Comments on: Minority report asks for Coliseum RFP delay /news/2010/04/13/minority-report-asks-for-coliseum-rfp-delay/ Building and Construction News in Portland, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest Sun, 18 Apr 2010 03:17:45 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.6 By: Mike Fisher /news/2010/04/13/minority-report-asks-for-coliseum-rfp-delay/#comment-19751 Sun, 18 Apr 2010 03:17:45 +0000 /?p=51702#comment-19751 I really think people need to focus on how ALL of these proposals will stir up job creation. As a local Oregon contractor, I must say that my industry has been hit the hardest by this economy. During the Great Depression, the president of the United States helped to fund the construction of the Bonneville Dam. That helped to create the cheapest electrical services in the nation that fueled the largest shipbuilders to relocate to Portland. This created tens of thousands of jobs in Portland. Several people from the south moved to Oregon, including a large number of African Americans. The district where the Memorial Coliseum now stands was once a thriving African American community that worked in the shipyards. They lived and worked in the district which was nicknamed “Jumptown”. We have an opportunity to create the desperately needed jobs like we did during the Great Depression.

Fast forward to 2010…Portland has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the nation. There is an opportunity to create thousands of jobs. So far I’ve seen two of the three proposers pick non local General Contractors, and that is the one thing that absolutely no one is focusing on. “MARC” has teamed with Howard S. Wright, a Washington based General, and “VMAC” has teamed with Kiewit Corporation, an Omaha, Nebraska based contractor. The Blazers have not yet announced who they plan to use, but I’m counting on them to be responsible and choose a company that is truly owned and operated in Oregon. Given the track record of the Rose Garden, Turner (German Owned) / JE Dunn (Kansas City), they might go down the same path as the rest of the teams.

The Blazers are teaming with developer Cordish who on their last project, “Kansas City Lights”, located in Kansas City, had a lot of problems from the minority community, but at least they hired local Kansas based contractor, JE Dunn, to do the work. Most Oregonians don’t realize that while a lot of the General contractors such as Turner (German Owned), Skanska (Swiss Owned), JE Dunn (Kansas City), Howards S. Wright (Seattle Washington), Kiewit Corporation (Omaha Nebraska) have offices in Oregon but are not Oregon based.

This means that the profits the companies make, do not recirculate in the Oregon economy. When you’re talking about millions of tax dollars going to these projects, it is irresponsible to hire non-local contractors and negligent when you’re talking about non-American owned companies such as Turner and Skanska. We have a host of locally owned General Contractors with great track records including: Hoffman, Anderson, Walsh, Emerick, R&H to name a few. While my firm is too small to go after such a large project, I’d rather see local contractors when it comes to publicly funded projects, because the money stays in our economy. Let’s hope the Blazers don’t go down the same road they did when they built the Rose Garden hiring Turner/JE Dunn to be their contractor (keep our dollars in our COMMUNITY!!!). I love reading the 91Ƶ, and I hope it will write an article about how many jobs are being taken from the qualified local General Contractors.

]]> By: Council moves coliseum proposals forward « Daily Journal of Commerce – Building and Construction News in Portland, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest /news/2010/04/13/minority-report-asks-for-coliseum-rfp-delay/#comment-19405 Thu, 15 Apr 2010 02:10:21 +0000 /?p=51702#comment-19405 […] some councilors also sympathized with concerns raised in a minority report submitted to the council by five members of the Rose Quarter Stakeholder Advisory Committee, that […]

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