NEWS BUZZ

murmurs

City Hall Smackdown!
An internal proposal to ban police surveillance of political groups sparked a confrontation between Mayor Vera Katz and City Commissioner Erik Sten--a tiff that escalated into a shouting match, according to a source who overheard the ruckus.

The Dec. 19 memo, written by Sten and obtained by WW under public-records law, called for a "council directive to vigorously protect civil liberties, so that any investigation of political activity [e.g., by Portland police] is expressly prohibited."

Moments after reading the memo, which was also signed by Commissioner Charlie Hales, Katz marched downstairs to Sten's City Hall office and demanded a meeting.

In a heated encounter that afternoon, Katz and Sam Adams, her chief of staff, reportedly blasted Sten for interfering with police matters, which are the domain of the mayor, whose portfolio includes the Police Bureau.

Neither Katz nor Sten will discuss specifics of the meeting, although Adams elliptically referred to the engagement as "very productive."

Her office's downplay notwithstanding, the proposal appears to have made an impact on Katz. The following day, after eight Portlanders hectored the council for approving the Portland Joint Terrorism Task Force last month, the mayor announced that the City Attorney's Office was looking into the task force and that Portland could soon expect long-promised police policy directives stemming from the May Day March.

"Distinguishing between political protests and law breaking is a fairly easy task that's dragged on and on," says Sten, who admits that he failed when he let the task force sail through council without demanding public discussions. Like Hales, he is not shy about pulling police matters before the entire council.

Robert King, president of the Portland Police Association, who happened to be meeting with Sten when the mayor stormed into Sten's reception area, told WW that he's open to working with the council on how police officers handle protesters.

A City Council work session on May Day is scheduled for Jan. 18, one week after commissioners initially consider creating a civilian review board.

--Philip Dawdy

The Great Wall of Chinatown
Chinatown: You've got the grimy storefronts and restaurants unknown to Zagat. On the other hand, you've got tourists raiding the new Classical Chinese Gardens and a developer's wet dream.

Conflict is inevitable.

John Plummer and Mike Quinn, of hipster shoe store Johnny Sole and rock promotions biz Monqui respectively, want to open a small bar named East on Northwest Everett Street, a half-block from the Garden, luring Pearl District refugees with a pan-Asian menu, cocktails and downtempo music.

But some neighbors claim a new bar will hurl reeling drunks at the Gardens and a nearby Chinese language school. "We'd like to see a decent business and not another bar," says Rebecca Liu, principal of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association's school.

The battle is the first test of new rules aimed at streamlining the liquor licensing process. In the past, applicants facing neighborhood controversy weathered tortuous hearings before City Council and the OLCC. But the council has washed its hands of such matters. Now, the Police Bureau simply consults with OLCC investigators, talks to neighbors and makes a yea/nay recommendation to the OLCC.

That's the theory, anyway. In this case, an outpouring of 28 letters opposing the dawn of East prompted the city to play it safe and make no recommendation. OLCC then split 2-2 on the application, with one of five commissioners absent, which means the issue will rise again at the commission's February meeting.

According to city officials, such non-recommendation recommendations are likely to be more common in the future--even in neighborhoods, like Chinatown, where the city harbors a longstanding hope for revitalization.

"I'm frustrated, not so much with OLCC, but with the city's inconsistency about what it wants out of Chinatown," says would-be East impresario Plummer.

While Plummer points out that East will host no dancing or live music, neighbors are suspicious of the partners' plans to employ DJs. "They say there's not going to be dancing there, but then they say that there's going to be a DJ," Liu says. "It's a very questionable set-up."

Some of East's supporters suspect the neighborhood opposition is animated less by the specter of disco than by the prospect of hordes of non-Asian entrepreneurs invading Chinatown. Several anti-East letters to the OLCC intimated that a business owned by non-Asians would be "culturally inappropriate" for the neighborhood.

Liu insists that race has nothing to do with it. "This doesn't have anything to do with their color," she says. "People are concerned about liquor, not their race." --Zach Dundas

RAINING ON GOLDSCHMIDT'S PARADE
Former Mayor Neil Goldschmidt's dream of pushing the Park Blocks through the center of the city attracted quick support. From prominent landowners (some of whom stand to gain from the scheme) to the editorial desks at The Oregonian, the idea of creating a Portland version of Barcelona's Las Ramblas seemed to catch the public's imagination.

But now that dust is settling on the blueprints, serious questions are being raised about the project's viability. Neither Mayor Vera Katz nor Commissioner Charlie Hales is keen on the plan, nor are most of the merchants and residents who stand in the way of the bulldozers. But the most active opposition to Goldschmidt's "Ramblas" seems to be developing within Portland's architectural community.

"We have many concerns about this project," says Garry Papers, chairman of the Urban Design Committee, which plans to issue a formal position statement in three weeks. "Many of us believe that rather than enhancing the pedestrian streetscape, the plan's proposed underground parking will create more traffic."

