Jessie Burke owns the Society Hotel in Portland’s Old Town Chinatown and volunteers as chairperson of the Old Town Community Association. She watches the neighborhood decline as it suffers from what she sees as the city’s badly skewed enforcement priorities.

“We get parking tickets, and I see a hatchet fight two hours later,” Burke said. “It’s the craziest thing to reconcile in your mind.”

Old Town Chinatown has long been one of Portland’s roughest neighborhoods, but conditions have deteriorated precipitously since the pandemic began, according to community representatives. Now, tents line the sidewalks. Loud arguments break out at all hours. Cleanup personnel battle needles and human waste.

On Tuesday, the Old Town Community Association held a press conference to kick off a 90-day “reset plan” to improve conditions in the neighborhood. The event seemed to be designed as a rallying point for neighborhood businesses and nonprofits, while increasing pressure on Mayor Ted Wheeler and other city officials to boost law enforcement’s presence and clean up the area.

The neighborhood group laid out several goals it wants the city to achieve within 90 days:

• reduce person-on-person crime by 40 percent;
• reduce property crimes by 50 percent;
• increase lighting, including reinforcement of red lampposts to support the weight of string lights;
• organize a Zoom meet-and-greet with police offers (Portland police officers should know the name of at least one person at each business or residence, and business owners or nonprofit directors should know the name of at least one Portland police officer in Old Town Chinatown); and
• implement mental health response teams with Blanchet House, a nonprofit shelter and kitchen on Northwest Glisan Street.

Old Town Chinatown is adjacent to downtown Portland, separated only by West Burnside Street. But in contrast to other adjacent neighborhoods such as the West End and Goose Hollow, real estate and community development in Old Town Chinatown has been sparse.

The Old Town Community Association holds weekly calls with the Wheeler’s office, Burke said. But Old Town representatives have seen crime and grime persist. With only 400 police officers or so assigned to patrol the whole city, incident response lags, Burke said.

“This is the plan: There is no plan,” she said.

Wheeler, in response to questions from the 91ĘÓƵ, indicated more help would be coming.

“The requests made by the Old Town Community Association are very reasonable,” Wheeler stated in an email via a spokesperson. “Oldtowners are asking to go to work peacefully, attend college, make a living or visit Old Town’s unique stores, bars, restaurants and cultural attractions. I intend to help them in the weeks ahead and ask others to join with me. Portland Oldtowners’ never-give-up attitude deserves our full support.”

Lacking an adequate police presence, Old Town business owners have increasingly turned to private security services such as Echelon Protective Services, as in December. Echelon security guards were present at Tuesday’s press conference.

Still, the efforts haven’t stopped deaths and shootings in the neighborhood. Jaquan Jenkins, 26, was killed in a shooting at Northwest Second Avenue and Couch Street early in the morning of Jan. 28, according to police. On Christmas Eve 2021, Derrick Kenreko Marshall, 41, was fatally shot at Northwest Sixth Avenue and Davis Street.

Living in the neighborhood has become difficult for residents, many of whom have low incomes. Leonard Keck, 52, said he was relieved when he got an electric wheelchair that allows him much greater mobility. But the presence of tents on many sidewalks complicates his trips.

“The tents, they don’t give me room on the sidewalks,” Keck said. “Half the time, I have to go into the middle of the road.”

Keck said trips have become so troublesome that he hesitates to leave his apartment in Musolf Manor, an Innovative Housing property.

Meanwhile, real estate development in the neighborhood has slowed despite its proximity to downtown. The neighborhood has seen an influx of affordable housing projects, including The Starlight, a Central City Concern project that Walsh Construction is building. Formerly the Westwind Apartments, The Starlight will offer 100 deeply affordable apartments when complete.

Old Town Chinatown is entirely within Portland’s opportunity zone, offering capital gains tax benefits to investors. Maximum heights in portions of the neighborhood were increased by the Central City 2035 zoning plan. Height limits vary but reach 460 feet on some properties.

Business and city officials are working to combat a proliferation of storefront vacancies. Upper Playground, an apparel shop and art gallery in business since 2016, announced on Instagram that it would close permanently on Sunday. Other closures since the pandemic began have included hip Mexican restaurant Mi Mero Mole and a Starbucks.

But other businesses are showing signs of life. Karl Dinkelspiel, a project manager at Prosper Portland, is tracking several openings:

• Deadstock Coffee plans to expand into the vacant former Mi Mero Mole space at Northwest Fifth Avenue and Couch Street, Dinkelspiel said. (Deadstock Coffee owner Ian Williams could not be reached for comment).
• OpenHAUS, a co-working business that caters to entrepreneurs of color, has taken approximately 5,000 square feet at Northwest Third Avenue and Davis Street.
• Goodies, a new market and plant nursery, will open on the 200 block of Northwest Davis Street.
• Cycle Portland, which closed briefly, will reopen at Northwest Third and Davis.
• A new arts and event space, Homies, is planned for Northwest Fourth Avenue and Glisan Street.

