Thank you, Mike, for this beautifully written and heartfelt piece. Ron would have been so pleased with this location, which perfectly fulfills his dream of adding "Portland's Kitchen" to "Portland's Living Room." His spirit was definitely present at the event yesterday.
In the 1990's US Bank moved their headquarters to Gresham. When Vera Katz was mayor Columbia Sportwear moved to Beaverton. Katz gave money to the arts telling us that would turn around our economy. She ignored the issue of street maintenance. Standard Insurance moved most of their jobs to Hillsboro. Wells Fargo moved most of their jobs to Clark County. PGE moved most of their jobs to Clackamas County.
We were told that the expensive street car would turn around downtown. Businesses continued to move to the suburbs. When Sam Adams was mayor, he told us we needed to get use to broken streets. He told us that funding failing theater groups would turn our economy around.
Now we are being told that an expensive food mall will turn around downtown. This expensive food mall is just one among a long line of shiny objects that was supposed to be the magical answer to downtown's many problems. What we really need is law and order and street maintenance. We need people in city government who will talk to people in the business community about what they need to move back into the downtown area. Instead the city talks to wealthy wankers who think cities about pleasuring themselves with expensive food.
This article makes it sound like this is already open, a success and working with lots of vendors. According to their website, they will not be accepting applications for vendors until the end of January and they will not open until 2026. The fact that they are asking for donations, not investors, tells you they are already in trouble. They have already eaten up money from the City of Portland and want more. If they do not get vendors selling product that the few customers left downtown want to buy, then they will become a dead mall before they even open.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. It’s worth noting that this group has raised substantial private funds—a donated building from a prominent real estate family and a recent $500k contribution from the Foti-Smola family. Starting out by owning their buildings outright puts them in an excellent position, even before launching a capital campaign. While it’s natural to approach this with a critical eye given past challenges, this is a group with new leadership and fresh momentum. The business community is rallying behind this project, which is encouraging to see. Portland needs wins right now—both in tackling our toughest challenges and creating attractions that draw people downtown. It’s exciting to see efforts like this that aim to contribute to that balance. I hope we can keep the conversation constructive as we explore the possibilities together.
Who in the business community is rallying behind this project? Are they the business people in the banking, insurance, accounting, engineering and manufacturing who provide goods and services that people actually need? Those people all moved to suburbs years ago. By "business community" do you mean wealthy wankers such as yourself who think cities are places to pleasure themselves with expensive food?
The food mall concept failed in downtown when people worked downtown. In the decades since then, most downtown employers have moved to the suburbs, which means the customers are not there. People would have to commute to downtown to just shop there. How are they going to get there? Drive cars on our broken streets, pay for parking and risk having their car being broken into? Or are they going to take transit next to someone with mental health or substance abuse issue who is acting up?
The original food malls failed as chain stores put in service cases and sold the same food for less money. Since then there has been the rise of neighborhood farmers markets that let customers connect with local food producers. Also, there is the rise of food delivery services that deliver quality food to you without your having to leave your home.
The win the downtown needs is for businesses to move back into the office towers in downtown. Downtown jobs are the only way to draw people into the downtown area. An expensive food mall is not going to do it.
The city is going to need to clean up downtown more if they really want this Market to flourish. With the new city council and election of 2 JVP supporters to Multnomah County Commission (Singleton & Moyer) I’m not hopeful for a change anytime soon. I was just down in the Pearl/Old Town and it’s still super sketchy. I mean who would want to go the the world class Lan Su garden anymore. I used to take visitors there. It now has a big chain link fence around it for protection. This market sounds cool—unfortunately I feel modern day Portland will hold it back. But hey this is what voters wanted. Se la vie I guess.
Great piece Mike. I'm so glad that Heidi Yorkshire's idea for the market will finally become the beacon for Portland's place in the food world. Brava Heidi ! and all the many, many people, including you, who have been a key part of its development. How wonderful for Portland and all our businesses, citizens and visitors!
Until we restore a semblance of order the Market is going to have a very hard time. I hope they have shatterproof glass…..or lots of plywood ready to board up their windows. Would have done great in Portland 2010, in Portland 2025 it's gonna be tough. But this is what Portlanders seem to like….so here we are. :(
Thanks Jo. There is definitely a lot of work to do and making this market incredible won't be easy and will require a lot of creativity. But believing in Downtown is very important right now, and there is momentum across many agencies who are committed. The city is putting a tax increment financing plan into place that will raise more than one billion for Downtown improvements in the next decades; While numbers are not perfect yet on houselessness and crime, they are heading in the right direction and have improved; There are also groups like Metro Chamber who is collaborating to expand the Clean and Safe project they oversee; But in addition to these efforts, projects that bring people Downtown are equally important to the outcome.
But today, this is a new group with new leadership--and there is also the political will.
Mike, what's your take on Wendy Gordon's comments. They seem "spot on" to me:
"As excited as I am, I will believe this project when I buy my first fillet of Alaskan salmon. The James Beard Market has been through many false starts before, in the process running through millions of donated and taxpayer dollars. This time the location is secured and a lot of funding is in place, but not all. The budget is high: over 20 million to buy and renovate the space, including an atrium, grand staircase, and rooftop event space.
