I walked into last night’s meeting of the Day Laborers’ Center committee, expecting to see a list of potential sites. After all, at the last focus group meeting about the forthcoming center—on August 15—project leader Jonath Colon said he’d be spending the next few weeks checking out available properties, and holding them up against criteria that had been vetted in the focus groups.

By the September 5 meeting at city hall, “It would be absolutely wonderful if we could announce a site” that fit all the criteria—things like size, impact on the neighborhood, traffic flow, and safety and comfort for the workers. But Colon cautioned that identifying “the” site by September 5 was unlikely. He would, however, have a list of “what sites could be considered, challenges with those sites, criteria.”

Last night, though, there were no sites for the committee to discuss. Instead, they got a presentation on the criteria that stakeholders—like day laborers, their employers, surrounding business owners and neighbors—had crafted, and an explanation from Colon on why they weren’t looking at a list of tangible sites.

“This is what everyone wants to hear about now. With our schedule, we were supposed to have a response today,” Colon said. “We now have the criteria, and we’re out looking at the stock now.” Colon—who refused to use the word setback or delay—told them that Peter Finley Fry, a Portland planning consulatant, has come on board to help vet properties, and they were going to take more time to tap his expertise. (Colon gave me this metaphor as I was heading out: If you were scheduled for surgery with the resident physician, and suddenly the doctor who invented the surgery was available, wouldn’t you… “reschedule?” I asked. Colon didn’t like that word, either. But they now seem to be working around the doctor’s schedule.)

“I just came from doing a tour with him,” Colon told the committee. “By the time we come back next time [in October], we’ll have five properties that have met the minimum criteria.”

“I’m confident that we’ll be able to find five properties. The challenge comes in [whether] they will meet all of those criteria.” Colon said that at the October meeting, the committee will have a chance to look at those five properties that might be a good fit—plus any other properties that committee members have suggested, to see how they did or didn’t stack up.

Teresa Bliven, the other project manager, said that they were still “on target” to find a site and pick a group to run the center by their November 14 “project wrap-up” committee meeting.