Locals call it “The Pit”.  It’s a giant rectangular hole in the heart of downtown Salem.

A 70-year-old marble and granite bank once stood on the southeast corner of Liberty and Chemeketa streets, where a fence partially conceals the rubble left behind nearly nine years after the building was torn down and its 14-foot basement was excavated.

The demolition debris is now mixed with overgrown vegetation and scattered trash, including a twin mattress, a blue recycling bin, and several orange and white city of Salem barricades.

The property has a complicated history, with multiple owners and developers abandoning plans to redevelop the site over the years due to high construction costs and constraints within the downtown historic district.

The current owner, FT LLC, reacquired the property last year and expressed desire to build a surface parking lot for the adjacent building it owns. But that plan is not currently permitted under the city zoning code.

FT LLC has submitted a land use application with the city. It’s the first official redevelopment proposal since the bank building was demolished in 2017. The previous one involved a combination of housing and retail space. Other similar plans were conceptualized but never advanced beyond the pre-application conference phase.

The plight of the property dates to 2001, when Wells Fargo closed its Liberty Street branch not long after merging with First Security Bank.

Officials determined the First Security location at 580 State St. offered more usable space, a larger parking lot and better access for vehicles, so they consolidated the two downtown branches. Wells Fargo Advisors still operates at the State Street location.

Wells Fargo occupied the Liberty location after acquiring First Interstate Bank, formerly First National, in 1996. First National constructed the building in 1947 on the site of a former service station.

The 21,400-square-foot building was designed by renowned Portland architect Pietro Belluschi; its exterior was sheathed with dark granite on the 8-foot base and white marble above.

Eight large cameo carvings by sculptor Frederic Littman, now referred to as relief sculptures, decorated the western marble face and portrayed the industrial and commercial life of the Salem region.

The bank president called the design “an edifice of pleasing architectural beauty.” The Oregon Statesman reported the cost of the building to be $500,000 — equivalent to $7.4 million today.

The interior featured a mezzanine above the rear of the ground floor and the main safe deposit vault in the basement, which extended underneath the sidewalk of Chemeketa Street. The basement also contained an employee cafeteria and mechanical rooms.

Over the course of seven decades, the bank employed countless residents and served the financial needs of generations of customers before Wells Fargo closed the branch and sold the property.

SP Development purchased nearly half a downtown block in 2005, including the bank building at 280 Liberty St. N.E. The deal took more than two years due to environmental concerns about underground fuel tanks at 277 High St. N.E, the former city hall site and parking lot since 1972.

The group, which included the Colson family and former Holiday Retirement Corp. senior managers, supported a plan for mixed-use development but determined that rehabilitation of the bank building would be cost prohibitive and economically unviable. In other words, it would not generate enough profit to justify the expense.

SP Development requested permission from the city in 2008 to demolish the building, which had structural deficiencies and would have required significant seismic and safety upgrades. Their application estimated reusing the existing building would cost between $6.6 million and $9.8 million.

The bank was in the downtown historic district and designated as a historic contributing resource. That meant demolition plans had to be approved by the city’s Historic Landmarks Commission.

Approval was granted in September 2008.

The Statesman Journal archives show various tenants occupied portions of the building while demolition plans languished, including a title company, bead store, mortgage company and pain center.

Nearly eight years later, in 2016, SP Development sold the bank and the parking lot to the east to FT LLC for $1.77 million.

The new owners, associated with Pacific Office Automation, submitted their own plans to demolish the bank building and redevelop the property. Their proposal was approved under three conditions, including the prominent display of the preserved marble relief sculptures on any new building.

It took three days to remove the eight sculptures from the west façade before the bank could be torn down. Each one was 5 feet tall, 6 feet wide, and 6 inches thick.

A conservator cleaned, palletized and covered the sculptures for storage in a Portland-area warehouse, where they remain today.

Demolition of the building was completed in the fall of 2017, creating The Pit as we know it today.

FT LLC never followed through with redevelopment. Once again, the city understood financing to be the biggest obstacle.

Mountain West Investment Corp. stepped up to purchase and develop the site in 2019, proposing to build more than 150 apartments by Salem Center mall as part of a project including two mixed-use buildings with ground-floor retail space.

