Reality of the Portland Commercial Real estate collapse
Besides the very public failing of the new Ritz-Carlton in downtown Portland facing foreclosure, now ‘Big Pink’ US Bancorp tower is up for sale for a fraction of it’s original value. There’s a reason Portland has the highest commercial vacancy rate in the country; and the internet company that just moved out didn’t hold any punches
After Digital Trends moved out of the U.S. Bancorp Tower in Portland, Ore., the technology publisher didn’t hold back about why it left.
The property, once a premier address in the city, was afflicted with “vagrants sleeping in hallways of vacant office floors.” They were “starting fires in stairwells, smoking fentanyl and defecating in common areas,” according to papers the company filed in a lease-termination lawsuit.
The building, once a cornerstone of the the city, is now joining a long line of other top building being fire-sold at huge losses:
The 42-story tower was recently put up for sale. The building affectionately known as Big Pink because of its pink-hued Spanish granite and pink glazed glass has an asking price of about $70 million, according to brokers. That is more than 80% below what the owners paid for it a decade ago
The forward outlook continues a multi-year DECLINE as companies flee Portland’s livability, homeless, and harshly anti-business taxes and laws
But Portland’s commercial real-estate market shows few signs of recovering from the fallout of the pandemic, rise in homelessness and the state’s botched experiment with drug decriminalization…. Portland’s first-quarter office vacancy rate at 35% was the highest among the 25 largest central business districts in the U.S., according to real-estate firm Colliers
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