THE HILTON GRAND BALLROOM is buzzing.
It’s Sunday, April 11. Four hundred people have crowded into the downtown Portland ballroom, most are holding auction paddles. Some have brought their kids, others have brought their lawyers. All hope to snatch up a cheap condo in the John Ross, the South Waterfront luxury-living building that bills itself as “the shining example of Portland’s commitment to sustainable living.”
Portland’s shining example is about to be sold to the highest bidder.
“Portland’s first green neighborhood!” crows the auctioneer, who is wearing a red tie and navy blue jacket. “Green innovation and ideal location combine!”
Portland has invested $93 million and 10 years in developing the South Waterfront urban renewal area. The result is five shimmering towers that rise between the freeway and the river south of downtown. The John Ross. Atwater Place. The Meriwether. The Ardea. Riva on the Park.
The Atwater was the first to auction off units last fall, unloading unsold condos for cut rates in the midst of the recession. The John Ross staved off auction for longer. At the height of the condo craze in 2005, the John Ross pre-sold 80 percent of its units in six days. This winter, that number had dropped to 74 percent sold. To resuscitate the building, its owners have put 48 units on the auction block. This includes a fabulous penthouse, whose kitchen comes with a built-in wine fridge and whose 30th-story wrap-around patio seems like a place Bruce Wayne might host a soiree. Original price tag: $1.49 million.
The auction is a smart move, but a desperate one. The special tax breaks that promote development in South Waterfront are going to be around until at least 2020. By that time, the city estimates it will have spent $221 million in public money building the area.
The Grand Ballroom leaps into action as the auction begins. Men in navy blue coats bark at the crowd, paddles are raised, bidding wars ensue. The penthouse goes for $851,000. The winners are offered bacon-wrapped scallops and bruschetta while they sign the papers.
***
Weeks later, as dusk falls, I wander the streets of South Waterfront. All is quiet. In 1999, Portland Development Commission (PDC), city hall, and Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) laid plans for South Waterfront, imagining it as a jobs district. Establishment of an urban renewal area, coupling public investment with tax breaks for developers, would create up to 10,000 jobs in Portland’s newest, greenest neighborhood—or so promised the plan.
But 10 years in, it has created only 2,300 jobs and South Waterfront’s dense condo buildings are ringed with retail space for lease. Empty storefronts are gaping abscesses at the feet of the glass and steel towers.
Residents and real estate agents deal with the emptiness in creative ways. Much of the coping seems to involve dogs. A lot of dogs. When they are out, most of the actual neighbors I see on the streets of South Waterfront are walking these dogs. There are pooper-scooper stations set up all around the area.
“Sometimes it feels like there are two dogs for every person,” notes Jesse Braeoninger, the clerk at the Urbana Market, which stocks a mix of organic snacks and convenience store food. It was almost closing time. No one else was around and Braeoninger had already dumped out the water bowl the shop puts out for customers’ pooches.
I count eight operating retail spaces in South Waterfront. Two of those retail outfits are doggie daycares/dog spas. That means dog-related pampering accounts for 25 percent of South Waterfront’s retail.
I ask Braeoninger what it’s like to work in the center of the city’s jobs district. He doesn’t understand what I’m talking about.
“It’s like a ghost town or a black hole here,” he says. He’s young. He lives near Lloyd Center. The Urbana Market is a good gig he found on Craigslist. He sells a lot of beer, wine, and milk. Basics.
“Oh, and we sell a lot of lottery tickets. You should probably put that in your article,” he adds. Maybe about 200 to 300 lottery tickets a day. Keno. Powerball. I leave.
Next door to Urbana Market, sushi place Le Hana is bustling. Thanks, perhaps, to its rather alarming but highly advertised special: dinner 50 percent off (with purchase of drink).
***
I walk between the tall buildings until I reach the desolate frontier south of Riva on the Park. The wind rustles through bioswales and the sun sets over OHSU. Not a soul is in sight. I half expect a tumbleweed of native grasses to blow across the wide desert of empty sidewalk.
