Portland Development Commission

[December 17th, 2003] Tim Wilson won't be sending anybody at the Portland Development Commission a Christmas card.

Wilson runs Western Arts Alliance, a San Francisco nonprofit that helps performers hook up with venues. He came to Portland in August looking for office space.

When he hit town, he met with Pete Eggspuehler, who works for the PDC, the city-owned agency that helps existing businesses grow and convinces out-of-town companies to move here. One way it does that is by helping out with the real-estate hunt. Among the places Eggspuehler showed him was the Creative Services Center in Old Town.

A couple of years ago, PDC helped the building's owner retrofit the facility; then it leased the entire seven-story building in hopes of creating an incubator for operations like Wilson's. Over time, the city agency found a scattering of tenants, including the Regional Arts & Culture Council.

"It looked like a great location," Wilson says. "It was newly renovated and there was synergy with other tenants."

Wilson began negotiating with PDC's broker, Mark Friel of Norris, Beggs & Simpson. Meanwhile, PDC was losing a bundle on its $100,000-a-month lease and had decided to cut its losses by canceling contracts with existing tenants and moving its own operations into the building.

On Nov. 14, Friel passed along a message abruptly terminating the discussion. "Due to the need to respond to serious budget problems PDC has just made the decision to put our Creative Services Center marketing efforts on hold," the email read.

Wilson was fuming. "We were negotiating in good faith while they [PDC] were planning to pull out," he says. "That's what's frustrating. They never gave us a heads-up."

He'd already scheduled movers, and his company was in the midst of its busiest time of year.

PDC Deputy Executive Director Wyman Winston says the agency faced a difficult situation: Its lease was expiring, its employees were spread across three buildings and it was losing big bucks on the Creative Services Center. And, he says, they didn't break any promise to Wilson. "No agreements were signed," Winston says.

Wilson subsequently found space near Pioneer Square, but he will arrive in Portland feeling less than welcomed--and certainly no fan of the PDC. "I find it ironic that this is the organization that is supposed to help businesses move to Portland," he says.