.
Later this hour, we’ll sit down with three champions of downtown Portland who have different views on how the city core is faring right now. But first, we’re going to take you on a tour. Not long ago, TOL producer Rolie Hernandez and I spent half a day walking around downtown, Old Town Chinatown and the Pearl District to see how tourists, community members and business owners are feeling these days.
We’ll start with a conversation Rolie had with Akiva DeJack. He told us he’s from somewhere in the Willamette Valley. Rolie asked what brought him to Portland.
Akiva DeJack: I have a daughter who lives here. And I come visit her as often as I can.
Rolie Hernandez: So how often do you come downtown whenever you come to Portland?
DeJack: I often stay near downtown. My child lives in the Pearl District, and I like to pick different quirky, boutique-y kinds of hotels to stay in.
Hernandez: So, I guess how do you view downtown? It sounds like you spend a lot of time here whenever you visit. So I guess what keeps you coming back to this area besides your daughter?
DeJack: Well, I mean, it’s vibrant and wonderful. At night, it’s a little different, but that only really starts after 1 a.m., or so. I’m sitting out here drinking a cappuccino and enjoying the weather. It’s lovely. There’s lots going on and I like to watch people. Yeah, it’s great.
Hernandez: How long have you been coming downtown?
DeJack: Probably since I started visiting Portland 20-ish years ago.
Hernandez: Oh, wow. So how have you seen downtown change then? I mean, the pandemic seems to be the turning point for downtown when it really changed. I guess how have you seen them?
DeJack: That’s what I hear. I’m a visitor, in and out, usually a long weekend or just a regular weekend. So for me, it hasn’t changed that much. I didn’t come around during the pandemic. And I read all sorts of horror stories about Portland. I checked with my peeps who live here and they said, “Don’t believe it. The city is doing well.” So I never stopped other than … I didn’t travel much like most people during the pandemic.
Hernandez: Yeah, I mean, that’s something I did want to ask. It seems like the narrative for downtown for a while now – at least since the pandemic – has been that it’s changed a lot. I guess I’m wondering, is that something you kind of see or agree with?
DeJack: You know, I have a daughter who’s a trans woman. And the changes have come to my family along with Portland. So I can’t say I agree or disagree with everything that’s happening in our culture, but I’ve felt perfectly safe these last three days I’ve been here. And agree, disagree, Portland’s a great city.
Miller [narrating]: That was Akiva DeJack. We’ll hear from Lily McKean and Bri Kirwan next. They were taking a stroll in Old Town with Lily’s 3-month-old son Wesley. I asked Bree how she would describe Portland right now.
Bri Kirwan: I think it’s getting so much better. It’s just still not quite there. I really only think Chinatown is where it’s bad. I think everywhere else is much, much improved, especially compared to last year.
Miller: What did you experience just now in Chinatown as you walked through it?
Kirwan: The walking dead.
Lily McKean: Like there’s this man just burping behind us as we’re walking and like there was a big pile of poop on the sidewalk. We don’t know if it was human or dog. And again, I’m only super hyper-aware because we have the baby now. Like if it was just us, we would just truck right on through. But we’re walking along, the waterfront is beautiful, but you’re still just like a little on edge. But yeah.
Kirwan: I’m not as much on edge because I don’t have a baby. And I’m used to it. I live …
Miller: You’re pushing the carriage.
Kirwan: Yeah, because this is my nephew. I only get the opportunity to do it so often, so like, “my baby today.” [Laughs]
McKean: I think just some interesting characters when you have a baby makes you a little concerned. I’m trying not to be though. We’re trying to be like coming out to see, look at how beautiful it is. But you can’t help but be a little worried. Yeah.
Miller: But you’re here.
Kirwan: Yeah.
Miller [narrating]: I ran into Mara Bubonja and Maria Rodriguez near Pioneer Courthouse Square. They had just arrived from Tampa, Florida to celebrate Mara’s birthday. I asked her why they chose Portland.
Mara Bubonja: Yeah, it was my and her choice. We were talking about hiking, getting away from the heat of Florida.
Miller: Yeah.