The pavement ends abruptly after the Riva. It’s a jarring break from the development’s smooth, white stone to a gravel path running next to construction fencing. From 1910 through the 1960s, South Waterfront was home to industry. For the next 40 years it was mostly abandoned.
Out there past the new, shimmering towers is the unfinished “creative apartment-living complex” the Matisse, a loading dock, more construction yards, vacant brownfields, and the end of the streetcar line.
“If you are inspired about the art of living, then your inspiration lives at the Matisse,” says the building’s promotional materials.
I stand for a while at the end of the streetcar line, where the tracks loop back to downtown. I’m not sure where to go, so I stare at the finely etched glass wall facing the track, which is engraved with some history. Generations before there was urban renewal and eco-districts, South Waterfront was the Jewish part of town.
“Small homes huddled close to the main thoroughfares, cobblestone boulevards lined with delicatessens, bakeries, and shops filled with neighbors,” reads the glass.
The blue lights of the Old Spaghetti Factory glare across the expanse of two parking lots. Six sapling trees huddle together near the streetcar stop, bound together with caution tape. It’s getting cold. I hear footsteps and am afraid someone has come to rob me. I find it hard to be inspired about the art of living.
***
Across the street from the John Ross and the Riva on the Park is, yes, a park. The park is lovely, with small, sloping green hills and stone-paved paths. A locked chain-link fence surrounds it. Elizabeth Caruthers Park was supposed to open in July 2009, but it will open this summer, a year late.
And across from Elizabeth Caruthers Park, staring out at the luxury units of the John Ross and Atwater Place is a muddy gravel lot that was supposed to be 400 units of affordable housing. Construction workers for the surrounding condos use it as a parking lot.
The South Waterfront urban renewal area is supposed to have up to 788 units of affordable housing. As of yet, not a single unit has been built.
“The South Waterfront District is a diverse, inclusive riverfront neighborhood,” reads the planning bureau’s vision for South Waterfront in 2020, written in 2002.
That vision of South Waterfront has failed.
The city poured $16 million into planning Block 33 (the muddy parking lot) and negotiation building rights, but the deal fell through with the market crash. [“Broken Homes,” News, March 4]. The city sold the property back to OHSU for a loss last month.
Plans are moving forward to build a different affordable housing complex, Block 49, but meanwhile housing advocates are quick to point out the stark contrast between the promise of a mixed-income neighborhood and the reality of the muddy pit that sits under the shadow of the tram. Homeless advocacy group Sisters of the Road rallied 20 people at Block 33 on Wednesday, March 31, with megaphones and posters reading, “If these units had been built, we’d be home now.” Except for their rabble-housing and a television crew, the emerging neighborhood was eerily empty.
League of Women Voters member Debbie Aiona, who sat in on the urban renewal process from the beginning, says the city should have bought land for affordable housing and pushed condo developers to carve out land for greenways before the district became an urban renewal area.
“It would have been smart to get in place those things that are difficult to carry out, if they were going to be an important part of your plan,” says Aiona.
***
But in some ways, our ghost town has met its goals.
When the urban renewal area was founded, South Waterfront consisted of abandoned, contaminated industrial land, a barge-building factory, and the world headquarters of the Old Spaghetti Factory. Humble beginnings.
From there, we have built 1,400 homes (though none of them affordable), a gorgeous aerial tram (though with money originally slated to build South Waterfront’s streets and parks), and laid the infrastructure for Portland’s downtown to expand. The neighborhood is linked to transit, and the condo towers are LEED-certified. For $93 million, it’s a helluva lot better than it used to be.
Plus, PDC number-cruncher Faye Brown says that despite the bottom falling out of the real estate market, South Waterfront is financially on track to pay back the $62 million the city has borrowed from South Waterfront urban renewal funds to build the streetcar, the tram, the streets, and the parks. PDC estimated South Waterfront’s central area would generate $5 million annually in tax increment financing by last year. It’s actually created $7.2 million.
