I'm pat dooris. Welcome to the story.
We're starting in downtown Portland because
with the mask mandate over, I figured.
Office.
Not so much. It's 12:15 this
sidewalk should be full,
but there's nobody here because
the city is not bringing back
its workers for at least a month.
A number of other companies are
not here either.
The City of Portland has 2950 employees who
work at several offices around downtown.
Many are here at the Portland Building.
Well, normally the sign on the
door reads closed to the public.
It's been that way for some time.
The city tells us.
Some workers are inside,
but most are working remotely
from home or other locations.
Portland managers are not requiring
them to come back to the city core on
a consistent basis until April 18th,
and then they'll only be
required to be at the office.
One day a week,
it's unclear what happens after that.
Each Bureau can decide.
I asked for an interview to talk with
the Chief Administrative Officer.
The Bureau did not reply.
Portland State University has doubled the
employees about 6000 at its downtown campus.
A spokeswoman said workers returned
for two or three days a week starting
last September and continuing through now.
At the same time,
many other companies have not
returned to downtown at all.
The standard building appears deserted.
It once had 2000 workers here.
At its height, downtown Portland had roughly
100,000 office workers here each day.
It's nothing like that now.
Just ask jeweler David Margolis.
Well, what it's like is twilight
zone because we have a fraction
of the people on the streets
that used to be on the streets.
Nobody is pouring out of the buildings
and so you are just in a very quiet.
Sleepy. Dormant situation,
he's closing the jewelry shop.
His father opened 90 years ago
in downtown Portland, blaming a
lack of shoppers and city leaders.
The employees aren't
coming to their buildings.
The shoppers aren't coming down
and our city has done too little.
Too late to help downtown and
the independent merchants,
Christine Azar owns a
coffee shop in downtown.
She said there is more foot
traffic than when COVID first hit,
but it's not. Back to normal
City leadership is not coming back to work.
The city is open.
City employees are not coming
back to the office. Why is that?
They should be the first back in the
office because they're the ones that
need to come down here and support us
with few customers.
Many stores have closed.
These women found it hard
to get lunch downtown.
Unfortunately, everywhere we've
been so far has shut down.
So no luck at this point,
unfortunately, and we're hungry.
It's not gone without notice.
Many are calling on the city of
Portland to do more to clean up the
streets and make downtown safe again.
Carrie Som works to attract new
businesses to Portland Old Town district.
She sees the impact each day,
our downtown district,
our Old Town district, the northwest.
It is really special.
Nothing like this exists anywhere
else and it's slowly dying because
folks are not coming back to work.
They're not coming back to their offices.
Our government officials.
Our city officials aren't coming back
and that has a massive impact on people.
Who are trying to make ends meet?
On the other hand,
working in Portland core is no picnic.
Recently Alexandra Etheridge,
a new Portland resident,
as well as a leader and scientists
with the US Geological Survey told
Portland lawmakers her fellow
employees are afraid to work downtown
because of multiple problems with
homeless campers and violence.
Equally egregious are random
and unpredictable events,
such as an explosion that blew
out office windows, arson,
trespassing and an unplanned presence
near an uncontrolled use of a firearm.
In an account Jason to our office,
these pose imminent danger with
the risk of severe injury or
death for our employees and
their concerns are reasonable.
There's a lot going on there.
I'm sorry to see Margolis go by the way.
That's where I got my
wedding ring 27 years ago.