I miss living downtown :(
That's all.

High end housing and swank-o retail and ridiculously expensive bistros is what they have in mind for downtown. A long way from the employment center that it always used to be. Makes you wonder why the transit system is designed to get people from the burbs to downtown. Maybe all the jobs will go to the burbs and everyone will live downtown, making it work out after all.

They talk a lot about affordable housing. What housing is affordable without a decent job?

i highly doubt Brooks Brothers will last in the Galleria. That is a black hole for business. I think it has been remodeled like 4 times in the past 20 years trying to get tenants. I think the culinary institute is a perfect match for it.

Regarding living downtown - hmmm. While I would love to live downtown, it is a little toooooo close to work. Also, to get middle class people and their families to move from the suburbs would take an act of congress. these people aren't going to move to downtown. just my two cents.

Appreciated, Diesel. But I live downtown and would gladly have kids there, except, it's not affordable for us.

1 Vote for a middle class family with kids who would love to live downtown - no need for act of congress.

But we can't afford it either. Close in urban neighborhoods is the most we can afford, and they are getting pricey as well.

But I think this is not unique to Portland as much as people like to bitch about it here.

Downtown is always expensive for real-estate. And since Portland does not have quite the extensive transit system of say, Manhattan, we still have to have at least one car realistically. So you can't save money by dumping cars to move into the city. We are already down to only one car. :)

There is not much in the $250k to $450k range for people who need more than one bedroom.

I am wondering how the market can sustain the thousands of expensive condos we have added in the last couple years. And they are still building more. Where are all these people coming from that can afford $700k condos, or $300k studios? Thousands of them...

California? That's what everyone seems to think, right??

Yes, California, with a few from back east. If you cash out of your house in SF or LA, or even somewhere in the NE, you come to Portland and the prices seem insanely cheap to you.

Since we can't stop people from moving to Portland (indeed, since we can't seem to stop the population of the US from increasing), the only solutions are to either limit the supply of housing (to drive up the price and prevent future folks from living here - the San Francisco model), build plenty of high density high rise housing (the Vancouver model) or flatten the farms and build out (the Phoenix model).

So far we seem to be choosing a hybrid of SF/Vancouver, with a splash of Phoenix (though the UGB is mostly successful at containing the damage).

But it could be worse - Washington is growing at a much faster pace than us, and not investing nearly as much in transit, and frankly, no one is happy. The view may be nice, but the housing prices and the traffic are bonkers.

Morgan—How can we be a hybrid of SF and Vancouver, if you're saying one is limiting housing and the other is increasing the supply? Do you mean we're increasing it in some areas, limiting it in others?

I for one hope we follow the Vancouver (and Seattle) model and increase the supply. Seattle, however, is too late—an average house is over $450K, I think. They're just know getting their act together to deal with future growth. I think Portland could get out ahead of it, if we do things like scrap the height limit downtown, encourage point towers on both sides of the river, and not freak out over six story buildings—with housing on top—along neighborhood commercial cooridors.

I say we're a hybrid because we are building housing, but prices are still going up - so clearly, we're not building enough!

I don't want to scrap the height limit downtown - but there's enough empty lots and parking lots close in that could reasonably be 6-8 story buildings that can provide plenty of central city housing.

I agree with you on the non-freak-outs. But there are a number of people who have this vision that Portland should stay the same as the day they moved here (cough bojack). However, they don't seem to be voting out the leaders who are allowing these buildings and this development, so their opinion is of little practical value.

I forgot to mention - you could also have the "Detroit model" where all of your industries go kaput for various reasons (foreign competition, intractable labor unions, crappy product design, low productivity, etc, etc.). So the town just starts dying and is taken over slowly but surely by natural forces like decay and reforestation. (See the invaluable Detroitblog - http://www.detroitblog.org/ - for more)

But I don't think we want that model for Portland. Well, maybe somebody does.

Wow, that "Everlasting Love" post on the Detroit blog is amazing.

Putting aside the larger issues, why do we need a Brooks Brothers downtown? There's already Nordstrom's, John Helmer, Banana Republic, Mario's, and god knows how many other high end men's stores.

Won't the customers (or lack thereof) determine whether or not Brooks Brothers is "needed" downtown?

BB would definitely argue that they are different from all those other stores...we'll see if people agree.

limit the supply of housing (to drive up the price and prevent future folks from living here - the San Francisco model), build plenty of high density high rise housing (the Vancouver model) or flatten the farms and build out (the Phoenix model)

There's also a couple different ways to think about "high density", tho. Infill, for example, doesn't have to mean up, just closer together.

The way I keep saying it is that (leaving aside "prevent folks from moving here" models), we can either build close, build up, and build out -- or some combination. In essence, the same choices you describe above.

One of the problems I frequently have with the ways in which some people oppose these choices is that they disguise their opposition to doing them at ALL by saying they're just opposing some particular project which exemplifies one of these choice.

But then they never seem to describe for anyone what a GOOD example of close, in, or out might look like -- which is sort of what shows that they oppose all realistic options in general, regardless of specifics, and have no solutions of their own.

On paper, increasing supply- i.e, building 6-stories up would keep housing prices in check. But, once something like that gets built, the only way the developer is really going to make any money back is to market it as 'the latest high-end thing.'
And there seems to be a never-ending supply of folks from points elsewhere ready to buy into that.
It just ain't sexy to build anything that is, or will remain, 'affordable.'

On paper, increasing supply- i.e, building 6-stories up would keep housing prices in check. But, once something like that gets built, the only way the developer is really going to make any money back is to market it as 'the latest high-end thing.'
And there seems to be a never-ending supply of folks from points elsewhere ready to buy into that.
It just ain't sexy to build anything that is, or will remain, 'affordable.'

Exactly. I've been saying this for years. The utoptian social engineering programs implemented in Portland, such as the UGB, will eventually drive the entire "creative class" out of the core city. Look around you. Affordable apartment complexes, one ofter the other, are beig condo-ized so quickly it is spinning people's heads.

Ultimately, the army of planners here are gonna have their Utopia all right-a core city catering to people who make 75k a year and up, like Portland's social engineers and their pals in the Condo racket. See the rest of you out in Rockwood or Linnton.

Hey, now, Linnton...I kind of like that area...a mix of industrial and cheap houses, kind of like parts of Portland were for years and years. Guess what the neighborhood groups there want ? Could it be...redevelopment and Condo towers ?

I like the current crop of housing going up outside of downtown, though still central city center area. First floor is commercial with three plus stories of housing. Makes sense. In residential areas, row houses and town homes are decent. I know, some of us wish Portland could be all tudors with .5 acre lots. Portland isn't that undesirable anymore.

Cabbie, I make more than $75K. Why with the class hate?

So do I. Just kidding.

But to address Ed's point: "Putting aside the larger issues, why do we need a Brooks Brothers downtown?"

I think to put aside the wider issues would make it impossible to answer that question. I'm constantly amazed at how Starbucks justifies its new locations, for example, but then, it's really based on the wider economics of greed.

The answer, then, is that we need a Brooks Brothers downtown because of the economics of greed.

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what? there was a debate at city club between two people who are essentially in agreement on the issue? how boring is that?

It was more of an opportunity to "put their side across with no risk of being challenged."

MONEY does that for a point of view.

I'd like to second hgpyb zhmgwopft's opinion, if I could. Hear, hear, hgpyb zhmgwopft!