“It’s easy to diss things in this financial climate, to say, ‘You should have’ and ‘I told you so.’ But this is a really important piece of property and it’s still a work in progress,” says local design critic and Portland Monthly Editor Randy Gragg, who penned outspoken columns in favor of establishing South Waterfront as an urban renewal area 10 years ago when he wrote for the Oregonian. Gragg doesn’t like everything about what South Waterfront has become (“The buildings are just too damn fat.”), but he does think it will pay off, in the long run, to build the fancy condos before low-income housing.
“It’s easy for idealists to stand on the sidelines and criticize. But the numbers just didn’t work at the time,” says Gragg. “The development has to fund the development. Affordable housing does not create a tax base of any reasonable consequence.”
Urban designer and architect George Crandall believes so strongly in the area that he sold his Northwest Portland home to snatch up a cut-rate condo at Atwater Place last year.
“I think it will be a model for how cities can become more sustainable and for how we can get infill on vacant land,” says Crandall. “The neighborhood may not be what I want today, but my sense is within a few years it will be the place to be in Portland.” Crandall concedes, though, that the push to bring retail to the condo canyon is stuck in a tail-chasing spiral. Retail needs people. People won’t move somewhere that doesn’t have retail.
“What South Waterfront really needs is a grocery store,” agrees Tom Heinicke, a real estate agent who also runs insidery blog agent503.com. He says he wouldn’t discourage someone from buying in South Waterfront, but the buyer would need to hold onto their new home for at least eight or 10 years to turn a real profit.
“There’s too much public money going into it for it to fail,” says Heinicke. “I know there are opinions out there that say it’ll be a ghost town in 20 years. I don’t agree. It’s kind of a ‘too big to fail’ for Portland.”
So maybe this is what progress feels like. Progress feels surprisingly empty.
But who needs a grocery store, anyway, when the John Ross’ concierge service will do your grocery shopping for you? And your laundry. And feed your dog.
The original promise of the South Waterfront was not about housing, but about jobs. Peter Kohler of OHSU convinced mayor Vera Katz that the public investment for the tram and the other south waterfront amenities would allow for the creation of a thriving biotech industrial complex, providing high paying jobs for ten to thirty thousand people. That was bogus from the get go and Kohler knew it. You can still find an expose on the whole thing if you search for “Banking on Biotech”. The whole venture was a big con job perpetrated by OHSU and the condo speculators.
I like the story and I’m glad somebody is willing to call BS publicly (even though I don’t quite agree that it’s “failed”). But I wonder if we should be talking more about the city’s fixed per-unit development costs, which create incentives to build only (a) big big big or (b) fancy fancy fancy.
Not that I know about that shit. But somebody ought to.
I’m so relieved to know that hundreds of millions of our tax dollars aren’t going to helping the needy, but instead toward developing phantom metropolises for the barely existent well-to-do. Sigh of relief here, really. Way to go progressive Portland.
Instead of surrendering the public treasury to be plundered for playtime for speculators and developers, Portland voters should elect people who want to plow our money back in and nourish the neighborhoods, parks, schools, streets and small businesses that we already have and that are crumbling from neglect. South Waterfront is an absolutely obscene example of the self-interest and irresponsibility of Portland’s political leadership, and it stands as a perpetual reminder that we voters need to apply continuous and constant pressure to keep local government focused on its proper priorities. What a criminal waste. And Randy Gragg STFU.
Kohler should be in jail. Under his direction, OHSU DID build the promised cuttling edge biotech development center with all its promised new jobs — in FLORIDA! Any story about this scandal that doesn’t include that fact is negligent.