Bubonja: And we wanted to see maybe a little bit of change of color on the leaves, some of the waterfalls, just get away.
Miller: OK, but you’ve only been here for three hours so far. It’s not a huge amount of time, but what are your first impressions?
Maria Rodriguez: Love the weather, loving the weather.
Miller: It’s a gorgeous day.
Rodriguez: People here are saying it’s hot, and I’m like, no, I’m cold. Like if I take the sweater off ...
Miller: You’re all wearing sweaters.
Rodriguez: Yeah, it’s really chilly. Yeah, we’ve never been to the West Coast. So it’s nice to not be surrounded by an intense stench. [Laughter]
Miller: What’s the stench of Tampa?
Bubonja: No, it’s just city smells.
Rodriguez: It’s a very thick city smell. It smells like really fishy because we’re right on the water. It just kind of smells like B.O., all over the place. [Laughter]
Miller [narrating]: In the Pearl District, Rolie spoke with Susan Evans at her plant and gift store Porch Light. She and her partner bought the shop in April.
Susan Evans: To be totally honest, I hadn’t been coming to this part of town for a long time. I live in Southeast. And it was just more convenient to shop very locally. I came down here for work occasionally. But since purchasing the business, I’ve spent more time in the Pearl District than I have probably in 17 years of living in Portland.
Hernandez: Yeah, I mean, it seems like the narrative downtown has had for a while is that it is unsafe or dirty or many of these other things. I mean, since you’ve been spending more time in the Pearl, is that something that you kind of agree with?
Evans: I have actually been shocked at how much better it is than I had been told. I’ve listened to the news like everyone else, and I keep hearing this narrative that downtown is this “horrible cesspool” and it’s “burning to the ground.” I knew that part wasn’t true, but I’m here all the time. I come through every day, and it certainly has its problems. I’ve lived in New York and San Francisco, and I’m used to some of the problems that are in every big city, but I feel like it’s getting better. That’s been my personal experience.
Hernandez: Is there anything you think people should know about downtown right now?
Evans: I just think that there are a lot of people who live here and who work here that really care about it and who want to find a solution to all of the troubles that we have here. Definitely, to me, I think the biggest problem is our mental health crisis. There’s no place for these people to go, but people need to know that we care very much about them and we’re looking for solutions. I find it frustrating that everyone has a complaint about it, and it’s very easy to look at downtown from afar. I feel like most of the online criticism comes from people from out of town who don’t actually live here. A lot of it is from people who haven’t stepped foot in Portland for years – and that’s frustrating.
Miller [narrating]: Doug Gallagher was at Pioneer Courthouse Square. He is a Jehovah’s Witness from Fairview who’s been coming to downtown Portland to evangelize for the last five years.
Miller: What kinds of changes have you seen over the course of five years?
Doug Gallagher: Boy. A lot of homeless, which is really sad. Seems like there’s a lot of mental health issues, which we see with a lot of people, and that’s really sad, too. And just seeing that some of the businesses have just pulled up, boarded up the windows and left, is pretty sad, too, yeah.
Miller: Have you seen any improvements in any of that in recent years or is it, for you, it got bad and it more or less stayed like that?
Gallagher: Pretty much, yeah. There may be improvements in different areas, but it’s just sad because this has always been a favorite place for my wife and I and friends to come down and hang out. Things have just changed and I don’t know if they’re gonna get back to where they were before.
Miller: Do you come here for other reasons? So you come as a kind of ministry once a week during the day.
Gallagher: Yes.
Miller: Do you come, at this point, for other reasons?
Gallagher: No, we used to come down here quite a bit for dinner and with friends, but we just don’t do it anymore. Yeah.
Miller: Why not?
Gallagher: I don’t feel safe. Especially with my wife. Yeah. Safety is an issue. I feel sorry for people and what they’re going through, but sometimes they can be very angry, and they can be very agitated. Just as much as I feel for them, they’re unpredictable, so we try to stay away.
Miller: You said the word earlier, you said it’s sad. What you’re describing is, especially since this is something … you used to love coming here.
