A vacant Main Street storefront in Pendleton, Ore. on Dec. 15, 2025.
Antonio Sierra / OPB
After spending years dangling carrots to boost the number of downtown businesses, the City of Pendleton is ready to wield a stick.
The Pendleton City Council passed an ordinance Tuesday meant to crack down on downtown building owners with long-term vacancies. Starting next year, landlords will be required to register vacant buildings with the city and create plans to fill the spaces, or potentially face thousands of dollars in penalties.
But Pendleton’s downtown area isn’t struggling to attract businesses. Replete with century-old, redbrick buildings, downtown is anchored by several businesses that have thrived there for decades. City surveys show that more than 9 out of every 10 downtown storefronts are occupied.
Despite the successes, Pendleton city officials say that the ordinance is necessary to keep the downtown area competitive and disincentivize apathy from local landlords.
“This policy is only to punish when folks are being deliberately malicious or acting on purpose to hold their space hostage,” said Addison Schulberg, a Pendleton city councilor and a downtown business owner.
A new ordinance with a small target
Charles Denight is largely satisfied with the state of the downtown area.
Denight is the associate director of the Pendleton Development Commission, a city agency that oversees economic development downtown and in the surrounding areas.
He pointed out that Main Street occupancy rose from 75% in 2012 to 87% this year. Occupancy across the downtown area is above 90%.
Denight said the development commission has taken steps to boost growth in the downtown area, from grants for commercial building renovation to the Path to Success Challenge, a program that grants local entrepreneurs $20,000 to start a new business.
But Denight said not every building owner is open to meeting demand. He said these building owners usually live out of the area and may have inherited the building from a relative.
“People inherit buildings because their great-great-granddad built it, and it’s just come down through the family,” he said. “They don’t want to let it go. It’s like an heirloom that they’re putting up on a shelf.”
The ordinance tries to push back against this by having all owners of buildings that have been vacant for more than 30 days register with the city.
Each vacant building owner will be required to assign a registered manager who lives within 50 miles of the property, and to create a plan on how they plan to fill the vacancy. If the building owner fails to meet these criteria or follow their plan, they could be fined up to $1,000 and up to $2,000 for each repeat violation.
Denight said plans don’t need to be comprehensive, and the hope is that the city won’t actually assess any fines. “We want nobody to pay fees, because what we want are the buildings to be occupied with merchants and restaurants that can really add to the vitality of the downtown,” he said.
Both Denight and Schulberg praised the downtown area for its resiliency. For decades, downtown Pendleton was the city’s only major commercial district, and its offerings were diverse: restaurants, hotels, pharmacies and retail of all kinds. But successive waves of big box retailers and online shopping forced the downtown area to adapt, city officials said. Today, downtown Pendleton still contains plenty of dining, but many retailers are catering to tourists and visitors instead of locals.
The ‘greater good’
With the city council on the verge of voting to pass the vacancy ordinance Tuesday night, Mayor McKennon McDonald said she had been quiet during most of the process, but she now felt compelled to speak.
McDonald said she would support the council’s decision, but she didn’t get why her colleagues were prioritizing this issue. The downtown area was already mostly full, and she worried that the new rules would infringe on personal property rights.
She added that other Oregon cities with similar rules had longer “runways” before enforcement.
The city surveyed several rural communities in Oregon and Washington with a building vacancy code already on the books. Multiple outside city officials said they were prioritizing other projects or had no need to enforce these rules.
Several city councilors said they shared McDonald’s concerns, but they felt that the vacancy ordinance is for the “greater good” of the downtown area and is broadly supported by downtown business owners. Whatever heartburn McDonald had about the ordinance, the city charter meant that, as mayor, she didn’t get a vote.
The council ultimately voted unanimously for the vacancy ordinance after holding a public hearing at which no one spoke for or against it.