Ahhhh…spring is in the air, the flowers are blooming, it’s times like this when I like to reflect back. I recall a time when The Mercury wasn’t so critical on this subject, like this piece from back in January of 2007:
http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/Co…
Here’s an excerpt:
“I envision a Portland where neighbors don’t automatically launch letter-writing campaigns against mixed-use buildings, because they too have glided to the top of the hill, and now see the obvious—that a six-story building ain’t no thing. I hope for a Portland where curmudgeonly old-timers—those who think the city reached its peak in 1972, when the Wells Fargo Center opened—sit back to listen to the newcomers, who have grand plans and big ideas for this place. And those big ideas, they realize, won’t ruin the city.
Pearce, and the city officials who had a hand in building this tram, get it.”
I rememeber writing Jennings quite a nasty note on that one. Maybe when your editor in chief takes a break from beating off to copies of HUMP clips someone can remind him that he’s a hypocrite. Grow up and fuck off.
Yeah ghost town it right. It all looks so good on paper up until reality sets in. Like I have said many times “you need people with actual jobs to pay for all this hype in real estate development.” You can build empty cities if no trade or commerce is not in place prior to development. Portland needs to invest in excellent education, including it’s State Universities to attract competitive bright minds, and a business structure ( Capital Venture!) to start industry or attract it here! What a concept to have people earning money first then actually aquiring the high rise apartment and model living ( this means affluent) after. Just a thought.
You forgot to mention that Multnomah County (Wheeler and Cogen included) issued tax free bonds on behalf of the Mirabella to build a retirement tower for the elite.
Thanks for posting that, zipitup. What a priceless quote.
I’d sure rather work in biotech than in some neighborhood small business. And it seems like, if a neighborhood small business needs money from the city to operate, it’s not sustainable and should be allowed to fail. Whereas a giant development plan like this could never happen anywhere without big amounts of city money. How much would another downtown core have grown the city? How many neighborhood small business have grown to serve all those employees and customers? We can sure say the plan hasn’t turned out well, yet, but I can’t complain about them trying it unless I knew a LOT more about it.
SMirk and the Merc, with Sam’s tram they were smitten
on his lap did they purr, like a 4th Estate kitten.
And cash it did flow, south from City Hall coffers
Big biotech jobs, OHSU promised to offer.
Like water, cash flowed into Dike’s financial dam
Homer, in Portland taxpayer money, he swam
And now SMirk and Merc feel as if they’ve been bitten
I say five years ago, this story they should have written
Its bigger by far than Sam’s Beau Breedlove bathroom bedlams
The story of Sam’s South Waterfront tram shams
Want a grocery store in the neighborhood? Link the south waterfront with John’s Landing with a local road (and maybe a streetcar, with existing track) and the residents can go to Zupans.
I live in Buffalo, New York, and came across this article on Planetizen. I thought Buffalo had it bad seeing we’ve lost more than half our population and we can’t keep up with all the neighborhoods we need to demolish.
Poor Portland. You “only” generated 2,300 jobs in your new downtown district when you originally planned 10,000. You built 1,400 green condos but none of them are affordable. The packed sushi place at the South Waterfront has had to offer half-priced sushi platters in this ghost town to attract customers. Oh, and the dogs! So many dogs! This kind of suffering is too much to bear. Should we pass around a hat in Buffalo and send you some spare change?
How about Buffalo send Portland our ghost towns and you can us yours?
i didnt realize the south waterfront is the only place feeling the recession.
give the neighborhood time. how can you write off a neighborhood when its only existed for 3 years? it has the infrastructure which is most important and is required no matter what happens there. the neighborhood vision can easily be changed. every new building that opens and every new resident enhances the neighborhood and makes it more attractive to other prospective residents. you need a critical mass of residents to support the retail, without retail and amenities an urban neighborhood like sowa has little appeal.
rome wasnt built in a day
poncho it has some buildings but it has no infrastructure. You may want to visit it one day so you don’t make this same mistake more than once.
What a bunch of toxic cynicism. Give it a chance. Development barely started 5 years ago and it’s already paying back all the bonds through increased tax revenue at a higher rate than anticipated. Some people have nothing better to do than complain.
Some sidewalks and streets aren’t finished because they’re going to be built by developers. I doubt “affordable” housing projects are going to generate enough revenue to pay for those street improvements. I’m sure someone would be complaining if the affordable housing went in first and there wasn’t ANY sidewalks… Hell, my neighborhood still doesn’t have sidewalks and some of the homes have been there 100 years! Maybe NE Portland is a failure too?
In fairness to Smirk she wasn’t around back when the Merc party line regarding shit like this was one giant schmoozefest with Amy Ruiz (nee Jenniges) leading the charge, harping on anybody who wouldn’t obiediently swallow whatever Sam Adams, et al were trying to sell us on.
Although the South Waterfront may evolve over time into something useful (ain’t holding my breath), there’s a method behind much of this ‘toxic’ cynicism and it has a lot to do with how apologists for stuff like this, such as Ms. Ruiz, made a desperate stink about how we couldn’t live without this shit without being doomed to a life of mediocrity.
Zipitup definitely gets my vote for comment of the week.
Collins and Reymont: you’re right, Katz-Sam, and Council didn’t make Affordable Housing the premier part of SoWhat, but over 800 Affordable Housing units were promised. Not one built. And now the insiders of Portland wants to make “workforce housing” and “student housing” help meet the requirement. Nice, now a household making $58,000 will be eligible for tax subsidies and will be counted as “affordable housing”. Many of us didn’t know that over 50% of Portlanders were now “poor”.
ZipitupL all three newspapers editorialized and embellished the absolute, unequivocal future success of SoWhat. Neighborhood Assn.s, individuals, urban planning experts testified in all the available forums that the Plan had “failure” written in many places. Not one environmental group questioned building on a flood plain/seismic zone, contested the 3 ft to 14 ft of fill throughout the site, the capping of toxic sites versus removal to mitigate contamination of the Willamette. Not one governmental agency like Metro, TriMet, Multnomah Co., PPS, Fire/Police and etc. contested the urban renewal dollars being sucked out from their pockets to provide basic services.
Jfeldingw: concerning a grocery store in SoWhat-several grocery companies have been approached by all property stakeholders in SoWhat (they know it would make their projects more viable). They all declined to invest because they determined their customers couldn’t find their way into SoWhat and the amount of residents there doesn’t justify the investment. Plus, their delivery trucks, etc. and the parking, service arrangements don’t make it convenient to service a store. A fact. Plus a trolley down to Zupan on SW Macadam would severely cripple vehicle traffic which now has over 42,000 trip per day and SoWhat when built out is to increase traffic an additional 29,000 trips-total Gridlock even without a trolley creeping along at 7 mph on average. Macadam now has “F” level of services at three of its major intersections in the Johns Landing area. Macadam is a state highway serving all of Clackamas Co. besides SW Portland.
Poncho and Ladd: SoWhat has been in planning for over 15 years, the Plan was adopted in 1999 and construction began soon after. There are now 8 buildings in the 250ft to 325ft range and four more in the 6 story range plus-all since the adoption. SoWhat is not how to build a city, Cities take many decades, and more like centuries. Forced Cities like SoWhat is not the best planning.
What many people don’t realize is that of all the over 30 public projects required to be built in in SoWhat , very few are started and only a couple are completed. Tram is completed. But streets, the three parks, greenway, pedestrian bridge over I-5, affordable housing, all the major transportation portals (3), etc. are only partial or not started. All projects finished or started have been over budget by 3 to 6 times.
Many parts of the 9 Amendments of the Plan’s Agreement have not been met. There is only $7M on average tax dollars anticipated to be generated by the SoWhat URA in the next 5 years per the PDC budget documents. This will not even pay the debt service on the tax dollars taken from Portland’s general fund and the bonds issued to pay for what has been built. How can the city pay the ultimate $289 Million of the maximum debt of SoWhat’s URA with this small income?