More important, no matter how beautiful the finished space, and no matter how yummy the products sold, the Public Market is not going to be a success unless downtown Portland is a place people want to be. I think ideas like this are going in the right direction: office workers are not going to return to downtown like in pre-Covid days. And online shopping has replaced much traditional retail. Re-purposing these empty spaces for fun and community building spaces such as a food market or art installments is a great way to go, and something many other cities have done to revitalize their downtowns. But, I repeat: downtown has be someplace people want to go, somewhere bright, clean, and safe, like it used to be.
This requires an enforced daytime camping ban, an end to open drug use, presence of adequate security, cleanup of litter, and removal of walled up windows and graffiti. Re-introducing Fareless Square might not be a bad idea also.
There’s a lot of talk about housing being a basic human right. And it is. Everyone has the right to shelter and a hot meal. What people do not have the right to do is take over the streets with tents, or use and sell drugs openly, use the streets as a bathroom, or scatter there garbage everywhere. Lost in the discussion, and sometimes (deliberately?) forgotten by the homeless/help industrial complex, are other rights. What about the people who work hard every day to keep their lives reasonably together? What about the rights of the 40 some businesses in the proposed market and the staff they employ? What about the rights of the shoppers and eaters? What about the rights of tourists to our city and the people that serve them?
We need a more expanded, holistic concept of rights if we are to rebuild a healthy city. We need a committment from city government to maintain clean safe streets as a first priority. I’ve visited city markets in places as far flung as Barcelona, Palermo, and Goa. If these disparate places can maintain safe and vibrant public places, surely we can too."
The issue that no one is talking about is that you can buy that fillet of Alaskan salmon for less money at your neighborhood grocery store. I worked at Newman's fish in the late 1980's when they had a retail store in a food mall in the Lloyd Center. There was a similar food mall in downtown Portland. The grocery stores responded by putting in food service cases to sell the same product the food malls were selling, and they sold the same food for less money. All the food malls in Portland went out of business. Downtown still had workers who could shop at the food malls, but chose not to. Those workers are all gone now, and they are not coming back anytime soon.
I saw the announcement yesterday and was curious your thoughts. So excited for PDX
Big news for the city. This is a huge vote of confidence in Portland. What a nice six weeks we've had in PDX.
Thank you, Mike, for this beautifully written and heartfelt piece. Ron would have been so pleased with this location, which perfectly fulfills his dream of adding "Portland's Kitchen" to "Portland's Living Room." His spirit was definitely present at the event yesterday.
Thanks Amelia. You all have worked so hard and have been so patient. I can only imagine how good this must feel. Well done.
Excited for this! Been waiting for this. I agree that it is the right time for Portland and the right location near Pioneer Courthouse Square.
Indeed! The center of it all.
In the 1990's US Bank moved their headquarters to Gresham. When Vera Katz was mayor Columbia Sportwear moved to Beaverton. Katz gave money to the arts telling us that would turn around our economy. She ignored the issue of street maintenance. Standard Insurance moved most of their jobs to Hillsboro. Wells Fargo moved most of their jobs to Clark County. PGE moved most of their jobs to Clackamas County.
We were told that the expensive street car would turn around downtown. Businesses continued to move to the suburbs. When Sam Adams was mayor, he told us we needed to get use to broken streets. He told us that funding failing theater groups would turn our economy around.
Now we are being told that an expensive food mall will turn around downtown. This expensive food mall is just one among a long line of shiny objects that was supposed to be the magical answer to downtown's many problems. What we really need is law and order and street maintenance. We need people in city government who will talk to people in the business community about what they need to move back into the downtown area. Instead the city talks to wealthy wankers who think cities about pleasuring themselves with expensive food.
This article makes it sound like this is already open, a success and working with lots of vendors. According to their website, they will not be accepting applications for vendors until the end of January and they will not open until 2026. The fact that they are asking for donations, not investors, tells you they are already in trouble. They have already eaten up money from the City of Portland and want more. If they do not get vendors selling product that the few customers left downtown want to buy, then they will become a dead mall before they even open.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. It’s worth noting that this group has raised substantial private funds—a donated building from a prominent real estate family and a recent $500k contribution from the Foti-Smola family. Starting out by owning their buildings outright puts them in an excellent position, even before launching a capital campaign. While it’s natural to approach this with a critical eye given past challenges, this is a group with new leadership and fresh momentum. The business community is rallying behind this project, which is encouraging to see. Portland needs wins right now—both in tackling our toughest challenges and creating attractions that draw people downtown. It’s exciting to see efforts like this that aim to contribute to that balance. I hope we can keep the conversation constructive as we explore the possibilities together.
Who in the business community is rallying behind this project? Are they the business people in the banking, insurance, accounting, engineering and manufacturing who provide goods and services that people actually need? Those people all moved to suburbs years ago. By "business community" do you mean wealthy wankers such as yourself who think cities are places to pleasure themselves with expensive food?
