Peopled with business representatives, the groups give recommendations to the mayor
In late January, the mayor’s office announced a new plan to restore the Central Eastside Industrial District neighborhood.
“My office has partnered with the Central Eastside Industrial Council to develop a 90-day reset plan to help revitalize their neighborhood,” Mayor Ted Wheeler tweeted Jan. 26. “This plan starts today.”
The effort was another in a series of steps aimed at “revitalizing” business districts in the city.
Last October, Portland City Council voted to create two “expediting groups” — the Central City Expediting Group and the Neighborhood Business Districts Expediting Group — to make post-pandemic economic recovery recommendations for lagging districts, an effort spurred by the ongoing battle to restore the downtown Portland area into the modest economic center it once was.
“The concept of these groups is to bring Portlanders together to work through small and big issues with the overall goal of making our city more livable and economically prosperous for all Portlanders,” a press release announcing the groups said.
The Portlanders brought together — business and community members invited to join the Central City Expediting Group, or CCEG — were hand-picked by the mayor’s office or recruited through word of mouth by members, ultimately representing predominantly wealthy, connected business interests.
According to the mayor’s office, the Neighborhood Business Districts Expediting Group, meant to focus on economic corridors outside downtown, was absorbed into the mayor’s existing “problem solver” meetings. The Central Eastside Industrial Council, comprised of businesses, developers and nonprofits, is an independent group founded in 1980.
The other expediting group persists as the CCEG, and its focus is reviving the beleaguered city core. Composed of neighborhood association members vocal in their criticism of city actions around homelessness and economic development, representatives from various bureaus in the city government and business representatives, the group currently meets on a bi-weekly basis.
In addition to the latest ‘90-day reset,’ enacted in partnership between the city and the Central Eastside Industrial Council, the groups yielded increased public lighting installation and additional funds to assist with replacing vandalized businesses’ broken windows in recent months.
Aside from graffiti clean-ups and safety efforts, the CCEG is eyeing beefed-up law enforcement, a streamlined process for real estate development and efforts to convert empty office buildings into housing.
The city ostensibly created the groups to support economic recovery from pandemic stagnation. Still, records obtained by Street Roots show the role of business in directing that effort looms large, raising questions about a cozy relationship in which business representatives weigh in on city policy and set priorities that positively impact businesses — all without disclosing activities as lobbying.
A loophole
While City Council didn’t vote on the CCEG until October 2022, records obtained by Street Roots show the group began meeting back in September 2022 — a handful of city representatives and stakeholders convened to brainstorm the challenges facing downtown Portland.
The members were somewhat usual players in the downtown political scene, city employees aside. Portland Business Alliance members, Old Town, Pearl and Downtown neighborhood associations representatives and staff from Downtown Portland Clean and Safe — the controversial group contracted by the city and overseen by the Portland Business Alliance, or PBA — each attended the initial meeting.
The brainstorming captured in early meeting notes laid out stakeholders' core concerns and priorities, which would evolve into the city-sanctioned CCEG priorities listed in the resolution — “improving the right-of-way, increasing affordable housing opportunities and improving public safety.”
While some of the conversations and ideas generated in the group are relatively innocuous — like graffiti abatement and increasing lighting in the city to improve public safety — others address more substantive issues, like law enforcement, homelessness policy and affordable housing development.
Despite the apparent link between business policy goals and recommendations developed by the CCEG, the city won’t require members to disclose these interactions in lobby reports.
According to city code, lobbying does not include “(t)ime spent participating in a board, committee, working group, or commission created by City Council through approval of resolution or ordinance.” This exception means the PBA and other business or special interest groups invited to the CCEG aren’t required to disclose interactions with elected officials when they are part of the CCEG.
Emails between city employees who helped draft the resolution noted this loophole. Andrew Fitzpatrick, the mayor’s director of economic development, highlighted the deliberate inclusion of language disclosing and formalizing using this loophole in an Oct. 18, 2022 email.
“Here’s the final, final now, which includes a clear explanation that the participants of these groups are not subject to lobbying reporting,” Fitzpatrick wrote.
The resolution eventually passed by the city council is upfront about this: “WHEREAS, because the Stakeholder groups are created through Council resolution, time spent participating in the group is not considered lobbying under Portland City Code 2.12.020.”
