Attorneys have filed a class-action suit on behalf of what they say are hundreds of people exposed to tear gas last summer while being held in the Multnomah County Detention Center. Federal and local law enforcement regularly unleashed the chemicals to combat the nightly demonstrations in the streets near the county jail. The suit claims that the building’s ventilation system sucked tear gas into the cells and staff did nothing to ameliorate the bad air.
Portland’s downtown changed, head-snapping quickly.
Retail merchants have been struggling for some time against the beast Amazon and other online sellers. Macy’s has closed its downtown Portland store. Meier & Frank Co. had been a fixture at that location since 1909. Macy’s purchased M & F in 2005. (Macy’s recently announced it will close its store at Lloyd Center.)
Merchants in the city’s core had been holding their own against Internet vendors. Restaurants also had been doing well, from ubiquitous food carts to fine dining and nearly everything in between. Drinking places, live-music venues, theatre—stage and cinema—also helped make Portland’s compact downtown a welcoming place for people employed there and for visitors.
Then came COVID 19. People working from home emptied streets and sidewalks. Eating and drinking places were forced to shut down. Then came the Black Lives Matter and police-brutality demonstrations. Daily protests were met with police resistance, including “less lethal” weaponry and tear gas. Rioters, mostly young and male and white, with no interest in Black Lives Matter, intent only on property damage, took this as an opportunity for looting and vandalism and graffiti. They hijacked BLM and nightly went on sprees of window smashing, arson, damaging private businesses and public buildings and monuments.
Plywood-covered storefronts now line the blocks, punctuated by fenced-off buildings, in downtown and other Portland business neighborhoods.
Working from home has no end date. Businesses are re-evaluating the need to have staff all in one location; landlords are possibly looking at long-term vacancies and falling rents. Whenever the COVID 19 pandemic is determined to be over, legions of workers may not come back. Busy lunchtimes and after-work socializing may not be the norm again anytime soon. Regulations for eating and drinking ricochet from take-out only to limited seating to outdoor only. Many businesses, especially restaurants, have closed permanently and more will.
The pandemic has exacerbated the tent encampments of the houseless, not just in Portland’s core, but all over the city. As more people lose employment and are unable to pay rent or mortgage, the numbers will likely grow, as will the attendant garbage and sanitation issues.
Graffiti is seemingly everywhere.
With so little activity, buses, MAX light-rail trains and streetcars run less frequently.
The attractive, small big-city center, the Portland of Portlandia is gone. How soon it returns, if it does… well, it’ll be a while.
