Are you KIDDING me? Ya know what? Sam, step down. Developers, leave town. People of Portland, get out in the streets and in the corridors of city halls and protect the only decent city left in America from the profiteers who intend to ruin our hometown.

Fourth Street Live in Louisville is an abomination. It's absolutely hideous and defames any of the city's wealth of character and charm.

Guys, are you on some kind of vendetta? You know as well as I do that Cordish has said up front they wouldn't be creating the same crap here as they did in KC--and Randy Leonard will demand it, as he told me.

As for dress codes, are you sure no bars in Portland have a similar dress code, without apparent outrage from the Merc?

Looking at these Cordish developments is scary: they somehow own (or control?) the "entertainment zone" as a corporation? So now we're building an outdoor strip of nightclubs (greenwashed of course!) that behaves like a mall?

We've already got PBA-funded private cops abusing their power on downtown streets with little or no accountability. And now we're leveling half the Rose Quarter to create a pseudo-public Fremont Street Experience-style abomination? What the fuck, Sam Adams? What the fuck, Randy Leonard? And every other one of you fucks. Fuck!

oh my god
i can not believe i am saying this
but
at this moment
i miss tom potter and his "lack of" visioning.

I'm sure Cordish has said a lot of things up front. They probably said the same things before they built their developments in Louisville and Kansas City, and almost 30 other places.

Cordish is a "multi-billion dollar global conglomerate" (quote from their website).

http://cordish.com/

Do you really think that they all of a sudden have changed the way they do business? Do you want that mentality driving redevelopment in Portland? Don't we have enough of that already, both here and stamped elsewhere across the country (and let's not forget Dubai, which is now making a fast retreat on development).

Do some basic research on the Google, eh? It takes seconds to find this stuff, like this...

http://www.pitch.com/2009-04-02/news/here-…

http://www.pitch.com/2008-02-14/news/drunk…

Fuck that development, yo.

"As for dress codes, are you sure no bars in Portland have a similar dress code, without apparent outrage from the Merc?"

torridjoe, as someone who regularly blogs while on the clock at a taxpayer-funded agency, you certainly understand the difference between a private club and one that was built with public dollars. Right?

"But I really really REALLY like soccer!"

I'll go down there wearing whatever I damn well please.

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 Mercury, and I hope it will write an article about how many jobs are being taken from the qualified local General Contractors.