Law enforcement
Meeting notes show participants raised the issue of increased law enforcement in downtown Portland during a Sept. 8, 2022, meeting.
According to notes, Walter Weyler, a member of the Downtown Community Association, said, “reputation needs to be sustained by word of mouth, so police presence is important, and it will make a huge difference.”
Notes show Steve Wytcherly, Downtown Portland Clean and Safe operations director, agreed with Weyler, and the notes summarize his comments.
“Security is key,” Wytcherly said, according to the notes. “Clean and Safe is strategizing around more public safety with the limited resources.”
The group will have opportunities to talk these ideas through with Portland police directly.
Portland police partners with the CCEG to help address public safety concerns, and both the Neighborhood Response Team and Central Precinct leadership regularly participate, according to Cody Bowman, Wheeler’s communication lead.
According to Bowman, the groups also “created the first walking beats the city has seen in years and are continuing to work with the (District Attorney) and retailers to target the most prolific and problematic shop lifters plaguing retailers.”
In response to increased retail theft, Bowman said, “retail theft missions were designed in close coordination with retailers, the Portland Police Bureau’s Neighborhood Response Team, the Multnomah County Sheriff, and the District Attorney.”
Right of way
Meetings focused on keeping sidewalks clear, a goal that sounds innocuous but implicitly means removing homeless Portlanders from city sidewalks. The city code relating to this is “right of way.” The rules mandate clear sidewalks, a set of regulations that proponents of sweeps have marshaled in their push to remove homeless people from public spaces. In communications, “right of way” often functions as shorthand for removing homeless camps.
In the initial CCEG meeting, notes state Jon Isaacs, vice president of public affairs for the Portland Business Alliance, weighed in on the responsibility of property owners to help keep their sidewalks clear.
“Property owners who are more diligent with their right of way, but there are some other (sic.) who don’t know how to deal with camping in the right of way adjacent to their property,” Isaacs said, according to the notes.
Then, Isaacs seemed to suggest the city mandate increased effort from property managers and owners to keep the public right of way clean.
“A city policy that needs to be acknowledged by property managers,” Isaacs said, according to the notes.
The notes indicate Isaacs’ plans to draft a version of this policy that he will send to Sam Adams, reading “Jon will send a draft to Sam for the City to review,” highlighted in yellow.
In response to questions from Street Roots, Bowman said the city is not using any policies drafted by Isaacs.
“We are unaware of such a proposal, and nothing of the sort is currently being used by the city,” Bowman said.
The PBA did not respond to requests for comment.
A pattern of influence
The ability of Central City Expediting Group members to have easier access to officials, weigh in on policy and make requests for law enforcement is part of a pattern in Portland, where city officials have comfortable ties with the business community and grants them priority.
As reported in March 2022, records obtained by Street Roots showed business owners successfully asking city officials for sweeps outside of established city processes intended to ensure encampment evaluations and sweeps are based on objective criteria.
Notably, many of the stakeholders now enshrined in the CCEG were involved in the email threads in which businesses and prominent members of neighborhood associations complained to officials about homeless camps and got them removed.
As reported by Street Roots at the time, recipients included members of the Portland Business Alliance, the Old Town Community Association, Sam Adams (then-director of strategic innovations at the mayor’s office), the director of Downtown Clean and Safe operations and members of the business community.
Street Roots obtained new records showing at least five instances where businesses asked for similar sweeps and got them from June 2022 through October 2022.
In a May 11, 2022 email captured in the public records request, Mark New, an N&N Real Estate realtor, emailed Sam Adams requesting assistance removing camps near Southwest 13th Avenue and Salmon Street. On June 1, New revived the thread noting the city had yet to remove the camps.
“It’s been over two weeks and the camps between Salmon and Burnside have increased along with the trash, vandalism and needles on the sidewalks,” New wrote. “I have told area property owners, tenants and prospective tenants (few and far between) that this matter is being attended to by the city within the time period that you stated. With no progress on this matter, it’s hard to maintain the hope that a resolution is forthcoming, or my own credibility.
“I know your (sic.) aware of the importance of cleaning this area and hope that you can get it accomplished right away. Some of us are trying to maintain the hope that downtown is a viable area to conduct business…… (sic.), and this is not helping our case. Thank you.”