Local architects were enlisted to draft drawings, and a pre-application conference was held with city officials before Mountain West backed out. A Mountain West representative told the Statesman Journal at the time that the deal fell apart due to high construction costs.

FT LLC eventually found a buyer for The Pit and the parking lot properties.

DD Citizen LLC, associated with Deacon Development, purchased the properties in November 2024. Deacon built the Rivenwood Apartments at the former Nordstrom site downtown.

New ownership translated into new hope for redevelopment of The Pit, but within seven months that was gone, too.

Deacon planned to develop both sites but within seven months had steered away from The Pit, repeating what their predecessors discovered — redevelopment was economically unviable.

Company officials said the site presented infrastructure challenges, including a high water table and stormwater connectivity issues, and additional conditions and costs related to historic overlay requirements.

New construction projects within Salem’s downtown historic district must go through a design review process and meet requirements intended to preserve the character of a designated historic district.

DD Citizen LLC sold The Pit property back to FT LLC in June 2025.

A few months later, Deacon crews broke ground on a $25 million, six-story, mixed-use building on the High Street property. The Citizen Apartments will include 105 units (a mix of studios and one-bedroom and two-bedroom units) and ground-floor commercial space.

City staff welcomed the project’s potential to revitalize an area that lagged other parts of downtown, holding out hope that The Pit will be next.

“Maybe when the apartment complex opens, now that the Forge is redeveloped, and if JCPenney is redeveloped, that might be a catalyst to moving things along in some way,” said Lisa Anderson-Ogilvie, the city’s planning administrator.

The Pit remains an eyesore while progress is made on the neighboring apartment building; completion is slated for spring 2027.

FT LLC has removed trash at the site multiple times and considered removing the demolition debris, but the city told the company that archaeologists would need to be involved. The debris now includes large chunks of granite and new layers of trash.

Local developers agree that constructing a mixed-use building at the site — something the city has hoped for since the bank was demolished — would be feasible but costly.

FT LLC submitted a land use application in January, proposing a surface parking lot exclusively for the building to the south. Pacific Office Automation occupies much of the ground floor, but the remainder of the building is apparently vacant. Exterior signs and interior fixtures and furniture for a taco restaurant remain even though it closed more than a year ago.

The preliminary site plan shows 26 parking spaces in the lot, with entry from Chemeketa Street through the alley east of the property.

The city reviewed the application for completeness in February, outlining additional information needed to address several items. One requires a list of all members of the company involved with the land use application request to identify any potential conflicts of interest.

BRAND Land Use is listed as the applicant and owner Britany Randall as the agent for FT LLC. Randall responded to a Statesman Journal inquiry but declined to answer questions on behalf of the property owner.

The city’s completeness review noted that constructing a surface parking lot would require a property line adjustment to consolidate the property with the abutting one to the south.

“As discussed at the pre-application conference, a stand-alone surface parking lot on a separate lot is only allowed as Commercial Parking … where such parking is available to the public and not exclusively accessory to a specific use or development,” the review stated.

The review also noted the need to apply for a variance because a surface parking lot would deviate from one of the conditions of the 2017 historic demolition approval for the bank building. An applicant for proposed development is required to use the eight Littman relief panels on the exterior of a new building.

City planners have since met with FT LLC representatives to discuss different options, including a parking garage with public access.

Parking lots, in general, are considered a detriment to the vibrancy of any downtown area, not only diminishing the charm necessary to attract visitors but reducing tax revenue.

Liam Bean, land use chair for the Central Area Neighborhood Development Organization, said CANDO “strongly opposes the construction of new surface parking lots without addition of retail space or dwelling units in downtown Salem.”

Downtown Salem has other voids to fill besides The Pit, including Block 50 to the west where the former Union Gospel Mission once stood.

The city began acquiring buildings on the block in 2020, including the UGM, ABC Music and Saffron Building Supply, with the intention of using the properties to help revitalize the downtown core. Its vision for the site is housing or offices with a mix of services on the ground floor, including restaurants, coffee shops, brewpubs, a grocery store or other retail.

Demolition of Block 50 began in the winter of 2022, leaving its own mini hole in the ground near the corner of Commercial and Chemeketa.

