Portland’s great white hope for caffeinating its listless South Waterfront district—a shiny new Nike campus, with lofty promises of some 6,000 new jobs—has evaporated.
Nike announced this afternoon that it will expand in Washington County, where it already lives, on land it already owns. By spurning Portland, which would have offered a 29-acre site for the company to sprawl into, Nike is passing up what the Oregonian reported were tens of millions of dollars in city and county tax incentives and abatements.
Mayor Charlie Hales’ office issued a release that does its best to put a good face on the company’s decision—coming after months of civic pursuit, threats by Nike to leave the state, and a crash special legislative session last year that, in turn, handed the company a tax deal meant to quell those threats.
“The city, the Portland Development Commission, and Multnomah County presented Nike and its representatives with a comprehensive and compelling proposal,” Hales said in the statement. “I’m proud of the effort our team put together. And I’m thrilled that the project, and the jobs, are staying in the metropolitan area.” Later, Hales said, “This expansion will have a huge impact on the regional economy.”
The statement said the negotiations with Nike started last summer after Nike approached Portland about a potential move. The company was interested in a swath of land owned by the Zidell family. The city put that land in a state enterprise zone, back in December, a clue that Nike was likely considering the property.
PDC Director Patrick Quinton echoed the mayor in the prepared remarks, talking up regional “efforts to present greater Portland as the global hub for the athletic and outdoor industry.”
Hales also promised to find another taker for the Zidell land, still seen as a linchpin for giving South Waterfront the critical mass of humans it sorely lacks right now.
“The site offers a unique opportunity for Portland to create an urban corporate campus,” Hales said. “It’s a 30-plus-acre site, on the riverfront, connected to a public transportation system and – hey, it’s got a view of Mount Hood! If there’s a better urban site for redevelopment in America: Show me.”
Wow. Sounds like a great place for a park.
WELL FINE, NIKE, WE’LL JUST MAKE IT A FOOD CART POD, THEN.
It’s nice of Nike to give a big middle finger to all the people (up to the governor!) who risked their political necks to rush through everything to make this initially possible. It’s now less likely that spectacle ever happens again without an actual commitment, which is probably for the best.
Still, like Hales said, it’s still a good space to try to draw another behemoth’s HQ to that property, and that does seem like the best one-shot way to make south waterfront happen.
Smart decision Nike. Now your employees won’t have to be worried about being mugged, harassed by infantile bums, congested traffic, nudist on bicycles, sewage floating by in the river and so on and so on.
I can’t believe anyone thought they were serious about the site.
Andy, I can tell you’ve never visited South Waterfront, and from your comments, it appears you haven’t been to most parts of Beaverton either.
Paul Allen should fund the erection on that South Waterfront site of a new jewel in the city’s tourism crown, the International Hipster Museum.
The Nike campus would make an excellent set for a movie. It looks like what people in the 1970’s thought the future would look like.
@ICEPREZ: LOGAN’S RUN REMAKE!!!!