Gallagher: Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Miller: Why do you come once a week? What does it mean to you to come?
Gallagher: To me, it’s very personal, because our ministry, we try to help people deal with life’s problems. We try to help them in practical ways to deal with life’s problems, so it’s really important to me because I want people to be happy, enjoy life, right? Treat each other with love and respect and be there for each other, and that’s what we try to help people do.
Miller [narrating]: Sasha Goldstein is the owner of SMG Collective. It’s a home goods store. She opened the store in May of 2018. I asked her what the pandemic was like.
Sasha Goldstein: A roller coaster, a very fearful one; however, I’ll say in my industry, like interiors, home decor, furniture sort of thrived during the pandemic because everyone was sitting at home, not spending money, not vacationing. So any financial investment went into home improvement, offices, etc.
Miller: Did that work though, even if you make most of your sales through brick and mortar, through people coming in, looking at stuff, touching it and then deciding to buy it?
Goldstein: Well, I’ve made the conscious decision to not sell online. I represent a lot of local artists and makers, so their pieces are not inventory heavy – a lot of them are one of a kind. And then our specialty is really custom area rugs that are handmade all over the world, all natural materials, and we really focus on customization to get it perfect in your space the first time.
Miller: So were people coming in?
Goldstein: A little bit. I’d say it was mostly phone calls, website inquiries, and then a lot of masks and people coming in. But I was here my shortened regular hours, every week, so I showed up and was here … and I’m still here.
Miller: You’re still here. You survived.
Goldstein: Yes, yes.
Miller: Was it ever touch and go?
Goldstein: Well, the city got a little frightening and in periods of time, I would just keep my door locked cause I had multiple occasions where I was verbally accosted and really weighed on my own mental health. So I just decided protection for myself was the best thing and just put a pretty sign up: “Please knock, we are here and open.” That’s changed. I’ve been in Portland a long time, so there’s always a little riffraff, but all in all, it feels a lot better environmentally, I’ll say, in the neighborhood.
Miller: You’ve noticed a major change?
Goldstein: Yeah, major since 2020-2021 for sure, yeah.
Miller: How much foot traffic is there?
Goldstein: It ebbs and flows. This summer tourism was definitely way down. In pre-COVID years, the two summers I experienced, it was almost a revolving door in here. That has really flattened. I work all over the country. I’m not limited to just Portland. So it’s definitely a lot quieter this summer, significantly. It’s ticked up a little bit in September, which has been nice.
Miller [narrating]: Near the library, Rolie spoke with Andru Morgan, the founder of Workshop PDX. He opened the creative space in March. Rolie asked him what he’s been seeing.
Andru Morgan: It’s been good. And I’m really not trying to promote things like Portland Clean & Safe too much or anything, but I do think the concept of individuals walking around cleaning up consistently, security guards walking around consistently, it gives it a safer feel. So outside of the zones where there is a lot of security and other things, I can’t speak to as much, but the foot traffic is pretty solid. I’m in an individual space where the majority of my foot traffic is all out of towners. It’s all people who are coming to visit and they love Portland from this angle that they get a chance to witness it.
So, I like the vibe. It’s a mixture of a little bit of everything. And being off the MAX, I really get a chance to see every single walk of life, from the people who are living on the streets to the people who are probably million and billionaires or something. Yeah, it’s an eclectic mix.
Hernandez: You are maybe like, what, a block-and-a-half away from the library, which has been kind of this epicenter for social services, for community. And it’s also kind of recently got a lot of negative press, so I guess I’m wondering if that’s something you experience?
Morgan: Yeah, the news had to tell me, you know what I mean? So it’s sort of like, I come here every day, I park in the parking garage, I walk up the street, sometimes I go up to the bookstore across the street from the library, our community in this space. I go to the Goodwill to get something to wear. These are my spots.
I kinda got the mentality maybe because I mind my business. I still acknowledge my neighbors. They’re not invisible just because they live on the streets. So I get a head nod or whatever, and I acknowledge people’s space that they take up in the world. But I think it creates a chill space and maybe that could be a perk of just being a larger Black man just in some people’s eyes, that people don’t look at me. But yeah, nah, I’m chill down here. I hear about it on the news, but if not, it don’t spill over. This isn’t some sort of weird war zone. It ain’t like that.