But there is only one Pit.

Developers and city planners agree that timing is everything. For The Pit, property conditions, the market and economy, and construction prices have yet to align in the 25 years since the bank closed.

The good news is that lessons have been learned through the struggle to redevelop the property.

The city’s historic code has undergone a major overhaul, more closely tying new construction to a demolition permit. The Holman Hotel on the former Marion Car Park property is a good example. The city had a proposed use to consider when reviewing the proposed demolition of the car park.

The Pit’s fate likely won’t be known for months.

FT LLC has 180 days from the date of submission to provide information and materials requested by the city. The application will expire July 22 if not deemed complete prior to that.

The land use application process can be lengthy. Decisions are complex and never made lightly due to the impact they can have on the community for generations.

“Once something is built, it will be there for a very long time,” Anderson-Ogilvie said. “Sometimes, I think it’s better to wait for a use more consistent with our vision for downtown.”

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in The Statesman Journal and then was distributed on the USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.

The post ‘The Pit’ in downtown Salem faces uncertain redevelopment future appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A vampiric restaurant and nightclub could be the first new business at Centennial Mills, a defunct former flour mill in Northwest Portland.

An early assistance application for Lestat Nightclub to operate at 1362 N.W. Naito Parkway was submitted to Portland Permitting & Development on Nov. 21.

The commercial concept is the latest twist for Centennial Mills, a 4.4-acre riverfront parcel that has long resisted redevelopment schemes.

The nightclub would reside in an existing building that was vacated by the Portland Police Bureau‘s Mounted Patrol in 2017, according to city documents.

That raises questions about the fate of a sweeping redevelopment plan for Centennial Mills that was approved by the Portland Design Commission in October. SERA Architects‘ design for the project, which was officially valued at $80 million, called for three new buildings encompassing 272 residential units and four retail spaces.

The two-story ex-Mounted Patrol building was not part of the plan presented to the Design Commission and would have to be demolished to make way for the new buildings.

Representatives of Lindquist Development, the site’s owner and developer, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Ryan Wilson, a Vancouver architect who is designing the Lestat Nightclub, said the restaurant-nightclub idea is preliminary.

“At this point, it’s a very conceptual idea,” he said.

No lease has been signed for the nightclub, Wilson added.

Members of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association were unaware of the Lestat Nightclub proposal, said Stan Penkin, a former PDNA chairman and Pearl District resident.

“It’s news to us,” he said.

Penkin said it was concerning to see a different, much-scaled-down plan after the Design Commission approved a major redevelopment.

“It makes me wonder if the developer of the apartments is backing off, which would be extremely disappointing, as you might imagine,” he said.

The parcel is located across Northwest Naito Parkway from Fields Park in the North Pearl District.

The ex-Mounted Patrol building has approximately 38,000 square feet, divided between two floors. The change of use for the restaurant and nightclub would likely trigger a required seismic upgrade, Wilson wrote to Permitting & Development officials in a Nov. 11 letter.

The project would also require new shear walls, and roof and floor diaphragm upgrades, Wilson wrote.

Lestat is the name of Tom Cruise’s character in the film “Interview with the Vampire,” and the Anne Rice novels that inspired the film and TV series.

For more than 20 years, city officials sought to redevelop Centennial Mills. A series of private developers investigated building on the property before backing out of negotiations with the Portland Development Commission and its successor agency, Prosper Portland.

In September 2024, Prosper Portland sold the property to MLR Ventures, controlled by the Ralston family, for $1.25 million. The Ralstons then conveyed the property to an entity linked to Lindquist Development.

The post Vampire-themed nightclub proposed at Centennial Mills appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced the selection of $6.85 million in Brownfields Grants to communities in Oregon. Nationwide, $267 million in grants are being awarded.

Federal grant recipients must satisfy legal and administrative requirements to receive funds from EPA, an EPA press release states. Brownfield Grants include Assessment, Revolving Loan Fund, and Cleanup Grants.

Assessment Grants will provide funding for brownfield inventories, planning, environmental assessments and community outreach. Oregon is receiving four Assessment Grants.

• The city of Beaverton will receive $500,000;
• Northwest Oregon Economic Alliance will receive $1.2 million;
• the city of Portland will receive $500,000; and
• Tillamook County will receive $500,000.

