How do domestic airports rank? This year, my Midwest home of Indianapolis gets some love as the #2 airport in the US.
Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport
Indianapolis International Airport
Rhode Island T.F. Green International Airport
Palm Beach International Airport
Tampa International Airport
Hartford Bradley International Airport
Minneapolis St. Paul
Long Beach Airport
Portland (Oregon) International Airport
Detroit Metropolitan Airport
Sadly, Portland falls to #9 after having lead the list in years past, but things haven’t been very good at Portland airport in the last few years. We had protesters/counter-protesters assault each other a few times, and then of course a recent woman that fired a few shots at the airport.
Higher interest rates now biting credit dependent famous local Portland restaraunts
Sortis Holdings bought up a number of famous top-flight Portland hospitality businesses and restaurants on a diet of low margins and low interest rates as they faltered during the pandemic. However, all is not well. They have been the target of at least 4 lawsuits by unpaid creditors, employees, contractors and partners since September. They recently failed at an attempt to acquire Ace Group International hotels and are currently facing many suits on unpaid bills.
Which Portland ‘local’ businesses do they own? Bamboo Sushi, Blue Star Donuts, Ava Gene’s, Tusk, Sizzle Pie pizza, the Ace Hotel, Rudy’s Barbershops, and Water Avenue Coffee to name just a few.
There’s a growing list of distressed commercial office buildings in Portland – some of the most iconic and largest ones. In the second half of 2023, this situation has finally come to a head. How bad is it? The numbers are almost twice as bad as they have ever been in 50 years, and some say Portland is facing at least a decade of downturn.
Nearly a third of Portland’s downtown office space now stands empty – and it’s a situation that’s growing worse in 2023. Many of these buildings, bought at top dollar during the time when Portland was one of the fastest growing cities in the country, now have too much debt and not enough income from rent to cover it. Owners aren’t just selling, they’re decided the situation isn’t going to get better and are now actively defaulting and walking away – just like homeowners did in the 2008 financial crisis.
The numbers are bad – off the charts bad
The commercial vacancy rate in Portland currently sits at 31.5%. Hard-hit San Francisco is 31.9%, Seattle 27.9%, Los Angeles 30.9%, Salt Lake City 19.9% and Denver 23.4%. Even during the great recession of 2008-2009, the commercial vacancy rate never broke 15% in Portland.
But things will get better right? “The Portland office market continues to face a bleak outlook at the midway point of 2023,” say analysts at Colliers – a Toronto-based firm that tracks global real estate. “Over the next two quarters, more than 500,000 square feet of leased space [in Portland] is set to expire market wide. Should these tenants maintain office space following the expiration of their leases, they will likely look to downsize their real estate footprints.” This means that as the leases expire, it’s highly probable the vacancy rate will go up even more – maybe to the highest levels in the country. This means even more foreclosures.
Meanwhile, a few miles away over the West Hills, just outside the Portland border in Beaverton and Hillsboro, companies are doing multi-billion dollar expansions. Companies such as Analog Devices and Intel. Beaverton is becoming the new foodie mecca. Why is Portland doing so bad just a few miles away?
Bob Ames, former president of First Interstate Bank of Oregon and a longtime investor in commercial property says this is the worst situation he’s seen in 50 years. He says Portland is still suffering as plywood covered windows from the 2020 riots and subsequent crime are still quite prevalent on 2023 downtown storefronts. Homeless camps have continued to grow. On some downtown blocks, you’re ‘just as likely to see someone smoking fentanyl as sipping a Frappuccino’.
Steadily increasing and expanding business taxes and regulation far beyond neighboring metro areas has also been discouraging businesses from Portland. Besides stifling new businesses, successful businesses are increasingly moving out too.
His assessment? “The problem with downtown Portland is that you don’t want to be in downtown Portland. We’ve driven a lot of capital out of here, and a lot of tenants. You’re not going to book another major employer into this city for a decade.”
One thing is clear, the collapse has begun. Things in Portland are likely to get worse before they get better. Serious and long-term damage has been done by leadership and Portland is almost certainly looking at a continued decline for a good while before things have a chance of turning around. That’s if Portland can recover from the destruction of it’s business tax base – at the same time they are also experiencing a disturbing income tax reduction due to a growing multi-year population decline.
A local paper, the Journal Courier, did a pretty interesting piece on the increasing drug problems on the Oregon coast. It turns out, the CJNG cartel from Mexico has been doing a heavy drug trade in more and more rural and coastal Oregon towns – even leaving a grisly warning for those who might talk.
Over four decades more than $9 billion in tax dollars were spent on fish conservation in the Columbia River basin.
Research headed by William Jaeger from the OSU College of Agricultural Sciences analyzed 50 years of data to answer the basic question: Is there any evidence of an overall boost in wild fish abundance that can be linked to the totality of the recovery efforts?
The study from Oregon State University shows that all these efforts have not resulted in a notable increase in wild salmon and steelhead populations in the Columbia River Basin. In fact, of all the many different conservation efforts, all the salmon and steelhead population growth can be attributed to one source: hatcheries.
The actual impact of all of these [individual conservation] efforts has always been poorly understood. One of the issues is that most studies evaluating restoration efforts have examined individual projects for specific species, life stages, or geographic areas, which limits the ability to make broad inferences at the basin level.
The role of hatcheries in recovery plans is controversial for many reasons, but results do indicate that hatchery production combined with restoration spending is associated with increases in returning adult fish. However, we found that adult returns attributable to spending and hatchery releases combined do not exceed what we can attribute to hatcheries alone.
It’s another example in Oregon’s sadly long list of feel-good measures and huge tax spending programs that failed to provide the promised results. This is very disappointing not only because of the wasted money, but because a great number of the conservation groups that lobbied for these programs have told us their science showed the expensive efforts would improve fish populations. It turns out they were wrong about both their science and policies.
Light pillars are an interesting natural phenomenon in which a vertical beam of light appears to extend above and/or below a light source. The effect is created by the reflection of light off tiny ice crystals slowly falling through the air, reflecting light rays off of them.
Polybius is an urban legend about a video game that appeared in arcades in the 1980’s around the Portland, Oregon area. It caused people to migraines, have hallucinations, hinted at mind control, cause knife attacks on others, and government conspiracies.
Like most things, if you dig in there is very little concrete evidence. Instead, it appears to be a collection of events that were all real and related to video games of the era.
The Why Files does a pretty decent job digging into the legend and gets a good collection of the facts behind the legend.
At the Clark County Fairgrounds in October, Cinema of Horrors sets up a temporary drive-in and puts on a few weeks of scary movies.
I’ve gone in years past and it’s a lot of fun for what it is. There are a few small booths with food carts, merch, and people walking around dressed in scary costumes. They have classic scary movies (Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, etc) as well as a few family nights (original Ghostbusters, Casper, Beetlejuice).
Ever want to buy a $100,000+ Porsche, BMW, Audi, Mercedes, or other semi-super car in Portland? Or maybe you just want to look at how the richer half lives.
If so, you might look at Grand Prix Motors in Portland. They have tons of interesting expensive cars to browse through on their website. They actually have what appears to be decent prices and move a good quantity of inventory so it’s always fun to browse through things you might never afford or want to actually spend your money on.
They also have some pretty wild cars that randomly migrate through their consignment sales section too for additional spice.
