PORTLAND, Ore. — In pockets of downtown Portland, the fight to revive the city is on full display.
“I think the downtown feels a lot better, definitely — there are more people down here,” said Briana Miller, who works near Pioneer Courthouse Square. The brick courtyard is currently in the middle of a summer concert series.
Many of the people Miller referred to are tourists like Jennie Kaplan, visiting from New York.
“I love it. I love it. It's like Laid-Back City,” Kaplan said.
Though, as Miller puts it, it all depends on where you look.
“I think it's got a lot of issues to deal with still,” she said.
The state is attempting to do just that by creating a Portland Central City Task Force. Members of the task force met for the first time on Tuesday.
Gov. Tina Kotek launched the task force two weeks ago to create a plan on how to better the city when it comes to issues like homelessness, safety, drug use and crime. It's made up of about 40 people, including downtown business owners and city leaders. They are broken up into five groups: Central City Value Proposition, Livable Neighborhoods, Community Safety, Housing and Homelessness, and Taxes for Services.
“There's a sense of urgency in this group. We are here to make progress built on good things that are happening, and be very clear that at this moment we can't just talk about things, we have to do things,” Kotek said.
As for further details of what that entails, precisely, Kotek was slow to share.
“I would say stay tuned. This is just the first meeting but we're hoping to have updates as we go along,” she said in a Tuesday press conference.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler is also on the task force. He submitted an eight-page list of requests of the state, including $21 million to fund his "temporary alternative shelter sites," along with more money for homeless camp sweeps and a sobering center.
He also asked for 96 state police officers to focus on Portland and open a state police branch downtown, and asked for a commitment from downtown businesses to bring remote work employees back into the office by January 1. It’s still unclear if any of those requests will be met, though the governor said she is not ruling anything out at this point.
“I am aware of his set of recommendations. One thing that we need to remember is that no one government … is going to solve all the challenges facing downtown Portland,” Kotek said.
“There is nobody in this room that wants to sit in another meeting to think about something we may do in 2025,” said Lisa Schroeder, who runs Mother’s Bistro. She is on the task force with a focus on community safety. “For me it's the drugs. I believe that fentanyl and methamphetamine is killing downtown Portland, so my quest is to deal with that and how it's affecting the city.”
Kotek believes what will come out of this task force will have a ripple effect on the rest of the state, seeing as Portland is a hub for business and tourism.
The task force is up against a tight timeline. Come December, they will need to present an action plan for downtown. Until then they will have meetings once a month.