Where Have All The Big Ideas Gone?

Portland was once the epicenter of new urban thinking. What happened?

I remember the moment I decided to move back to Portland. 

It was the early-middle Aughts, and I had a cushy government relations job in Washington, DC and absolutely zero plans of leaving it to move back to Portland—my quirky but sleepy hometown. Then one day, while visiting on a sunny Spring day, standing at the intersection of SW Yamhill and Morrison, a brand new electric blue streetcar whizzed by. 

WTF was that? 

Amazed that this type of thing even existed, I hopped aboard and rode past Powells Books and into the booming Pearl District, half of which was under transformation–emerging from a drab rail yard into America’s boldest experiment in new urbanism. There, I saw all sorts of new buildings, new parks, and even world-class public art. As we passed the repurposed Ecotrust building at NW Johnson Street, a man sitting across from me interrupted my thoughts to tell me that Ecotrust was among the first LEED-certified buildings in America—which I would later learn that Portland not had more of than any city in the country, but that its braintrust had also played a significant role in creating the LEED program itself. 

Even as recent as 20 years ago, the notion of a new urban mix-used neighborhood with multi-income housing developments, imaginative uses of public space, and the first new street car system that America had seen since the big-three auto companies were actually paying cities to tear them out in the 1950s, was a novel and game-changing idea. At the time, there was absolutely nothing like it at that scale anywhere in America—not in Seattle, not in New York, and certainly not in Washington, DC, which was still subsidizing residents to renovate the thousands of historic inner-city brownstones that were boarded-up and abandoned. Portland at that time was years ahead of everywhere else—and everyone here knew it. 

What’s more, the Pearl District was far from the only game in town. Ground was breaking on the South Waterfront neighborhood, where Portland’s visionary badass mayor Vera Katz and a team of local developers had sparked an international design competition to envision an aerial tram that would connect OHSU, the city’s largest employer, with the last acres of undeveloped land in the central city—parts of which were once a superfund site. Across the river from Downtown, the Eastbank Esplanade had been recently unveiled—and with it new views of Downtown and the connection to the river that Portland had lacked. 

Not only was all of this happening two decades ago—it was all happening at the exact same time. Back then, it seemed that Portland did some pretty extraordinary and big things. Fast forward to 2024. At a time when we need a radical re-thinking of our city more than any time since the 1990s, where are all the big ideas? Or more succinctly, at a time when how we work, shop, and travel for business has been radically affected, what should our big ideas even be? 

Here are a few thoughts. 

Downtown Needs More Residents
A notable Portland real estate developer once told me that the single most important thing to know about building a neighborhood is also the most obvious, and it is this: 

Money and investment always follows people. Where there are more people, there will be growth. Where there are fewer people, there will be decline. 

When you consider that the core of Downtown Portland does not have a large residential population, it becomes pretty clear why so many small businesses were forced to shutter when tourism, a daytime office worker population of 100,000-plus, and destination shopping dried up in 2020, and Downtown Portland felt like a ghost town for a couple of years. 

Meanwhile, for as much attention that Portland and its West Coast peers have received for their perceived central business district decline, there has been far too little coverage on the bigger picture—how simultaneously outer neighborhoods in those same cities have been booming and growing as people tended to stay closer to where they lived. Where I live near Laurelhurst Park, Belmont Street has become so popular that street parking in the neighborhood for us residents on the weekend nights requires planning ahead. A few blocks away on East 28th, the nightly queues outside of the popular restaurants and throngs of people who visit the street far exceeds its pre-pandemic volume. The same goes for Alberta Street, where a new hotel/club/health spa is about to open, and on NW 23rd, which has recently added North America’s flagship On Running store, a lovely second outpost of Kate’s Ice Cream, a busy outpost of the restaurant Harlow, and a lot more. 

And for as much bad press as REI leaving the Pearl District generated, there was no coverage when Joybird, Williams Sonoma, and CB2 all opened flagship Pearl District stores around the same time. That hardly seems to support the narrative of a dying city. (Also, fuck REI for throwing so much shade. Everyone close to real estate circles knows they have been trying to get out of that space for years.)

I digress. 

