We still have really high retail vacancy in downtown and in a lot of the urban core. Do you see the city as having a role in filling some of those spaces? I think there’s a role in working with partners on those. One of my approaches is, with the business districts, all the neighborhoods, and then also downtown: How do we make these businesses that are here right now sustainable and successful, and then recruit around them? Yes, there are a lot of vacancies, but if we fill these three vacancies and then these three closed, it’s just kind of a whack-a-mole. JASON E. KAPLAN What are you hearing from businesses that are really established in business districts that are suffering? I think it’s, one, all the costs have gone up just in general, and two, there’s just an uncertainty about everything. That can range from taxes to tariffs, the cost of goods to access to capital like SBA loans. Everybody is so worried about all these layers, let alone getting enough foot traffic in the door to buy their locally made products, or their beer or their coffee or something like that. It’s different in every area. Downtown’s a lot different than Multnomah Village. Multnomah Village is doing well because the community supports it. And I think there are other districts that have communities around them, but there are certain areas where public safety is still an issue, and vandalism, and I don’t think we can shy away from some of those issues when dealing with supporting small business. It sounds like you see your role as less in recruitment than in just supporting the businesses that already exist, and even sort of nurturing them and building business districts around those businesses. At least from the office standpoint. I think from a Prosper standpoint, there’s the Business Advancement Team, which does a lot of the recruitment and retaining of businesses, that works with [Greater Portland Inc.], that works with Business Oregon, so you have the three layers of those all working on that aspect. But I think that I will say, from 2010 to 2020, when they recruited businesses here, a lot of them were recruiting based on getting talent here too, and the talent wanted to be here because of the neighborhoods, the local coffee shops, the craft-beer scene, the foods. The role also for us is to show that part of Portland’s appeal to recruit companies is supporting the small businesses that make people who come here to work for that company want to live here, want to engage in the community, just like they have for the past 20 years. I think that’s sometimes missing a bit — like the neighborhoods and where these people are actually going to live. The housing piece is beyond your purview, and yet it really does underpin everything, doesn’t it? The housing piece, the lease rates — there’s a lot of stuff that’s out of our purview, as you say, but these all affect small businesses. I think there are definitely some challenges for Portland’s future, but I think that when you drive around some of these neighborhoods, you start to see it over the last year and a half: The foot traffic’s up, you feel the vibrancy coming back. I walk by bars and restaurants in Montavilla or Hawthorne and they’re busy on, like, a Thursday afternoon at three o’clock. So you can see those signs of resurgence in a lot of the areas around, too. What are things that give you some hope about this office moving forward? I think what gives me hope is the same thing that’s given me hope for the past 15 years: It’s the founders and business owners themselves. When you take the time to meet them and build those relationships, you realize whether it’s Ian [Williams] at Deadstock [Coffee] or Brianne [Mees] of Tender Loving [Empire]; they’re the ones building this city from the ground up. When the story of Portland gets told, it’s usually told through that lens instead of the big companies. I can sense the turning around of Portland over the past year, and so now it’s really around, how do we kind of help it move a little faster? And I think that is giving these small businesses the hope and the support needed to become sustainable, then profitable. Because for a lot of small businesses, profitability is the hardest one. 11
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