Cleanup Grants will provide money to carry out cleanup activities at brownfield sites owned by the recipient. Oregon is receiving three Cleanup Grants.

• The city of Astoria will receive $2 million;
• the North Plains Urban Renewal Agency will receive $500,000; and
• the city of Portland will receive $500,000.

Supplemental Revolving Loan Fund Grants are awarded to high-performing recipients to help communities continue their work to carry out cleanup and redevelopment projects on contaminated brownfield properties. Supplemental funding for Revolving Loan Fund Grants is available to recipients that have depleted their funds and have viable cleanup projects ready for work. Oregon has one recipient of a Supplemental RFL Grant:

• The Oregon Business Development Department will receive $650,000.

The post Oregon awarded $6.85M in EPA brownfield cleanup grants appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Portland Development Commission is seeking a developer to give a new lease on life to a long-vacant historic building at the foot of the Steel Bridge in Old Town Chinatown. The nearly 7,000-square foot brick structure was built as a fire station in 1913, and was used most recently as office space in 2000 before being vacated due to structural and code issues.

The commission acquired the property in 1987 and in its acquisition and redevelopment last month. Evaluations completed last year by the PDC found that the building needs repairs totaling more than $6 million – nearly $1 million in seismic and MEP upgrades, and up to $5.5 million for either a new mat foundation or drilled piers to mitigate settlement and lateral movement in the event of seismic activity. Proposals are due this Friday at 5 p.m.

The post Photos: Proposals sought for historic firehouse appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

I want to take a moment and follow up on my two previous blog posts (here and here), which examined the potential closure of all 425 redevelopment agencies in California. The idea was pitched by retread Gov. Jerry Brown earlier this month as a cost cutting tactic to .

When I first started looking into this issue I noted a bunch of correlations between the situation in California and how it could repeat itself here in Oregon. Oregon has a comparable per capita debt, there’s a growing lobbyist core for special taxing districts against urban renewal in Oregon and there’s lots of citizens who distrust urban renewal and tax increment financing.

I will admit that the idea of Oregon losing all of its redevelopment agencies, like the Portland Development Commission here in the city, is hard to believe. But as I’ve started to look into the idea more, it definitely feels like Oregon is somewhat heading in that direction.

First is this by longtime guest columnist and Southwest Portland resident Jill Warren. Most notably Warren calls out the long anticipated project, a sustainable office tower in Northwest Portland that has been proposed for over a decade but still sits as a vacant lot. The PDC has invested more than $1.2 million in the project to help get it off the ground.

While I don’t agree with the entire column – most notably that only rich people are benefiting (sometimes the case, but not always) and that Portland doesn’t have a good enough public process (I mean, really?) – but she really hits her point home when she said:

“Here’s my problem: taxes in Multnomah County are too high. People grumble about this all the time. The PDC has the power to pledge tax dollars however it sees fit. It’s easy to lose someone else’s money.

I’m suspicious of any project that’s reliant on subsidies to exist. Development should pay for itself. Tax abatements and cash infusions from the public are out of control and should be reigned in. It’s a drain on public coffers.”

There is an inherent flaw in how urban renewal and tax increment financing is used these days: it lends a financial hand to projects that wouldn’t be able to go forward or survive without the subsidy in a normal free market, capitalist society. This is why there are still so many failed redevelopment projects: a bad project is still a bad project no matter if it gets public training wheels.

So, the public distrust for urban renewal is there, as it always has been, and it’s growing.

But in addition to public dissatisfaction, public entities that lose operating funds because of urban renewal and politicians are also getting more vocal and brash about their opposition to it.

Both the Clackamas Fire District #1 and Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue last year adopted inter organizational policies about when to support or denounce an urban renewal area within their respective regions.

Multnomah County Chair Jeff Cogen also sounded off against a new downtown Portland urban renewal area last October, which eventually led to Mayor Sam Adams deciding to suspend the process of developing the urban renewal area.

In an email between Cogen and PDC staffer Peter Englander, Cogen wrote:

“(Discussing the new URA) is important now because we have to remember that we’re facing a $3 billion shortfall here in Oregon. We need to see where things are with the state budget before we start freezing property taxes in specified areas.”