Miller [narrating]: We’re gonna to end our downtown tour with Violet Aveline, Crimson Calagher and Lulu. I stopped them when they were out for a run. I asked Violet how she would describe Portland right now.
Violet Aveline: A lot of opportunity right now to build up from what the pandemic kind of took. That and that entertainment district, I think, did a lot of terrible things for the neighborhood, just making a place to party and not a place to live and work in. So I think there’s a lot of cool things building up right now. I’m pretty positive.
Miller: What makes you feel positive?
Aveline: The community I’m working with. I work with a lot of the other nonprofits around. And I’ve just been going to shows here in Old Town forever and working in downtown. I got the same old downtown vibe that most cities have, so I love it. It’s properly crusty. [Laughs]
Miller: Properly crusty. You mean it should be crusty because it’s a city.
Aveline: Yeah, it is a city. It’s supposed to be lived in, worked in, existed in. It’s supposed to be kind of gnarly. [Laughs]
Miller: But do you feel safe? Because it’s one thing to say crusty and gnarly, it’s another just to say, “I feel safe.”
Aveline: I never feel safe around people, ever. I feel safe in the woods, not around humans. I grew up in a very small town, rural Indiana, and they were some of the worst people I’ve ever met in my life. So I’m like, yeah, I don’t feel safe around people. How about you?
Crimson Calagher: Do I still feel safe in Portland?
Miller: Yeah.
Calagher: In general, yeah. I’ve never had any negative experience that has led me to feel unsafe, I would say. Yeah.
Aveline: How about you, Lulu?
Lulu: I feel safe, but I’m predominantly from Arkansas, so it’s a different scenery. But I feel safe here.
Miller: You do?
Lulu: Yeah.
Miller: Do you like Portland?
Lulu: Yeah, I love Portland.
Miller: What do you love about it?
Lulu: The support. And I don’t mean like financially. I mean like mentally, the support mentally, the mentors that I’ve got since I’ve been here, pretty much. Yeah, the support. It’s a good community here in Portland.
Miller [narrating]: Thanks very much to everybody who stopped to talk with us. I’m always amazed by how many people say yes, they will talk when a stranger walks up to them with a microphone.
[Returned to studio]
We went [to downtown Portland] to get folks’ answers to a pretty simple question: How do you think downtown Portland is doing these days? We’re going to dig deeper into that question right now with three guests in our studio. Todd Zarnitz is the president of the Northwest District Association. Sarah Shaoul is the founder and CEO of Bricks Need Mortar, which advocates for small independent businesses. Ryan Hashagen is an adjunct professor at PSU, the founder of Icicle Tricycles and the director of the Steel Bridge Skatepark Coalition. It’s great to have all three of you on the show.
Todd Zarnitz: Thanks for having us.
Ryan Hashagen: Thanks.
Sarah Shaoul: Thank you.
Miller: Sarah, first – I’m just curious, what stood out to you in those voices we all just heard?
Shaoul: Well, by and large, people really love Portland and they are speaking in contrast to a narrative that has gone national that is just not accurate. And I really loved that there were so many small business voices. I mean, the small business owners are the front line of the city. They are engaging on a daily basis with the people on the street.
And just to jump ahead – it’s no surprise to me that it’s the small business community that’s stepping up that’s providing meals for people who are going without SNAP benefits. They create community. It’s really beautiful to see.
Miller: It wasn’t a fully rosy picture from the small business owners that we heard either. I mean, nobody had a fully rosy picture, but I do agree that one of the themes is that a lot of people saying, “I love this place.” And in various versions, “I wish I felt more comfortable” or “I wish it were a little bit better in some ways” – this was not an uncommon piece of this as well. Todd, what’s it out to you?
Zarnitz: I think it was a great balanced report. And I think what was missing in a way was that it’s interviewing people that are actually downtown; what it’s not interviewing is people that refuse to go downtown for any reason. And those are the people we need to go into downtown. So I think if we took a bus of families from Beaverton and said, “Hey, we’re gonna take a field trip to Portland, give us your impressions at the end of the day what you think,” I think we would hear very different feedback, basically.
