Isaac Laquedem

If the City's not going to get rid of the leaves from the street trees, it could join in the fun of relocating them

Yesterday I observed a man with a leaf blower in front of the South Park restaurant, pushing the leaves from the sidewalk into the street.  The situation reminded me of the Roman cloaca maxima, or common sewer, into which the Romans could throw whatever (and sometimes whomever) they wished.  Originally an open drain, it was eventually covered over and extended with branches to other parts of Rome.

The leaf-blowing man (or, more likely, his employer) viewed Salmon Street as a common sewer - the problem of the leaves on the sidewalk will go away if he pushes them, both physically and metaphorically, onto the government.  It occurred to me that the city, instead of looking for ineffective ways to charge homeowners to remove leaves from street trees, could simply engage a vehicle with a powerful fan to drive along our fair streets and blow the leaves back.

A different approach to panhandlers

During a recent visit to a Southern city of some size, I noticed that there were no panhandlers or homeless people visible on the street.  My guide explained that the long-time mayor was a law-and-order type, and had instructed the police force to escort homeless people from downtown to a social services center, some miles away from downtown, where they are fed and housed for the night.  The assumption, I gathered, was that anyone who was on the street asking for money needed help, and the city would provide that help, but not in the tourist district.  It's a soft approach, and one that Portland might well consider -- that is, unless we're not interested in being a tourist destination.

The second floor is safe again, even though the roof still leaks

My friend with the restaurant and the fire stairs reports that the City authorities have since smiled upon him, and have told him that his second floor lounge is now officially safe, even though the roof above the sixth floor still leaks.

That's one small step for man, one giant set of fire stairs for a building department

A friend who runs a restaurant downtown on two floors of an old building says that the Portland building pooh-bahs told him that he couldn't use the second floor beyond a certain date unless he, or the owner of the building, repaired one of the internal fire stairs in the building so that guests on the second floor could exit in case of fire.  (The restaurant has two other internal staircases and an exterior fire escape also.)  He replaced the stairs, not just from the second floor to the street but -- at the city's insistence -- all the way from the top of the building down to the street.  (The rest of the building is empty.)  Problem solved?  Not quite, because the same pooh-bahs told him that the second floor is unsafe until the owner repairs the roof.  It's a six-floor building.  The restaurant owner is scratching his head over this one, and wondering (a) how a leaky roof 40 feet above his restaurant makes the second floor unsafe, but not the first floor, and (b) how many more things the city will come up with before he gets his final occupancy permit.  I think he wishes that the building people had more than one active project on their plates, so that they'd spend some of their time elsewhere.  He's also thinking that his next restaurant -- and the jobs that come with it -- will be in one of the suburbs, where the rules stay the same from start to finish. 

Just for fun, here's an alternate use for the City's stadium funds

I'm entranced by the economic arguments offered in favor of using public money to turn PGE Park into a soccer-only field and to build a new minor-league baseball park, so that Portland can move one notch up in the soccer world.  Let's suppose that our friends in local government really have, or can find, $76 million to $89 million to put into sports arenas.  (Apparently, ordinary bank financing isn't available for projects like this.) 

Another prominent Portland project can't get bank financing; it's Tom Moyer's Park Avenue West Tower on Morrison Street downtown, on which he halted construction when the market for permanent financing dried up.  Compare the economics of the City borrowing money to build two sports fields with what would result if it lent money for Mr. Moyer's project. 

City investment:  $76 million (current estimate) coming from City funds (see item 6 of this report from the Mayor's office).  $120 million (roughly) for the office tower loan.

City repayment:  For the sports field bonds, repayment comes from rents and ticket tax revenues from the sports fields, if the teams and the fans can afford to pay them.  The Paulson family will guarantee the sports team's payments to the Spectator Facilities Fund, which would issue bonds for about 40% of the City's cost.  The Mayor's report does not indicate that the Paulsons would guarantee the other 60% of the City's new bonds.  For Mr. Moyer's office building, repayment comes from refinancing the building in a few years when the credit markets return to normal.

City cash flow:  For the sports fields, the city would pay interest to the bondholders, which it hopes will be covered by rent payments and ticket taxes.  For the office building, the city would receive interest on the building mortgage.

Property taxes:  The sports fields would be owned by the public and would not pay property taxes.  The sports teams would pay property taxes on the personal property (equipment, etc.) used in the businesses.  If the sports teams have $5 million of equipment they would pay about $110,000/year in property taxes on the equipment.  The office building will likely be worth about $160 million when complete, will be on the tax rolls at about 70% of that, or $112 million (this is a result of Measure 5, not a special favor), and will pay about $2.5 million/year in property taxes.  It will also generate about $100,000/year for the Downtown Portland Clean and Safe fee and some money for the City/County business income tax.

Lag time before job creation:  The city can't start work on PGE Park until it has a final design, land use approvals (even the city needs land use approvals), and bond funds in hand.  It has to wait until the end of the current baseball season, so not much would happen there until September at the earliest.  For the replacement baseball field, the City has to overcome some land use obstacles (see the e-mail from Josh Cohen to the Mayor, quoted in this post by Professor Bogdanski), survive citizen opposition to tearing down Memorial Coliseum, and get a design approved  -- let's say 1 year at the earliest, longer if one of the groups of citizen opponents takes it to the Land Use Board of Appeals, which I think will happen.  By contrast, the office building was already under construction.  It has all of its land use approvals except one for removing the condominiums from the top, and Hoffman Construction could put people back to work in a week.  You can't get more shovel-ready than that.

Likelihood of financial success:  With respect to the sports fields, the Paulson family has financial strength, but sports is a rocky business, and the City hasn't finished paying for the last remodel of PGE Park.  The office building, by contrast, is 55% leased already, and Mr. Moyer's track record for repaying loans has been sound for decades.

Likelihood of cost overruns:  Because the PGE Park remodel and the baseball stadium haven't been designed yet, no one knows exactly what they will cost, but the City's track record on projects of this sort has been that they cost more than planned.  Someone -- I hope Mr. Paulson and not the City -- will have to pick up the almost-inevitable excess cost.  The office building investment is a loan.  Loans don't have cost overruns. 

I don't seriously expect the City to consider lending money for Mr. Moyer's building, but I think this comparison is an edifying prism through which to look at Mr. Paulson's sports proposal.

The Convention Center hotel already exists

It's called the Doubletree at Lloyd Center and it lies a few blocks east of the northeast corner of the convention center.  It's about 200 feet farther from the convention center than the distance from one end of the convention center to the other, and it's one stop away by light rail.

The cheap and easy way to build a convention center hotel is to proivde some financing to the Doubletree to upgrade the existing hotel as necessary to suit the demands of conventioneers, and to face the fact that to planners of national conventions, our city is less interesting and less accessible than Seattle is..

How to save Memorial Coliseum from minor league baseball

Petition the City Council to rename it after Cesar Chavez.

How I know that the City's projections for the Triple-A ballpark are wrong

The easy way to demonstrate that Portland will lose money on the proposed triple-A baseball stadium is that if it could be run at a profit, Gerding Edlen or Williams & Dame would be proposing to build and own it.

Where Saturday Market could fill a need

Only after the City started construction on Saturday Market's new home did it occur to me that the warren of shops and booths could easily fit into some of the empty space in the Convention Center, where it could operate in good weather and bad, and still be accessible by MAX in TriMet's fareless zone.

Portland makes it clear that Peterson's has to move

One way or another, the City of Portland will get Peterson's to move away from 9th and Morrison.  Having John Carroll tear the entire building down, however, seems like a clumsy and expensive way to get rid of one tenant.