What is also forgotten is all the other tax dollars designated to SoWhat besides the $289 M from the feds, state, grants, Metro, TriMet, etc. It is estimated, including the debt services, that over $1.1 BILLION of taxpayer money will be spent in SoWhat in the next 25 years. Do you think the citizens see the benefits of that?
Of course its like a ghost town at 9 pm with shitty weather out, exactly like the rest of portland, people shut themselves indoors and have to go outside because they have to do the nescessities, like let the dogs poop. The place is sort of like a gated community, 24 hour security, and it gets quiet at night, very safe. The day time its filled with foot traffic, cars, and bikes. At lunchtime, the restaraunts and conveinence store has a huge amount of people from OHSU, construction workers and residents. It has definitely grown over the past year and its just going up. This place is diverse, with mixed incomes, from middle class to the most wealthy, students, doctors, retirees; people who need the place to be convenient. Its stopping gentrification by providing a new area, and letting a culture create itself, and not butt into other solidified communities; its a very proud community of people who love where they live and how they live. its getting more wealthy people to move to portland and spend their money here, its providing state of the art green buildings, its provided 2300 jobs, thats 2300 people who have money, it got me a job when the rest of portland wasn’t providing anything. Its a pretty great place.
Its not a growing tumor on the SW end of portland sucking all the energy out of it, more like a tattoo slowly and painfully being needled in, but the final design is well worth it.
OK friends, initially when asked my opinion on this article I leaned in favor of the subject line. Admittedly I have yet to finish reading this article, however I wonder if we would be better off if such pessimism wasn’t the headline of one of our leading local publications. Merc is a rep for OUR great NW and as I see it, we want to improve upon and continue to be leaders in the green movement. Discouragement and negativity go so much further than optimism unfortunately. I don’t say this to bash any of US all. I just want to say we actually do have a reputation to uphold. We are known as a kind, supportive, progressive state so lets live up to it! I’m a broke ass fool and all good things come with time and initially a price, eventually it will be the norm. Lets make a good impression fellow Oregonians!
The pessimism is refreshing. Can we stop being so concerned for our “green” reputation and, you know, at least accomplish a full school year for Portland children? The limousine liberals coming to this city, the same ones SoWhat was designed to attract, are driving this city into the ground. Let’s call a duck a duck, this is Neo-Liberal policy, the same bs we’ve been swallowing for years. The same policies kicking the homeless off the sidewalks rather than investing in social services. We’re promised that if we keep kicking money and favors to big developers and gentrifying, the money will come. But there’s no trickle down here; the big windfall of tax revenue generated from investing in the wealthy is never coming. You may have heard — the same class generating this nonsense policy has robbed us all blind a little too often, and now no one has the income to buy their condos.
Sarah Mirk rightly gives it to the robber baron scumbags and their political flunkies in her journalistic stroll through the South Waterfront development. Vacuosity abounds in those parts and it is walking, apparently, a miniatiurized canine. I take issue only with Ms. Mirk’s mixing of medical metaphor. An abscess is a collection of pus that has formed in the midst of a bacterial infection. Metaphorically, it is something like an overt, painful or concentrated manifestation of underlying discord or corruption. One might say, for instance, that the empty storefronts are an abscess on the superficially pleasant but constitutionally diseased property. However, abscesses, quite simply, do not gape. An abscess can bulge, fester, erupt or disfigure but it does not gape. In fact, when opened either surgically or spontaneously, it is generally viewed as a positive both medically and metaphorically; it is the beginning of cure: the painful and, take my word, extremely disagreeable but necessary step towards healing. Wounds, lacerations, avulsions, open fractures, punctures and ulcerations gape, but represent something different – metaphorically – altogether.
Dr. Wordypants
Why aren’t the homeless or destitute being housed temporarily here? They may know more about green living than anyone else.
Ahhh now Portland is going to shit……………anyone for Alaska?