{"id":14105,"date":"2025-05-20T19:15:17","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T02:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=14105"},"modified":"2025-10-17T10:53:03","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T17:53:03","slug":"reality-of-the-portland-commercial-real-estate-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=14105","title":{"rendered":"Reality of the Portland Commercial Real estate collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Besides the very public failing of the new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.koin.com\/news\/business\/ritz-carlton-building-in-downtown-portland-in-trouble-lender-may-foreclose-documents-state\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.koin.com\/news\/business\/ritz-carlton-building-in-downtown-portland-in-trouble-lender-may-foreclose-documents-state\/\">Ritz-Carlton in downtown Portland facing foreclosure<\/a>, now &#8216;Big Pink&#8217; US Bancorp tower is up for sale for a fraction of it&#8217;s original value. There&#8217;s a reason <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oregonlive.com\/business\/2024\/03\/downtown-portlands-office-vacancy-rate-is-highest-in-the-nation-report-says.html\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.oregonlive.com\/business\/2024\/03\/downtown-portlands-office-vacancy-rate-is-highest-in-the-nation-report-says.html\">Portland has the highest commercial vacancy rate in the country<\/a>; and the internet company that just moved out didn&#8217;t hold any punches<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After Digital Trends moved out of the U.S. Bancorp Tower in Portland, Ore., the technology publisher didn\u2019t hold back about why it left.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The property, once a premier address in the city, was afflicted with \u201cvagrants sleeping in hallways of vacant office floors.\u201d They were \u201cstarting fires in stairwells, smoking fentanyl and defecating in common areas,\u201d according to papers the company filed in a lease-termination lawsuit.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The building, once a cornerstone of the the city, is now <a href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=9839\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=9839\">joining a long line of other top building being fire-sold at huge losses<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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&nbsp;80% below what the owners paid for it when it sold for $372 million in 2015.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The forward outlook continues a multi-year DECLINE as companies flee Portland&#8217;s livability, homeless, and harshly anti-business taxes and laws<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Portland\u2019s commercial real-estate market shows few signs of recovering&nbsp;from the fallout of the pandemic, rise in homelessness and&nbsp;the state\u2019s botched experiment with drug decriminalization&#8230;. Portland\u2019s first-quarter&nbsp;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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Update July 2025:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.opb.org\/article\/2025\/07\/09\/portland-oregon-big-pink-skyscraper-us-bancorp-tower-jeff-swickward\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.opb.org\/article\/2025\/07\/09\/portland-oregon-big-pink-skyscraper-us-bancorp-tower-jeff-swickward\/\">Big Pink, one of the premier properties in downtown Portland, just sold for $45 million<\/a> &#8211; that was a decline of 88% since it last sold in 2015 for $372 million.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Links:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/real-estate\/commercial\/a-fire-sale-of-portlands-largest-office-tower-shows-how-far-the-city-has-fallen-322e0f2d\">https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/real-estate\/commercial\/a-fire-sale-of-portlands-largest-office-tower-shows-how-far-the-city-has-fallen-322e0f2d<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oregonlive.com\/business\/2024\/03\/downtown-portlands-office-vacancy-rate-is-highest-in-the-nation-report-says.html\">https:\/\/www.oregonlive.com\/business\/2024\/03\/downtown-portlands-office-vacancy-rate-is-highest-in-the-nation-report-says.html<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Besides the very public failing of the new Ritz-Carlton in downtown Portland facing foreclosure, now &#8216;Big Pink&#8217; US Bancorp tower is up for sale for a fraction of it&#8217;s original value. There&#8217;s a reason Portland has the highest commercial vacancy rate in the country; and the internet company that just moved out didn&#8217;t hold any punches After Digital Trends moved out of the U.S. Bancorp Tower in Portland, Ore., the technology publisher didn\u2019t hold back about why it left.&nbsp;&nbsp; The&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=14105\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool","category-local-interest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-3Fv","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14105"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15509,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14105\/revisions\/15509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}