Will Seagram’s 7 Crown Downtown? Seagram is interested in buying a sizeable chunk of stock in downtown Portland By Kevin Mulligan “The basic issue we raise is a moral one, which seems to have been overlooked in the excitement generated by this huge proposal. It concerns the city’s use of its powers of condemnation for the benefit of one developer,” said Lyndon Bowman, President of the Oregon Society of Industrial Realtors. “This appears to be a case where city officials have met with a developer in private, worked out plans to condemn private property, and agreed to resell it to them at a loss. We know for a fact that a good many of those property owners have never been contacted, or nothing was ever discussed with them,” Bowman said. “Now, I don’t know many of these people, and we have no axe to grind, although there are a good many economic axes being ground in connection with this thing,” he added. And those economic axes are starting to cut into a lot of people’s hides. The development in question is the now nearly famous Morrison Street Project which is being proposed for the belly of downtown Portland by the Cadillac Fairview Company. Described by the developer as a project which will give Downtown “a focal point, a global civic attraction,” the four-block proposal will level the entire area between SW Morrison and Taylor, and 3rd and 5th avenues, and replace it with an ultra-modern, mixed-use project involving two new department stores, a hotel, office and parking towers, and a 250,000-squarefoot retail mall. The benefits of this project for Portland are mentioned in terms of $70 to $85 million in new investment, 1,300 new jobs, approximately $1.7 million per year in hotel and property taxes, and the establishing of a “ retail mix” which will allow Downtown to “ become competitive with most suburban shopping centers.” All worthwhile goals. However, in the haste to welcome a development of this type into the Downtown, the powers-that-be seem to be ignoring a very vital fact. That is, the area which has been proposed for this development is already a healthy, and somewhat happy, retail and residential community. And for the most part, the people who do business in that area are not interested in being moved out to make room for a gleaming steel and glass temple of consumption. It appears to be of small consequence to the city council, or the Portland Development Commission, or the Cadillac Fairview Company, that this project, if and when it wins approval, will wipe out several historically important buildings, a valuable downtown hotel, and several thriving restaurants and businesses which combine to provide perhaps the greatest retail “mix” of anyplace in the city. Nor does there seem to be a great deal of concern for the fact that this project will bring thousands of additional cars into the downtown area each day, fouling the air, clogging the streets, violating the intent of the Transit Mall, and laughing in the face of the gasoline shortage. However, perhaps the greatest injury to be committed in this case will be against the spirit and strength of our entire community. At no time in the development of this project have local merchants, property owners, developers or concerned citizens been contacted to solicit and gain their opinions and suggestions. In fact, both the developer and the PDC have repeatedly demonstrated an arrogant and selfish attitude toward the people who have been making their living in this area for decades. For the most part, the merchants in the area weren’t even informed that a development project was being considered, let alone asked what type of project they would be interested in for their community. Finally, as in the case of the Wacker electronics company, which this paper reported on last issue, the PDC and the city are again offering concessions and assistance to a foreign developer that have never been offered to local businesses or developers. In June of last year, representatives of the PDC and the Portland Bureau of Planning traveled to Washington, D.C., to participate in the Urban Land Institute Development Conference. There, the City gave a presentation to the 17-or-so developers that were in attendance, telling them about the needs and, one would think, the requirements for developing this area of Downtown. Significantly, the area which was pinpointed for development by the PDC was circled in red on the map. which the developers saw, and it included the entire four-block area. It seems there was no looking back after that, and the PDC has continued to pursue its goal of destruction and development of the entire area as a four-block unit. Although the Cadillac Fairview Company wasn’t at the PDC presentation, they soon heard about the possibilities and put a full contingent of professional planners, architects, lawyers and civic hustlers on the trail of Portland Prime (land, that is). Just when, or by what criteria, the PDC selected Cadillac for this development remains a mystery. However, we do know that at least two other companies were interested in working with the PDC to develop a proposal, but, according to a source at a leading Portland architectural firm, the PDC responded like the auctioneer in the 10
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz