But let's start with a question we ask here on the story from time to time.
How are you feeling about Portland these days, especially downtown?
Are you ready to come downtown for work to go to a show
or to go out to eat?
Well,
the Portland Metro Chamber just released its annual state of the economy report
which included an entire section on downtown.
We're diving into that tonight. It is our big story tonight.
Well,
if you ask the Portland Metro Chamber where we go from here in regard to the Rose City,
they say
it's time to stop comparing Portland to its past and start working on something new,
especially when it comes to downtown.
Well, let's get into the report now first,
who's actually moving to the Portland area?
Well, we've heard for a while now
that people are actually leaving Portland and the
Portland Metro Chamber says that trend is continuing
when you look at the four counties in the metro area,
three of them have been losing people in the last two years after a decade of growth.
M
Moma
County especially losing more than 10,000 people last year
and 12,000 the year before
now, Clackamas and Washington counties have also seen their populations drop.
But it's a much different story in Clark County,
which grew by more than 3000 people last year.
Why?
Well, the chamber says there could be a lot of reasons,
but they're chalking it up to three big things.
People changing up their lifestyles now that working from home is more common
and unaffordable housing market in the Portland area. And yes, you guessed it
high taxes and they said big declines of
Anoma County's population which contribute to a region wide loss
suggest too many households and businesses
see better value propositions elsewhere.
Once a migration magnet,
the Portland area appears to have hit an affordability wall.
Meanwhile, in Clark County,
they say people and businesses are being lured by lower taxes
and more available land along with new development like the Vancouver waterfront.
Now, Portland's real estate market
has become unattractive on a national scale. Back in 2017, the Urban Land Institute
had us ranked near the top 96 percentile.
But as you can see, we've fallen sharply since then,
just dropped right off and that fall started happening before
the pandemic although it really sped up in 2020.
Now, we're ranked 51 out of 80
when it comes to building new housing in Portland. The chamber found
a sharp drop off in permits for new construction
because of high interest rates, limited access to capital
and a slowdown in permitting.
They say it doesn't bode well for housing affordability
in Portland's future.
And they don't think the metro area will meet the state's housing goals.
Remember Governor
Kotek
wanted to build 36,000 new units of housing a year.
So now let's look closer at downtown.
According to a report by real estate firm Colliers,
about a third of Portland's offices are empty right now
and they're expecting that number to rise to about 40%
this year as leases that were signed before the pandemic expire
and they don't get renewed.
The Metro Chamber's report shows we have 8.6
million square feet of empty office space right now
to put that in perspective, that's like having 44 standard Walmart stores,
all sitting empty.
Well,
city leaders have made a big push in the past
couple of years to get workers back downtown even recently,
urging private companies to get office workers back.
Now, the Portland Metro Chamber says that strategy is not likely to bear fruit.
We sort of have hit what is likely our ceiling
in office return.
So we have to stop making that comparison because what we were going to achieve
through really solid efforts of bringing people back to the core.
We have achieved that now
because of that new sort of ceiling that we have relative to 19.
Uh that means that we're seeing empty buildings
and that we are seeing less people here.
Now, Hones says it's time to envision a new downtown Portland
and that is going to look different than what it was
and it will if we do our jobs right contain a lot more housing.
So we have a more mixed use environment in our downtown
and that will spur more retail activations
and of course attendance to our
major cultural institutions, performing art venues,
the things that you want to see vibrant.
So a future downtown is going to see a lot more people living
in it than just working in it and a better balance of office
and housing,
which is necessary for what I think and what I
think most people are coming to the same conclusion,
the new downtown, the new central city won't just be office 9 to 5.
It's gonna be 24 73 65 live work play
types of neighborhoods that celebrate the cultural institutions,
the retail establishments,
but that are neighborhoods and we need to establish
downtown as a neighborhood that people live in.
Now the Urban Land Institute agrees they wrote in that same
report that rated Portland less attractive for real estate investment.
Hybrid work is here to stay.
The real estate industry has largely accepted that the office
sector will not be returning to its pre pandemic state
as employee work and commuting preferences are standing firm,
office buildings have lost their appeal to investors
with sales transactions down more than twice as much
as other major property types.
Well,
we wanted to find out how people in
commercial real estate are feeling about that assessment.
So we reached out to the revitalized Portland coalition.
They are a group of property owners and managers here in Portland.
They say private industry wants to be part of the solution, but they need support,
you know, the pivot
needs to include supports for small biz for, you know,
the the the kind of livability items that Portland is so famous for.
Um as well as you know, a pivot that says, OK,
what are we gonna do with this commercial space and
in terms of residential or innovations hubs or you know,
new ways of working?
Um That's a big shift and you know, we need a,
we need a functional city and county government to support those efforts.
Yeah, it's a lot of shifting and pivoting, isn't it?
Well,
Cole says that when it comes to reimagining
Portland downtown and its empty office space buildings,
uh especially our local government still need
to tackle the public safety and homelessness issues
and they need to cut more of the red tape that comes with development.
I think there's a lot of, of, of proposals and ideas about how you,
what you shift to and how you do it.
The bottom line for us though is that development is very
cumbersome and difficult in
the environment now. But it this is pre panem too.
So we have a lot of the government has a lot of ability to incentivize,
you know, innovative development, new ideas, but they've got to take steps
to make that process more predictable, you know, the,
the permitting process and the planning process more predictable
um and more flexible.
And we've seen some steps around the residential
housing reforms that the city just passed,
but there's a lot much longer way to go and,
you know, these things tie together because we need outside investments.
And that depends on the livability and the public image, you know, of Portland.
But those outside investors are also looking at what does it take to put up or convert
um a a building.
And you know, when we have
our, you know, significant hurdles in that governmental process,
we don't look as attractive as other cities do.
All right now it's time for you to weigh in like we like you to do.
What do you want to see for the future of Portland, especially downtown?
And what do you think is standing in the way of that?
Email us at the story at kgw.com or of course,
you can always call and leave a voicemail
at the number there. 503226 5090.