And while the thought of eliminating the PDC, and other redevelopment agencies like it, seems far fetched, there is .

These potential legal changes include permitting school construction and fire vehicle replacement with urban renewal funds, which would help two of the public services that are financially affected by urban renewal. Other legislation would give taxing districts affected by urban renewal a process to be removed from the plan and receive full property tax allotment. And the most drastic idea is requiring a citizens’ vote of approval on new urban renewal plans or amendments to existing ones.

The PDC and urban renewal across the state may not die, but I am pretty confident that things are going to change. And when they do, Oregon will be one of the first places to find out if urban renewal is a helping hand or an expensive illusion.

The post Portland could lose the PDC appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

I want to take a moment and follow up on my two previous blog posts (here and here), which examined the potential closure of all 425 redevelopment agencies in California. The idea was pitched by retread Gov. Jerry Brown earlier this month as a cost cutting tactic to .

When I first started looking into this issue I noted a bunch of correlations between the situation in California and how it could repeat itself here in Oregon. Oregon has a comparable per capita debt, there’s a growing lobbyist core for special taxing districts against urban renewal in Oregon and there’s lots of citizens who distrust urban renewal and tax increment financing.

I will admit that the idea of Oregon losing all of its redevelopment agencies, like the Portland Development Commission here in the city, is hard to believe. But as I’ve started to look into the idea more, it definitely feels like Oregon is somewhat heading in that direction.

First is this by longtime guest columnist and Southwest Portland resident Jill Warren. Most notably Warren calls out the long anticipated project, a sustainable office tower in Northwest Portland that has been proposed for over a decade but still sits as a vacant lot. The PDC has invested more than $1.2 million in the project to help get it off the ground.

While I don’t agree with the entire column – most notably that only rich people are benefiting (sometimes the case, but not always) and that Portland doesn’t have a good enough public process (I mean, really?) – but she really hits her point home when she said:

“Here’s my problem: taxes in Multnomah County are too high. People grumble about this all the time. The PDC has the power to pledge tax dollars however it sees fit. It’s easy to lose someone else’s money.

I’m suspicious of any project that’s reliant on subsidies to exist. Development should pay for itself. Tax abatements and cash infusions from the public are out of control and should be reigned in. It’s a drain on public coffers.”

There is an inherent flaw in how urban renewal and tax increment financing is used these days: it lends a financial hand to projects that wouldn’t be able to go forward or survive without the subsidy in a normal free market, capitalist society. This is why there are still so many failed redevelopment projects: a bad project is still a bad project no matter if it gets public training wheels.

So, the public distrust for urban renewal is there, as it always has been, and it’s growing.

But in addition to public dissatisfaction, public entities that lose operating funds because of urban renewal and politicians are also getting more vocal and brash about their opposition to it.

Both the Clackamas Fire District #1 and Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue last year adopted inter organizational policies about when to support or denounce an urban renewal area within their respective regions.

Multnomah County Chair Jeff Cogen also sounded off against a new downtown Portland urban renewal area last October, which eventually led to Mayor Sam Adams deciding to suspend the process of developing the urban renewal area.

In an email between Cogen and PDC staffer Peter Englander, Cogen wrote:

“(Discussing the new URA) is important now because we have to remember that we’re facing a $3 billion shortfall here in Oregon. We need to see where things are with the state budget before we start freezing property taxes in specified areas.”

And while the thought of eliminating the PDC, and other redevelopment agencies like it, seems far fetched, there is .

These potential legal changes include permitting school construction and fire vehicle replacement with urban renewal funds, which would help two of the public services that are financially affected by urban renewal. Other legislation would give taxing districts affected by urban renewal a process to be removed from the plan and receive full property tax allotment. And the most drastic idea is requiring a citizens’ vote of approval on new urban renewal plans or amendments to existing ones.

The PDC and urban renewal across the state may not die, but I am pretty confident that things are going to change. And when they do, Oregon will be one of the first places to find out if urban renewal is a helping hand or an expensive illusion.

The post Portland could lose the PDC appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

California’s new governor Jerry Brown is taking no time to shake things up in the Golden State.

