Charade In Oregon

[June 3rd, 2009]

To Portlanders enamored of the “Made in Oregon” sign atop the White Stag building in Old Town, City Commissioner Randy Leonard appeared to be a hero.

On April 8, after much public debate about the fate of the neon sign, Leonard announced a compromise with the University of Oregon, which had the right to change the popular “Made in Oregon” in its 2006 deal with its landlord and the sign’s owner.

Leonard, who opposed the university’s changing the sign on the grounds it would alter an iconic part of Portland’s skyline, had wanted to use eminent domain to condemn the sign. He sought to bring the sign under the City of Portland’s control and block the university from putting its moniker on the west bank of the Willamette. And he proposed changing the message to “Portland, Oregon,” with “City of Roses” below.

Eventually, however, Leonard and the university compromised on a simpler message: “Oregon,” with the words “Portland” and “Old Town” underneath. “The outcome is clear,” Jan Oliver, an associate vice president for the university’s Portland campus, told City Council on April 8. “We are comfortable with it.”

Yet the terms of the deal weren’t at all clear; not to the public, anyway.

WW has learned that while everyone was focused on what the sign would say and how it would say it, another debate—about substance rather than style—bubbled at City Hall in the offices of Leonard and Mayor Sam Adams.

And it might have been an even more important debate, since it involved money at a time when the city was making significant budget cuts: What would the City of Portland give the University of Oregon for relinquishing its neon marketing tool? What would the city do to make the university whole?

The answer, it turns out, is a parking lot. Or, specifically, a city-owned lot that could have generated at least $54,000 a year for Portland’s Bureau of Transportation, which just shed 57 full-time jobs and $5.4 million under Adams’ recently approved 2009-10 budget.

To the university, the 27 spots under the west end of the Burnside Bridge—next to the university’s Portland home in the White Stag building—are worth more than the money the university could generate by subleasing the spaces. (Under the agreement between the school and the city still being finalized, the university will retain the right to rent the parking spots to other tenants of the White Stag building and the university’s new neighbor, Mercy Corps.)

The spots in the parking lot, formerly the site of Saturday Market, are viewed instead by the university as a key component of its safety strategy.

Students entering the building at all hours often use the side entrance under the bridge, since that’s the door that leads to the bike-storage room. In the months leading up to the great sign debate, university officials had expressed concern that they lacked an adequate presence in the sometimes vacant lot next to their building to monitor students’ safety. They wanted to set up a retail store under the bridge to create that vigilance, but for complicated legal reasons they could not do that—unless they also held a lease for the lot.

Adams knew that. And as early as December, the then-mayor-elect mentioned a willingness to help the university gain control of the parking lot, according to the university. It wasn’t until the last minute of the great sign debate, though, that Leonard says he learned of Adams’ separate negotiations with the university. “You’re giving away something for nothing,” Leonard says he told Adams then.

Now included in the proposed lease is the “compromise” deal on the changes to the “Made in Oregon” sign.

Leonard, a Portland State University alum, says the decision to forgo making money off the lot preceded the sign debate. But the financial aspects of the city’s deal with the university weren’t addressed at the April 8 public meeting on the sign. “I’ve told anybody who would listen,” Leonard says. “This is not a secret.”