Update Update! The SAFE committee is not meeting at the center on Thursday after all, because only half its members can make it. It will decide on the new center on the 17th at its next scheduled meeting, instead.

Update 16:27: “It’s kind of shock and awe,” says Cap Berri—who is an agent for the Bill Naito Company, in reaction to Leonard’s latest move. “We don’t think even the guy who owns the building [11 NW 5th—the owner is John Beardsley] knew about this.”

Berri met with “ten to 15” Old Town private investors this afternoon, including David Gold, who owns the block next to the Grove Hotel, as well as representatives for the University of Oregon and Mercy Corps, along with local condo owners. Berri says: “We’d like to hear Erik Sten be open to really looking at including the neighborhood [at tomorrow’s meeting of the Visions Committee, to discuss the siting of the permanent day access center].”

Sources say the group also agreed to hire a lobbyist to lobby city hall about not wanting the day access center, although Berri said “we’re on the verge…” of hiring Gwen Baldwin to do the work. Baldwin has not returned Blogtown’s calls for comment.

No word yet on whether Leonard wants to name the new center after Cesar Chavez.

ORIGINAL POST, 13:40: Commissioner Randy Leonard is proposing a controversial deal to locate a second temporary day access center for the homeless in Old Town Chinatown, in a move likely to ignite the already tinder-dry powder keg of Old Town neighborhood politics.
11 NW 5th Ave: “Historic Street Presence and Visibility…”

Leonard’s timing could not be worse for Old Town businesses and neighbors, who are already furious about Commissioner Erik Sten’s surprise decision to build a permanent day access center for the homeless on block 25 in Old Town. Sten is due to meet with Old Town neighbors tomorrow to talk about that decision, but thanks to Leonard he is now likely to face even louder accusations that Old Town is becoming a “dumping ground” for Portland’s social services.

Details of the deal are complex: Leonard wants to move the Salvation Army’s Habor Light shelter for women from 2nd and Ankeny to this new site on NW 5th and Burnside, in order to make way for 30 inpatient drug treatment beds at the Harbor Light shelter, as part of his Project 57 plan to treat the city’s worst drug offenders, for which he got $850,000 in the fall budget bump. Leonard is working on that plan with downtown cop Jeff Myers.

The new space in the NW 5th and Burnside building would have extra room not only for the Salvation Army’s transplanted women’s shelter, but also a second mixed-gender day access center as a supplement to the mayor’s Street Access For Everyone (SAFE) committee’s temporary day access center in the Julia West House—where overcrowding has been leading to safety problems, including drug dealing.

The mayor’s SAFE committee has been looking for a second temporary day access center for some time—Leonard is now asking it for $50,000 in Portland Business Alliance money to fund capital improvements to that building before it can be opened as a homeless day access center. The SAFE committee will meet at the property on Thursday morning to take a look at the building and make a decision. The new center will also be funded by $208,000 of city money, asked for by the Mayor’s office under the SAFE committee in the fall budget bump CORRECTION: to be asked for next June in the 08-09 budget…these funds aren’t yet approved by council.

The building, right opposite the city’s newly acquired Grove Hotel on NW 5th, sits between the Cabaret strip club and Pasha, a Mediterranean restaurant where Portland Development Commission employees can often be found at lunchtime, gathering around the restaurant’s renowned buffet. Across the street, next to the Grove, is a sign on half a block reading “Retail Space For Lease,” which if Leonard’s proposal goes through, could well be up a little while longer—it’s hard to lease property opposite such centers.

Leonard’s plan has irked social service providers and downtown business representatives alike.

“I just found out about this yesterday,” said Doreen Binder, executive director of Transition Projects, Inc, this morning, whose organization will run the new permanent center on block 25. “It is totally unacceptable for me. This will make it very difficult for us to move forward [with the block 25 center]. I think this will derail everything that we’re working on. I really do.”

“I’ve stressed to Randy that he needs to make sure that the neighborhood signs off on this because it is going to be controversial,” said the PBA’s Mike Kuykendall, who co-chairs the SAFE committee. “It’s a fairly contentious issue.”

“I honestly feel that this center will improve the dynamic in the neighborhood,” an undeterred Commissioner Leonard tells Blogtown. “It is a real plan versus this feel-good approach of the PFZs [prostitution free zones] and the DFZs [drug free zones—the PFZs and DFZs expired at the end of September after an independent consultant found they were being used disproportionately against black people].”

Leonard also hit back at those resistant to the idea.

“Any time you have someone out there doing something proactive about the problem you have this resistance,” he says. “I’m not buying into the dysfunction. I actually want to build bathrooms, not talk about them. I want to get a temporary day access center, and a permanent one, not just talk about it.”

“It’s just sad when you get people who are advocating for people experiencing the condition of homelessness,” Leonard continues, “and they’re compromised to the point that they’ve forgotten what it is they’re advocating for. At some point you either just fold up and walk away, or you say okay, we heard you, and we’re going ahead.”

If Leonard is as determined to push ahead with his plan as he seems, and if he’s willing to take this kind of “with me or against me” approach to the mat with the Old Town neighbors and anybody else who’s against him, you can be sure there’ll be some political blood spilled before this fight is out. Also, it’s unlikely to be Leonard’s.

Meanwhile, Old Town neighbors are due to meet with a business consultant, Gwen Baldwin, this afternoon at 2pm. They’re having a closed meeting above the Merchant Hotel on NW 2nd, with the aim of coming up with some consistent talking points for tomorrow’s meeting with Sten. Any flies on the wall at that meeting would be more than welcome to give Blogtown a bell afterwards.

We’ll keep you posted.