FOR AROUND 14 years, the City of Portland has made it too easy to demolish old buildings.
It’s not the Mercury saying that, or the ever-growing contingent of groups railing against changes to their neighborhoods. It’s the City of Portland.
In a low-key “service level update” sent out by the Portland Bureau of Development Services (BDS) on August 31, the city announced a change long sought by advocates: Most property owners who have a piece of land on the city’s Historic Resource Inventory (HRI) will have to wait 120 days to demolish those properties going forward.
That 120-day period is required by state law, the city freely acknowledged in its announcement. But since 2002, it hasn’t been enforced in Portland. Instead, the city has allowed people to remove their buildings from the HRI and get a permit to demolish them the very same day.