Hard Times Come Again

Feb. 25, 2024
By: Fred Leeson

Montgomery Park (nee Ward) circa 1927

Portland’s urban core clearly isn’t what it used to be.  A recent consultant’s report suggested that office vacancies will hit 40 percent this year, and it might be higher already with unexpired leases going unused. Fewer workers downtown mean fewer business opportunities for others.

A dramatic example is the nine-story Montgomery Park building in Norwest Portland, which sold for $255 million in 2019..It was flipped recently back to the lender for $37.7 million.  “The bargain price points to the woeful state of Portland’s commercial real estate market,” wrote Jeff Manning, an outstanding “Oregonian” business reporter.

Montgomery Park joins Jackson Tower, the J.K. Gill Building and the Loyalty Building as prominent office sites that have been turned back to their lenders without winning any alternative bids.  Clearly, big-money investors currently are keeping their wallets in their pockets.

The new entry won't happen.

Swept way with the pandemic was a plan approved by the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission to revitalize the old Montgomery Ward building by adding a glassy new western entrance and several new retail and restaurant spaces.  Plans once approved by the commission for renovating four other historic sites in or near downtown also appear to be dead or on hold. (Notable examples include re-use proposals for the former Multnomah County Courthouse and First Church of Christ Scientist.)

For the most part, central cities evolve organically.  Offices bring workers downtown who eat lunch, drink coffee, go to bars and restaurants after work, and frequent nearby retail shops.  All those ancillary enterprises suffer and close when workers and shoppers disappear.

What also is lost is the communal experience Portlanders used to feel by shopping downtown at the major department stores, going to movie theaters and concerts.  As people become more entrenched and isolated on their cell phones and computers what Portland – and other cities – lose is a “sense of place” that makes a city feel different and special.   

What does the future hold?  The “pandemic-induced deterioration” described by one analyst does not appear to have speedy solutions.  Substantial numbers of workers have found it preferable to work from home, and internet-based shopping shows no signs of ebbing.   Downtown and its important historic buildings could take on much more of a “ghost town” feel unless smart minds can conceive of new ways to make the urban core vibrant again.

Faced with the glut of new shopping opportunities in the suburbs, Portland more than 50 years ago launched a wide-ranging “Downtown Plan” aimed at retaining its urban importance.  Its major conclusions at the time led to the creation of Waterfront Park, the downtown transit malls and development regulations that sought to place taller buildings in the heart of the core – all good ideas at the time.

Now it might be time to gather concerned citizens and smart minds from many specialties to undertake a new long-range plan, taking into consideration the unavoidable consequences of the current trends.

What’s at stake is the loss of urban reputation that could lead someone speaking of Portland to borrow the famous line from Gertrude Stein:  “There is no there there.”  It would be a communal loss ranging beyond our pocketbooks.

Fred Leeson is a former president of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation and a member of the foundation's Board of Advisors.