Miller: This was absolutely self-selected. These are people who chose, for a variety of reasons, to be there. [We talked to someone] from Fairview. We talked to someone from Chile who didn’t end up on the air, but a lot of people from all over the place. But yes, they had affirmatively chosen to be there. OK, so in some ways, we can’t know for sure because the people you’re talking about were not there. But what do you think you would hear?
Zarnitz: Well, I mean, I think you would hear a lot of concern, probably more concerned about the things that were addressed in the piece about trashy sidewalks or people. I think generally the problem is just kind of crazy, drug-addicted people that are causing great problems. It’s both like really hard to look at and experience, and then there’s an element of danger involved too, you know what I mean? Because you have very unpredictable people, especially concentrated in Chinatown Old Town.
But overall, I think what I was hearing, what stood out to me, is that downtown has gotten incrementally better than, sort of the nadir, but there’s still a while to go.
Miller: How much do you want to hear from people who actually haven’t seen Portland? I mean, one of the arguments that I’ve heard that I have taken to heart is … and this isn’t simply a question of the charge of irresponsible journalism … but what’s the value of saying to somebody who has not been to Portland in five years, “What do you think of Portland?”
Zarnitz: Somehow you have to be self-critical and also champion the downtown, so it gets better. You don’t want to paint such a bad picture that nobody wants to go there, of course, but also you have to be realistic about what the experience is like and how we should work on getting it better.
Miller: Ryan, what about you? What stood out to you in the voices we heard?
Hashagen: Yeah, I really appreciated hearing how people had a perspective on the street and countering the narrative that’s been perpetuated by a select group of concentrated wealth over the last many years. I work in Old Town every single day and I see that there’s both a humanitarian and economic crisis, and a lot of that gets concentrated in Old Town. But these are real people and I appreciated some of the guests humanizing those folks. Our business, we have a manufacturing facility located in the depths of Old Town and I interact with people on a daily basis. I think acknowledging them as people, you learn the stories and you realize it’s not just people shouting at the clouds.
Miller: I mentioned at the beginning recent data from Portland Clean & Safe, saying that visitor numbers, overall foot traffic, has trended up in the last couple of years. But when you look at the graphs that they provided, it’s actually pretty interesting because you can see that visitor numbers are up in the last couple of years. But employee numbers are actually a little bit down, from 2023 to 2025, at a time when maybe there’d been this hope that more and more people, more and more employees, workers would come back to downtown offices or other places – they haven’t been. There are fewer now than there were two years ago. Sarah, how do you explain that?
Shaoul: Well, we’ve changed the way we do things since the pandemic. So many are working from home. I actually met with a restaurant owner from the Pearl yesterday who told me that one of the challenges for a lot of people who work in small businesses is just how far away they live. The affordability crisis requires that people live outside of the communities in which they work. Just traveling downtown, her employees have to spend $400 a month on parking at a restaurant, to get to work. That’s a big challenge for people who work in small businesses.
So we have to be looking more holistically at addressing some of the systemic issues that have been building long before the pandemic. And if we can get real about those and have an appetite to address those things, I think we can actually see some increase in the number of people working in our downtown core.
Miller: But Todd, it also does seem like we are now looking at just a different way to think about the downtown core. Enough time has passed since the initial lockdowns of March of 2020 that we can’t say that what we’re looking at is a temporary pandemic related phenomenon. We’re looking at a new baseline of fewer people, fewer office workers in particular, working downtown. What does that mean for this central core as we knew it?
Zarnitz: Well, I think, the big problem is that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Portland went all in on Class A real estate. Of course, that works for office space. And of course, that works when the model is working, but the pandemic kind of accelerated this again, work-from-home situation.