After Adams responds and orders Impact Reduction Program staffers to facilitate removal, New thanks Adams and notes a tent left behind in a June 6, 2022 email.
“Thank you,” New said. “It looks like it was completed today, except that one tent was left behind….. (sic.) perhaps it goes away later today. Thank you for your assistance on this matter.”
With staffers Nate Takara and Skyler Brocker-Knapp cc’d, Adams offers New an emphatic response.
“Let’s get that last one!” Adams said.
Shared goals
In recent months, the city introduced five resolutions passed by City Council to “fast-track” affordable housing and enforce a camping ban. While not officially tied to the CCEG, the objectives dovetail with the desires of its prominent business members to remove homeless Portlanders from the streets.
The homelessness crisis is a friction point where ongoing economic and housing crises clash with business interests. Businesses and community groups have been vocal about proposed solutions, with a central focus on whether or not homeless Portlanders should be removed from public areas.
While the purpose of the Central City Expediting Group is economic recharge, homelessness emerges as an issue within its scope because business owners downtown maintain rampant homelessness is squelching business.
In July 2022, prior to the CCEG launch, a published “State of the Alliance” from PBA board chair John Maher, president of The Oregonian/OregonLive media group, boasted about hugely successful lobby efforts, claiming credit for the mayor’s actions on homelessness.
“Concerning homelessness and the humanitarian crisis on our streets — our advocacy efforts have yielded a string of executive emergency orders; the city has enacted safe rest villages, and the city, county and state have generated a record amount of shelter capacity that has been funded — and that opened — this year,” Maher said.
In the statement, Maher also said PBA lobbying garnered “over 100 million dollars in livability and public safety investments to our city, county and state” and noted recent shifts in local crime policy as a lobbying win.
“Concerning public safety — in addition to resources for our police, for the first time in recent history, the county is investing in the expansion of the district attorney’s office, which will include neighborhood DAs and a dedicated office in Old Town,” Maher wrote.
The PBA did not respond to Street Roots’ requests for comment.
The Revitalize Portland Coalition, or RPC, is a relative newcomer to Portland advocacy efforts and began summer of 2022 but gained access to government officials quickly. Erik Cole, the executive director of the RPC, was already involved in CCEG and attended the Sept. 8, 2022 meeting. Backed by local real estate mogul Jordan Schnitzer, the RPC is a coalition of real estate developers organized around the same persistent principle of “revitalizing” downtown Portland.
On Sept. 7, 2022, the RPC held its first “Issues Symposium” — a gathering of some 80 members who convened to delve into the pressing issue of homelessness in Portland.
At the time, the RPC introduced an eight-step plan for addressing homelessness, including enforcing vagrancy laws that ban camping in public places and repealing voter-passed Measure 110. This 2020 law decriminalized hard drugs in favor of increased support for addiction and social services in the push for combating rampant addiction.
The Portland Business Alliance details some overlapping goals in its policy agenda, including “increased funding for Portland Police Bureau staffing, including increased walking-beat assignments in Downtown Portland,” restoring budget cuts and increasing funding for corrections, jails and the Multnomah County District Attorney Office and funding for “technology for the most efficient use and deployment of Portland police officers.”
An economic resolution
The core argument for the Central City Expediting Group is economic vitality. Like cities nationwide, Portland is struggling to recover from the economic stall brought on by the pandemic. Lasting changes, such as working from home and online shopping, complicated this recovery by contributing to empty office buildings, reduced foot traffic and closing retail stores. The city also faces serious challenges from rises in violent crime, shootings and car theft, and the separate challenges of homelessness and housing.
“The central city and the various business districts across the city are the most densely populated areas in the region and serves as economic, cultural, and civic hubs,” the city argues in the resolution.
While general economic wisdom holds city centers are critical for economic and cultural health in cities, it is also true that wealth is unevenly distributed and resources are concentrated in more prosperous communities, a truth borne out in Portland.
“There shouldn't be planning groups with five hotel owners who live in the 'burbs and zero people who are on hotel cleaning staff. We hear a lot from business owners about downtown. Let's hear from their actual on-site staffers, particularly those at the front of the shop."
— Lisa Bates
Professor in the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning and in Black studies,
Portland State University
Ensuring representation in development and revitalization efforts is central, said Lisa Bates, professor in the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning and in Black Studies at Portland State University.
