PORTLAND, Ore. — In early August, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek formed a group aimed at creating a plan to jumpstart downtown Portland. It’s called the Portland Central City Task Force. Kotek split more than 50 local stakeholders into five committees focused on everything from public safety to trash and graffiti removal. Monday was their last in-person meeting as a group. In six weeks, they’ll present their ideas to the Oregon Business Summit.
Each meeting was held behind closed doors with the governor saying little about the ideas being discussed. "A lot of hard work is still happening in the committees, but we will have a very specific set of actions to present at the business summit," Kotek said in a Monday press conference.
KGW talked with members of the task force to learn more about the proposals being considered.
"I'm just really excited that we're looking at ways to make downtown better," said Lisa Schroeder, who runs Mother’s Bistro, a dining staple in downtown Portland. Schroeder is on the task force in the committee focused on public safety. She said they’ve been talking about opening a sobering center downtown and having a van to transport people from the streets to the center.
"We're also looking at peer-to-peer support, bringing people who have experienced substance abuse out to the streets and working with people and trying to encourage them to get help," Schroeder said.
"I think we need to think about who the audience is that we're trying to get back down here," added Jessie Burke, who chairs the Old Town Community Association and co-owns a small hotel in the heart of Old Town. She’s also on the task force focused on cleaning up the streets. She said they’ve talked of assigning a crew to remove graffiti in Old Town a few times a week. "Let's train some more people, maybe at Solve, to help with this, then you can cover a lot more ground," she said.
Other task force suggestions include waiving income taxes for businesses based in downtown, removing parking fees and converting empty office space into housing.
"That is my greatest wish. If we can only turn office space into housing, we'd see this city flourish," Schroeder said.
A city spokesperson told KGW that Mayor Ted Wheeler is talking with several interested downtown building owners. On Monday, Burke suggested introducing a sales tax to help pay for these types of larger projects.
"I get concerned when people say it might be too hard, and if that's not the reason we're meeting right now then I don't know why we're meeting. This is supposed to be the best and brightest in the room because we're going to figure it out," Burke said.
The task force committees will continue to meet on their own over the next six weeks as they finalize their ideas before presenting them to the Oregon Business Summit in December. Once they're presented, it's not clear which ones will be implemented or how long that process will take.