But I think the real problem with the city is that the city has lost our trust, you know what I mean? Like does this city really care about small businesses and people working in offices? For a couple of years, they really didn’t, they weren’t taking safety very seriously. They weren’t taking the cleanliness of downtown very seriously. They kind of saw those people as privileged, rich. You’re well-to-do people, we don’t really have to care about you. We’re gonna concentrate on this other issue. And instead of making it more clean, more safe and saying less nonsense, they kind of leaned into it and said, this is actually acceptable. And everybody left – appropriately so. If you’re gonna have a …
Miller: Not everybody left.
Zarnitz: Well, the Big Pink just sold at a huge haircut and a lot of other buildings, because everybody, a lot of people left, as far as like working downtown goes. And I think that’s just downtown, but if you look at the Pearl District, too, that’s a better mix of businesses and people that live there, but they also have some huge problems there and lots of vacancies. And I think a lot of that is like, if I’m gonna invest my money as a businessperson in an area, I have to trust the government. I have to trust the city that they’re here to support me. I think that’s missing.
Miller: What would it take for you to say that you do trust the city of Portland? And one of the challenges here I think is talking about, if things have changed so much in terms of both the politicians who are in office, whether we’re looking at the D.A., the mayor or the city council … So there’ve been so many political changes in recent years and even statewide changes about, say, the end of drug decriminalization and then a newly enforcement-based way to think about or to address homelessness. So, it’s a challenge to talk about this in any kind of a static way, but I guess I’m wondering, going forward, what it would take for you to say, “Yes, I trust the city now?”
Zarnitz: That’s a great question. I live in the Northwest District, and we ran into a vagrant with a machete, waving it around a children’s playground. And we called the cops and said like, “Hey, this is unacceptable.” The cops came and said, “Well, he’s allowed to be here and it’s not illegal to have a machete,” and they left. And how do you trust a city that does something like that? I mean, that’s insanity, and I think we’ve rolled back that attitude a lot. But also, these are things that we did experience and were so completely inappropriate that it’s going to take a lot of time to rebuild the idea that the city has the [backs] of the people who live here and the businesses that are here.
Miller: Ryan, I think it’s fair to say that you and Todd have the biggest ideological gulf between the two of you about the way you see Portland right now, and I think the way you’ve seen city leadership in recent years. I’m curious what stands out to you and what Todd is saying? Where is there agreement and where is there a disagreement?
Hashagen: Well, I do agree that downtown has changed and the business model of downtown has changed. At one point, having it be a concentration of an office park is really not where we’re at these days. Portland has a creative, energetic and artistic hub that really is where it could be a future of the city. Us having a business model of just downtown office towers as something that needs to be refocused upon, and we need to channel that energy and use the kind of creativity that Portland has with food carts, the bookstores and other elements to be able to bring people into the city.
Miller: Sarah, we’ve heard in recent weeks on this show, and before that, about various efforts to activate – the favorite word of urban planners now – empty storefronts. And there have been some examples of that happening, but how successful overall do you think that’s been?
Shaoul: I’m cautiously optimistic about those efforts, and the reason being is I think we have to be really thoughtful about how we support those small businesses that we invite to activate these spaces. We have to set them up to be successful and make sure that we’re not just using them to activate space, because it’s really challenging in this moment to be a small business owner. The factors are compounding more than ever before. Whether it’s the high cost of labor, the fact that small businesses are trying to figure out how to support their employees with health care, addressing access to capital, how small businesses are impacted by extreme weather events, and getting very little support when those things happen and they’re becoming more and more common. We have to be looking at these things.
So if we’re going to look at how to activate space, we have to be really thoughtful about understanding the metrics for success and be looking at what businesses can be successful in these vacant spaces.
Miller: What have you heard from retailers in particular about the challenges that they’re facing right now, as opposed to, say, restaurants, entertainment venues or offices that we were talking about before?
Shaoul: All have their unique challenges, but they’re all challenged – and I mentioned some of those challenges before. The high cost of labor continues to be very, very difficult. Tariffs, uncertainty about the costs of materials, and rents continue to be very high. And I’ve been hearing from many small businesses that they are holding steady, sales are good, but margins are down. So the same amount of effort equals less revenue is the overall story that I’m hearing from most of the small businesses I talked to.
Miller: Ryan, you want to jump in there?