The food mall concept failed in downtown when people worked downtown. In the decades since then, most downtown employers have moved to the suburbs, which means the customers are not there. People would have to commute to downtown to just shop there. How are they going to get there? Drive cars on our broken streets, pay for parking and risk having their car being broken into? Or are they going to take transit next to someone with mental health or substance abuse issue who is acting up?
The original food malls failed as chain stores put in service cases and sold the same food for less money. Since then there has been the rise of neighborhood farmers markets that let customers connect with local food producers. Also, there is the rise of food delivery services that deliver quality food to you without your having to leave your home.
The win the downtown needs is for businesses to move back into the office towers in downtown. Downtown jobs are the only way to draw people into the downtown area. An expensive food mall is not going to do it.
The city is going to need to clean up downtown more if they really want this Market to flourish. With the new city council and election of 2 JVP supporters to Multnomah County Commission (Singleton & Moyer) I’m not hopeful for a change anytime soon. I was just down in the Pearl/Old Town and it’s still super sketchy. I mean who would want to go the the world class Lan Su garden anymore. I used to take visitors there. It now has a big chain link fence around it for protection. This market sounds cool—unfortunately I feel modern day Portland will hold it back. But hey this is what voters wanted. Se la vie I guess.
Great piece Mike. I'm so glad that Heidi Yorkshire's idea for the market will finally become the beacon for Portland's place in the food world. Brava Heidi ! and all the many, many people, including you, who have been a key part of its development. How wonderful for Portland and all our businesses, citizens and visitors!
Until we restore a semblance of order the Market is going to have a very hard time. I hope they have shatterproof glass…..or lots of plywood ready to board up their windows. Would have done great in Portland 2010, in Portland 2025 it's gonna be tough. But this is what Portlanders seem to like….so here we are. :(
Your writing and perspective offers much hope here. But some people feel a little burned because they spent a lot of money trying to lift this project years ago (ie $1000 fundraising dinners). This is an interesting perspective from a friend of Ron Paul’s: https://wagordon2017.substack.com/p/the-james-beard-market-a-recipe-for?publication_id=2507515&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=48kc1&utm_medium=email
Thanks Jo. There is definitely a lot of work to do and making this market incredible won't be easy and will require a lot of creativity. But believing in Downtown is very important right now, and there is momentum across many agencies who are committed. The city is putting a tax increment financing plan into place that will raise more than one billion for Downtown improvements in the next decades; While numbers are not perfect yet on houselessness and crime, they are heading in the right direction and have improved; There are also groups like Metro Chamber who is collaborating to expand the Clean and Safe project they oversee; But in addition to these efforts, projects that bring people Downtown are equally important to the outcome.
But today, this is a new group with new leadership--and there is also the political will.
Mike, what's your take on Wendy Gordon's comments. They seem "spot on" to me:
"As excited as I am, I will believe this project when I buy my first fillet of Alaskan salmon. The James Beard Market has been through many false starts before, in the process running through millions of donated and taxpayer dollars. This time the location is secured and a lot of funding is in place, but not all. The budget is high: over 20 million to buy and renovate the space, including an atrium, grand staircase, and rooftop event space.
More important, no matter how beautiful the finished space, and no matter how yummy the products sold, the Public Market is not going to be a success unless downtown Portland is a place people want to be. I think ideas like this are going in the right direction: office workers are not going to return to downtown like in pre-Covid days. And online shopping has replaced much traditional retail. Re-purposing these empty spaces for fun and community building spaces such as a food market or art installments is a great way to go, and something many other cities have done to revitalize their downtowns. But, I repeat: downtown has be someplace people want to go, somewhere bright, clean, and safe, like it used to be.
This requires an enforced daytime camping ban, an end to open drug use, presence of adequate security, cleanup of litter, and removal of walled up windows and graffiti. Re-introducing Fareless Square might not be a bad idea also.
There’s a lot of talk about housing being a basic human right. And it is. Everyone has the right to shelter and a hot meal. What people do not have the right to do is take over the streets with tents, or use and sell drugs openly, use the streets as a bathroom, or scatter there garbage everywhere. Lost in the discussion, and sometimes (deliberately?) forgotten by the homeless/help industrial complex, are other rights. What about the people who work hard every day to keep their lives reasonably together? What about the rights of the 40 some businesses in the proposed market and the staff they employ? What about the rights of the shoppers and eaters? What about the rights of tourists to our city and the people that serve them?
We need a more expanded, holistic concept of rights if we are to rebuild a healthy city. We need a committment from city government to maintain clean safe streets as a first priority. I’ve visited city markets in places as far flung as Barcelona, Palermo, and Goa. If these disparate places can maintain safe and vibrant public places, surely we can too."
The issue that no one is talking about is that you can buy that fillet of Alaskan salmon for less money at your neighborhood grocery store. I worked at Newman's fish in the late 1980's when they had a retail store in a food mall in the Lloyd Center. There was a similar food mall in downtown Portland. The grocery stores responded by putting in food service cases to sell the same product the food malls were selling, and they sold the same food for less money. All the food malls in Portland went out of business. Downtown still had workers who could shop at the food malls, but chose not to. Those workers are all gone now, and they are not coming back anytime soon.