Downtown isn’t what she used to be. The small, poorly lit, slightly dirty Safeway has long since been demolished and replaced by a shinier version topped by higher-end apartments. The ever-boring Buffalo Exchange has replaced Ozone Records, the grungy little record store that used to be across from Powell’s that added so much flavor to the downtown experience.
This is what Portlanders have been witnessing all over downtown. Wherever you turn, something old and cool is being replaced with a sterile, bigger, corporate-sponsored version. The trend was started by Starbucks in the early ’90s, but has spread to all levels of our society.
But is a little grit so bad? It seems ridiculous to think that Portland’s downtown has to be sterilized. This new situation Portland’s downtown is beginning to face recalls strong memories of the famous Orson Welles quote from the classic film The Third Man: “Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love-they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
Not to say that Portland should be or ever was a violent city, far from it. But that quote speaks to the idea that a little unrest can serve as the figurative primordial ooze that gives birth to so many great accomplishments. If the developers get their way, the fear is that Portland will have a downtown made up of fancy condos and high-end retailers with a population of the positively elite. And in order to be as artsy as they’d like to imagine the more wealthy downtown will be, they’ll have to start bussing the starving artists over from the eastside in the evenings.
Local developer Tom Moyer has a vision of downtown where the upper class can glide on the light rail or from upper-end shops to the front doors of fancy restaurants. At the end of the evening, they can ride back to their palatial ultra-modern condos in the sky.
Moyer’s first project in this ilk was the Fox Tower. Once again, according to an article that appeared in The Oregonian a few weeks ago, he is “betting hundreds of millions of his own dollars” on a new building called The Park Avenue West tower that will lie just west of Nordstrom.
There are enough upper-end malls in the world. Does our downtown have to become one too? If you want a clean, safe, pretty, overly planned upper-class community, you can have it. It’s called The Pearl. Let downtown remain what it has been for decades: a diverse and eclectic community. The concern now is that the soul of the city will be tarnished or, worse yet, killed if we allow developers to make it all new and squeaky-clean.
The biggest concern, however, should be the less fortunate members of our community who very well could be threatened by the build-up of the gentrification movement currently underway. Thankfully, some low-end housing will still remain. There will be a lower-income neighbor next to the Civic, a building being erected in the space that formerly was occupied by the Civic Apartments, a lower-income building. The presence of a low-income building next to the Civic was a requirement by the city.
Yes, more money downtown could be a good thing for Portland. But let’s not forget what brought so many of us here, or kept us here: Portland’s accessibility. It’s not just another cold downtown center like other cities around the country. You can walk around and feel the personality of the place. Just look at buildings like the Portland Outdoor Store. From the outside it looks slightly dilapidated, but it’s got so much soul, and it can serve as a window into our past. Buildings like that are the features on Portland’s face that take it from ordinary to unique. It’s hard to imagine starting up at a new construction high-rise with its hundreds of feet of glass and steel and feeling its presence other than on a monumental scale.
Let’s make sure we work hard to retain our mix of new and old as Portland develops. It would be a shame to see developers throw away our city’s personality by striving for the almighty dollar.