What this all tells us is pretty clear: For neighborhoods to thrive, there must be actual neighbors–people who live, shop, and work all of the time. And right now we should be implementing big measures to incentivize the development of housing in our urban core because it seems unlikely they will occur without some really shiny perks. There are entire parts of Downtown Portland that could be prime spots for mass development of housing—like along Naito Parkway facing Waterfront Park—which brings me to my next suggestion. 

Waterfront Park Needs To Be Dramatically Reimagined
We all know the story about how Portland reclaimed Waterfront Park from a former freeway, and as much as I love that narrative, I believe we declared victory a little too soon. As a river city, Waterfront Park is the city’s door mat, but for such a high-profile location, it’s not a place that anyone wants to be—and sadly functions for the most part more as a venue for lackluster carnivals than the world-class, year-round public space it could and should be. 

Considering the park broke ground when Nixon was president, I believe we are passed due for stage two. 

If you look at the other great river cities in the world, you’ll find much better inspiration on what a waterfront can and should be. Take Bilbao in the Basque region of Spain: Also a historically an industrial port city with a river that runs through its heart, Bilbao dreamt a lot bigger and reimagined its riverfront by actually building on it. Yes, there’s ample green space with ramps that connect passers by with the river, but there is also thoughtful hardscaping, excellent public art including the famous Jeff Koons puppy which make it a wonderful place to be and to stroll. 

And of course there is the crown jewel: an outpost of the Solomon Guggenheim museum that attracts more than 30,000 people every week. 

Imagine the Portland waterfront with a hard-scape amphitheater to host concerts and lectures for the majority of the year, a sculpture park with world-class art, an indoor botanical garden housed in a molded glass and metal building that evokes the energy of the Guggenheim, and some type of food market. And across from the park, imagine new housing towers facing it along Naito Parkway–from the Hawthorne Bridge to the newly designed Burnside Bridge. 

The Best Marketing Strategy is Doing Things
Speaking of the Guggenheim, I recently read a quote by the legendary Michelin-starred Basque chef Juan Mari Arzak who noted that his reservations increased by more than 20 percent after the Guggenheim’s opening. What’s most notable about this stat is that his place, Arzak, is located in the city of San Sebastián, more than 60 miles away. These days, Basque Country is considered to be among the top culinary destination, with more Michelin stars per capita than any place on the planet. But more than any other factor, one could make a pretty strong argument that it was the Guggenheim that put Basque Country on the map. Before that museum, most people had never heard of Bilbao. I hadn’t. Another example of if you build it they will come.

It has been awhile since the era of regular effusive Portland-is-great articles in big and globally-minded publications—so long that I forgot what it felt like to read them—until this week when the new main PDX terminal was unveiled on Monday—and a level of praise we haven’t seen in close to a decade poured in—from CNN, Condé Nast Traveler, Fast Company, The New York Post—and that was just Tuesday alone. 

The praise is well deserved. Rather than trying to figure how many clicks it might take to restore Portland to its sparkly image, the Port of Portland was busy building the most ambitious public works project in the state’s history—a $2.1 billion moonshot that resulted in a sculptural nine-acre mass timber marvel with a photogenic undulating roof.

Impressive.

What’s so important about this project—and any good civic-minded project—is its dual effect in both spreading an inspiring narrative globally that reflects the aspirations and values of where we live—and even more importantly–instilling a deep sense of pride among the people who live in and near Portland, reminding everyone of our capabilities and ambition when we come together to make big things happen.

To answer the question of where the ideas have gone…

The Albina Vision project is one of the most relevant and ambitious redevelopment efforts in the country’s history—and that is happening right here. There is also the $110 million Rothko Pavilion at the Portland Art Museum, which debuts next year, plus a handful of other big projects that we’re not allowed to talk about yet–in Old Town, near PSU, and right along the river. 

I believe that we’ll look back on this era—the decade that started around 2016 in Portland—as a time of great transformation, of latent ambition, and intentional rebirth. Portland has always been a slow but deliberate actor—a place that likes to make its moves from a position of confidence and consensus—for better or worse—but often for the better. And while it’s too bad that we all had to meddle with a global pandemic at a time when our city was undergoing deep growing pains—and man did we feel it—I believe we will be better off in the long run. 

As much as some like to talk about the pre-pandemic Portland as the good old days, I believe we were on a course that was not reflective of who we are or want to be.

Portland is a special place–not a commodity to be consumed by the masses.

In the long run, we will likely look back fondly at the era of intentional reset.