Prosper Portland is following a strategy laid out in a May 2021 ECONorthwest report to activate Old Town Chinatown, Dinkelspiel said.

“We’re following the strategy as best we can and with the resources we have available to us,” he said.

Prosper Portland also follows its five-year action plan. The agency has funded storefront improvements and repairs.

Matt Goodman, vice president of Downtown Development Group, said the neighborhood has suffered from the “spillover effects” of a concentration of social service organizations that hasn’t been managed well by city or Multnomah County officials.

“By any measure, that’s been a tremendous failure in Old Town,” he said. “If you walk or drive through Old Town, it’s heartbreaking.”

Downtown Development Group owns neighborhood parking lots that have not yet been snapped up for redevelopment. Other properties the family firm owns have been sold for redevelopment, including Block 216 for the Ritz-Carlton tower, or in the case of Eleven West, redeveloped with partners.

As part of the 90-day pilot program announced this week, the Office of Civic Life will step up graffiti removal, and Downtown Portland Clean & Safe will pick up litter. But business owners are looking to the city to do more.

Burke said she asked city officials what they plan to do for the neighborhood. They turned the task back to Burke, asking her to come up with goals to accomplish, she said. That she has done.

“You might regret asking me to write the goals,” Burke said, “because that becomes your deliverables.”

The post A search for solutions in Portland’s Old Town appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Downtown Portland Clean & Safe recently released its 2018 Development/Redevelopment Report, and it shows that a record construction boom is still under way in the city.

Currently, 48 construction projects are active in the Central City – an enhanced services district defined as downtown Portland, the West End, the University District, the River District, the South Waterfront District, the Central Eastside Industrial District and the Lloyd District. The 2017 report tallied 45 active projects.

The annual report presents construction and development patterns over the past five years. Highlights this year include the revelation that Central City office vacancy rates increased slightly from 10.5 percent a year ago to 12.8 percent. Citywide, the office vacancy rate is just 9.5 percent. According to Colliers, rental rates in the Central City average $31, with Class A rates at $35 and Class C at $25.

“At the core, these rates reflect the fundamental stability of downtown’s finance, insurance and real estate sectors,” the report states.

Meanwhile, the citywide residential vacancy rate fell from 5.4 percent to 4.3 percent over the same time period. Correspondingly, since 2011 more than 5,000 residential units have been built in the Central City, with 3,300 additional residential units coming in 19 projects now under construction. Also, 2,000 more units in four projects are in some phase of development.

Hotels are another growth area, with more than 3,000 new rooms expected to come online by the end of 2019, said Jeff Miller, CEO of Travel Portland and a Downtown Portland Clean & Safe board member.

“These additional rooms not only help meet business and tourist visitor demand,” he said, “but, for the local market, they directly expand on the more than 35,000 tourism-related jobs the industry already supports in Portland.”

In light of the rapid pace of ongoing construction, Portland developer Jordan Menashe believes there is potential for more growth. But he also cautioned against over-optimism, particularly when considering the ups and downs of the typical real estate cycle.

“From somebody that works downtown and lives downtown and knows downtown, I’ll tell you that I think there’s more space on the market from an office standpoint than we think,” he said. “And with interest rates ticking up, I think that we need to be cautiously optimistic, with a little bit more emphasis on the cautious portion. Nobody has a crystal ball, but nobody knows how tough it can (be) until it really gets tough.”

Mike Salsgiver, executive director of the Associated General Contractors Oregon-Columbia chapter, had a similar takeaway.

“The only concern I have as someone who’s watched the economy a long time is that this is a long-in-the-tooth recovery,” he said. “I know that it’s a part of a cycle and at some point the cycle will crest and head down. But right now we’re not seeing an immediate danger.”

For the time being, Salsgiver added, contractors’ biggest problem still is finding enough skilled trades workers.

“Everybody that I talk to in the industry is telling me that their project pipeline is full,” he said. “The two biggest challenges remain that they cannot find enough skilled workers to do the work, and they can’t find the subcontractors they need.”

The report also touches on the housing crisis that continues to envelop Portland. Just 10 percent of the new residential units built in recent years are considered “affordable,” according to the report, while the city’s 2017 inclusionary housing rules have almost completely halted development applications.

The medium- and long-term implications are somewhat mixed. Prior to the program beginning in February 2017, developers submitted permits for more than 19,000 housing units across the city, mainly to ensure profitability. During the first year of the program, however, only 17 new residential permits were filed. That is likely to have a substantial ripple effect on the local construction industry in coming years.

“It’s huge,” Menashe said. “We don’t develop multifamily, but I do know the spigot has turned off. The numbers don’t lie. Especially with rising interest rates, it cannot pencil for multifamily developers to have to do this. The city would get more with honey than they have with vinegar, which is inclusionary zoning.”

The Downtown Portland Clean & Safe District covers a 213-square-block area. Businesses in this area pay for services that include cleaning, security, community justice services, market research and retail advocacy.

The complete report, including a full list of current Central City projects, is available at: .

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