Hashagen: Yeah, I just see that there’s new businesses moving into Old Town and downtown as well. There’s a new vibrancy to downtown. I know our business in 2021, we invested and purchased a new-to-us building in Old Town – a 30,000 square foot manufacturing facility – because we see that the city is on an upswing, that there is this creative energy that is brought by these new businesses and is a great place to do business.
Miller: Todd, why have you stayed in Portland?
Zarnitz: Portland is a great place. I grew up on the East Coast and kind of came out here in about 2017. And I don’t know, there’s so many fun, awesome things about it. I love this time of year where, like after 4:30, it’s hard to tell if it’s like five o’clock, eight o’clock or 11 o’clock. I love the rain. I think the best thing about Portland is it’s a very creative space, you know what I mean? It’s a place where you can do your own thing, people aren’t gonna look at you funny for trying new things. So it’s a very vibrant, creative town. There aren’t many towns like this and it’s very new.
Miller: So, you still feel that way despite the challenges that you’ve seen or the complaints that you have with leadership or the last couple of years.
Zarnitz: Yeah. In fact, that’s why I’m involved. A lot of people that kind of came in with the neighborhood associations and business associations at the time I did, which was a couple of years ago … we were like, something’s going terribly wrong. Nobody’s here to stop the chaos or nobody really kind of cares about it. We care about this town. And if nobody else is going to do it, we’re going to step up and try to make this thing what it should be.
Miller: So then what would you say to those people … was it Wilsonville or Beaverton? I forgot your example earlier, but the people that we didn’t hear from because they were not where we were.
Zarnitz: Yeah, I don’t think it’s the town for them, to be honest.
Miller: OK, well, maybe you reject the premise of my question. [Laughter] My question was going to be, if you want to get them to come to Portland to visit, to experience the wonderfulness that Portland can provide, what would you say?
Zarnitz: This is my answer: What we desperately need is a minimum set of acceptable standards for public behavior. We don’t have that. People have sort of a depressing way of living down to your minimum expectations. Right now, it’s sort of getting better, but especially if you go to Old Town Chinatown, there is just nonsense going on down there. And I think at some point you just have to say, enough of the nonsense. And we have the laws on the books, we have a police force, we have a court system, but nobody really wants to use it because it’s like kind of like, “Well, I don’t feel nice about cleaning up vagrants or somebody sleeping in the doorway, we should just kind of let them be.”
I think we have to redefine what “nice” is. It’s really not nice to let a person die a slow street death. That’s not nice at all. I think we just don’t want to make a hard choice to put that person on a better path. That’s getting in the way of cleaning up the town and getting people back to where they should be in life.
Hashagen: Yeah, as a business owner in Old Town, I would, in the same sense of asking folks in Beaverton to come down to Portland, I would ask Portland residents to come down to Old Town as well. Right now, the visibility of that humanitarian and economic crisis becomes so much more apparent because there’s not the range of uses that there might have been or the range of people in Old Town that there was in 2018 when you had Ground Score, Backspace and all these different establishments. But you also had these traditional social services that have been there 100 years – Union Gospel, Blanchet House and Salvation Army were founded in Old Town.
So Old Town was at its best when it was a mix of uses. It’s always been a place of refuge for cultural communities, and that’s why we have great establishments like Lan Su Chinese Gardens and the Japanese American Museum. But it’s been a place of refuge, but also a place of artistic expression. So I would invite Todd and others to come down to Old Town and see what it is right now. It’s not just people sleeping in doorways.
Miller: Todd Zarnitz, Ryan Hashagen and Sarah Shaoul, thanks very much.
Zarnitz: Thanks.
Shaoul: Thanks for having us.
Hashagen: Thank you.
Miller: Sarah Shaoul is the founder and CEO of Bricks Need Mortar, which supports small independent businesses, especially those that are actual places, brick and mortar stores. Ryan Hashagen is an adjunct professor in urban planning at PSU. He is the founder of Icicle Tricycles and the director of the Steel Bridge Skatepark Coalition. And Todd Zarnitz is the president of the Northwest District Association.
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