“There are interests — real estate owners, business owners, workers — who live outside the city but have strong interests in downtown,” Bates said. “And the region as a whole has interest in this area as an economic driver. So representation in this group is complicated.”
According to Bowman, the selection process for CCEG membership is informal and includes neighborhood leaders, businesses that occupy the central city, community-based partners and Portland city staff. Emails obtained by Street Roots corroborate Bowman’s statements and show city staffers and existing business and neighborhood association members brainstorming about who else to invite to the group.
“There is no formal membership model or nomination process,” Bowman said in an email. “Much of the participation is based on invitations within the community by the community of people they think would be interested. While it’s not a public town hall, it’s generally open to community members in the neighborhood.”
Bates said a deliberately equitable approach to membership is important.
“There shouldn't be planning groups with five hotel owners who live in the 'burbs and zero people who are on hotel cleaning staff,” Bates said in an email. “We hear a lot from business owners about downtown. Let's hear from their actual on-site staffers, particularly those at the front of the shop. PSU students! Social service organizations, and not only staff, but folks accessing their shelter. And the group needs to be future-oriented, not just about re-doing the status quo.”
The resolution to create the CCEG relies on consulting work on the city’s economic corridors conducted by the economic consulting firm ECONorthwest.
The resolution names ECONorthwest and its work twice, noting the firm “is completing an assessment of post-pandemic economic performance and needed recovery interventions” and that “based on ECONorthwest’s work, these groups will be tasked with developing recommendations for the Mayor’s consideration to improve the communication, coordination and alignment of activities that are needed across city government, the private sector, and community-based organizations in an action-oriented and urgent manner.”
Bates notes that the selection of a consulting firm would ideally be part of equity considerations.
“I'd also want a process where an equitable development-oriented committee chooses the technical consulting teams that provide the basis for the work,” Bates said. “That's not, in my opinion, ECONW. If the city has agreed that ‘equity is the superior growth model,’ it needs expertise in development that includes community benefits and social equity impacts, not business as usual.”
Records obtained by Street Roots indicate the ECONorthwest study was originally developed for the Portland Business Alliance, though the study is attributed to ECONorthwest/Prosper Portland in the documents provided to City Council.
In a Sept. 26, 2022 email, Eric Zimmerman, central city economic advisor at the mayor’s office, noted ECONorthwest originally developed the slides for the Portland Business Alliance.
Erik Cole, executive director of the Revitalize Portland Coalition, requested a copy of the slides from Zimmerman. Zimmerman declined to share them, indicating the content needed to be changed before the slides were made public.
“Here is my PPT. As for the ECOnorthwest (sic.) piece, since they reported to us a draft and are including the feedback from that presentation and others into their final product, I can’t share that out right now,” Zimmerman said in the email. “My apologies- but you understand they’re making adjustments for external audience from just PBA.”
In an email, Bowman told Street Roots Zimmerman misspoke.
“Prosper Portland contracted with ECONorthwest to perform this economic recovery analysis for the central city,” Bowman said. “PBA also released a similar analysis at the time which caused some confusion.”
Street Roots reached out to ECONorthwest to ask about the CCEG. The firm said it has no knowledge of the expediting group but is researching Central City revitalization for Prosper Portland.
Equity and transparency
Street Roots asked the mayor’s office if it believed it was “transparent and equitable for select businesses to make recommendations without disclosing it as lobbying.”
In response, the city ignored any mention of lobbying and focused on the CCEG’s engagement with stakeholders.
“Neighborhood groups, business owners, community-based organizations and stakeholders working with the Mayor’s office to identify concerns in their neighborhood is basic constituent services,” Bowman said. “The concept of these groups is to bring Portlanders together to work through small and big issues with the overall goal of making our city more livable and economically prosperous for all Portlanders. Improving the right-of-way, increasing affordable housing opportunities, and improving public safety across our various districts and neighborhoods are shared goals in an inclusive economic recovery.”
The existence of an advisory group like the CCEG isn’t itself notable — governments engage with stakeholders to inform policy all the time. What is notable is the selection of the members — predominantly businesses, including many from the real estate sector — who have regular access to officials in opaque meetings with built-in immunity from lobby reporting.
“To have equity at the center of asking what downtown is and what it could and should be, you need to think about who does and could ‘live, work, play’ downtown,” Bates said.
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
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