Only a week after his inauguration, Brown released his budget proposal, which calls for $12.5 billion in cuts coupled with five years of tax increases that is meant to close the state’s $25.4 billion deficit. Of the potential cuts listed, one in particular has the greater real estate and development community concerned.

Brown is calling for the closure of , only operating in a limited capacity retire debts and contractual obligations. The money that would have gone to the agencies, which is used to help get development projects out of the ground, would then be distributed to local governments to fund public services.

For example, the . The .

This money is used to fund development projects, either by infusing public funds into private projects that will eventually increase the tax base or through the use of tax increment financing to leverage funds for public projects that entice future private development.

I’m not going to get into whether closing the agencies is a good or a bad idea (it’s a bad idea) because when you are facing that type of deficit there are few bad ideas. But I will talk a bit about how it can affect some Oregon firms.

First, Oregon is facing its own budget crisis, a predicted $3.5 billion budget shortfall for the next fiscal year. And urban renewal, like in many parts of the country, is often the target of citizen groups around Portland, which call it a behind-the-scenes way for developers and public officials to get private developments done.

When Oregon starts to look at nifty ways to close the budget gap, perhaps an entity like the Portland Development Commission could end up on the chopping block.

I don’t see this happening, and I have doubts that it will even happen in California, but it would be interesting to see what Portland would look like without the PDC. Look at what has been done on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard or in Old Town and Chinatown. There is a good argument that a lot of the success of those areas wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t for the groundwork started by the PDC.

Another issue is that Oregon firms, whether they be developers, architects, engineers or builders, do a lot of work in California. Both Gerding Edlen and Williams & Dame Development have developed several mixed-use projects around Los Angeles. And TVA Architects has designed large buildings in the city as well.

With Portland’s notoriety as an eco-friendly city, firms from around the Portland area get sustainable building work in other parts of the country. San Francisco and Los Angeles are close enough for Portland firms to work in their markets.

Whether this happens in California remains to be seen. But when a decision is made, it could be a telling sign of an overall national sentiment on public-private development projects.

The post California looks at axing redevelopment agencies appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

California’s new governor Jerry Brown is taking no time to shake things up in the Golden State.

Only a week after his inauguration, Brown released his budget proposal, which calls for $12.5 billion in cuts coupled with five years of tax increases that is meant to close the state’s $25.4 billion deficit. Of the potential cuts listed, one in particular has the greater real estate and development community concerned.

Brown is calling for the closure of , only operating in a limited capacity retire debts and contractual obligations. The money that would have gone to the agencies, which is used to help get development projects out of the ground, would then be distributed to local governments to fund public services.

For example, the . The .

This money is used to fund development projects, either by infusing public funds into private projects that will eventually increase the tax base or through the use of tax increment financing to leverage funds for public projects that entice future private development.

I’m not going to get into whether closing the agencies is a good or a bad idea (it’s a bad idea) because when you are facing that type of deficit there are few bad ideas. But I will talk a bit about how it can affect some Oregon firms.

First, Oregon is facing its own budget crisis, a predicted $3.5 billion budget shortfall for the next fiscal year. And urban renewal, like in many parts of the country, is often the target of citizen groups around Portland, which call it a behind-the-scenes way for developers and public officials to get private developments done.

When Oregon starts to look at nifty ways to close the budget gap, perhaps an entity like the Portland Development Commission could end up on the chopping block.

I don’t see this happening, and I have doubts that it will even happen in California, but it would be interesting to see what Portland would look like without the PDC. Look at what has been done on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard or in Old Town and Chinatown. There is a good argument that a lot of the success of those areas wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t for the groundwork started by the PDC.

Another issue is that Oregon firms, whether they be developers, architects, engineers or builders, do a lot of work in California. Both Gerding Edlen and Williams & Dame Development have developed several mixed-use projects around Los Angeles. And TVA Architects has designed large buildings in the city as well.

With Portland’s notoriety as an eco-friendly city, firms from around the Portland area get sustainable building work in other parts of the country. San Francisco and Los Angeles are close enough for Portland firms to work in their markets.

Whether this happens in California remains to be seen. But when a decision is made, it could be a telling sign of an overall national sentiment on public-private development projects.

The post California looks at axing redevelopment agencies appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.