Opponents to the plan think the existing blocks (home of the Virginia Cafe, Zell's, Rich's Cigar Store, Johnny Sole and the Mercantile) constitute an urban success because the narrow, pedestrian-friendly streets tame traffic. There are also two buildings of historical interest in the bulldozers' path--the Woodlark by A. E. Doyle and the graceful Stevens Building--which have been earmarked for a proposed terra cotta architectural district. "This city's greatest successes have been accomplished through careful and incremental change," says Papers. "I don't think this project considers the entire fabric or scale of our downtown."

Goldschmidt's response to the architects' concerns has been cautious. "I'm interested in hearing everyone's ideas about the project," he told WW.

--Steffen Silvis

Water Torture in the Pearl
Residents of an award-winning luxury condo project in the Pearl District say leaky pipes and shoddy workmanship have turned their adventure in urban living into a sodden nightmare.

Residents of the North Park Lofts building at Northwest 8th Avenue and Everett Street got an unwanted Christmas present on the night of Dec. 23, when a plumbing fixture broke in a fourth-floor condo, flooding 10 of the building's 68 units.

"The developers did a poor job with the systems," says one resident, who, like the others WW contacted, requested anonymity. "We're on the verge of suing them."

The Christmas Eve flood, apparently caused when a sink fitting gave way, was the third major deluge that has coursed through the 10-story building since it opened a year ago (the first, in March, heavily damaged 15 units).

"I've never seen so many plumbing problems in the 14 years I've worked for the city," says building inspector Kathy Davis.

Leaky pipes aren't rare in large buildings, but the magnitude of the problem has taken residents by surprise. The North Park Lofts is a brand-new luxury condo project, which won a local American Institute of Architects Design Award, and whose penthouse units sell for up to half a million bucks.

Now the building is the scene of a major battle between condo owners and the building's developer, Enterprise Development, which residents accuse of shoddy work and failure to complete construction. The building's plumbing contractor, Bayview Mechanical, has gone bust, according to a former employee.

In fact, North Park Lofts still does not have a certificate of occupancy, the city's designation of a finished building. "One might say that the city of Portland did not do its job," one resident grumbles.

Although she was unaware of the second flood, which disabled the building's fire alarm, Davis says only minor issues prevent her from issuing a certificate. "I wouldn't say it's a regular occurrence for a building not to have a certificate of occupancy a year after residents move in," Davis adds. "But it's not uncommon." (The city does not record how many buildings are occupied without such certificates.)

Davis's optimism is little consolation to residents; nearly a week after the Christmas Eve gusher, portable industrial fans still whirred around the clock to dry the flood's remains.

Enterprise officials were unavailable for comment.

--Nigel Jaquiss

Murmurs

WE'VE NEVER MET A RESOLUTION THAT CAN'T BE BROKEN.

* Steve Koblik, president of Reed College, will doff his waterproof cap and gown in August and head for the Huntingdon Library in San Marino, Calif., where he will be president. During Koblik's nine years at Reed, the endowment tripled to $350 million, the school added 15 new faculty positions, and the campus was graced with the nation's first drinking fountain for dogs.

* Local indie rocker Sarah Dougher was named one of Out magazine's "Out 100," a roundup of friends and members of the gay community who "made a difference" last year. The magazine lauded Ladyfest, Dougher's "punky alternative" to the Womyn's Music Festival. Dougher has just left for a monthlong residency at New York's Knitting Factory.

* Police Chief Mark Kroeker can't win. Already bashed for decade-old homophobic comments and zealously going after political protesters, now he's taking flack within his department for having a skeleton crew on duty at Pioneer Square to face the New Year's Eve rioters. "Cops I know are bitching because there was no plan," one source told Murmurs.

* Call 911! Murmurs hears that City Commissioner Dan Saltzman has given BOEC director Sherrill Whittemore her "final warning" after an exchange of nasty notes between the two in October and November.

* Wayward bureaucrats aren't Saltzman's only targets. Sick of judges going easy on speeders, illegal parkers and uninsured motorists, the commissioner has asked Gov. John Kitzhaber to make traffic fines a litmus test for appointments to the local bench. "Ten times more Portland citizens suffer serious injury or property loss from traffic incidents than by criminal act," Saltzman wrote in a Dec. 15 letter to the Guv. "Please choose judges to serve in Multnomah County that understand the interrelated economic and public safety issues at stake when setting the appropriate amount of a fine in Traffic Court." The man speaks from experience: He
has nine parking tickets on his résumé, all of them paid.

* The new year may be somewhat happier for 150 employees of Portland's Northwestern Regional Educational Lab, who voted by more than a two-to-one margin to be represented by the Oregon Public Employees Union. The vote was highly unusual; none of the other nine education labs in the country is unionized.

* The Portland Tribune finally got around to the important work of staffing its sports section, grabbing senior Oregonian sportswriter Kerry Eggers, who, until he fell afoul of Blazers management a couple of years ago, provided some real coverage of the hometown team. (Until leaving the paper last week, Eggers had been covering major-league baseball and professional football.) Joining him will be John Vondersmith, a five-year
veteran of the Vancouver Columbian.

* Memo to the insurance industry: pay yer damn bills! Apparently local HMOs have been dragging their heels on compensating docs for medical care, according to a study by the Oregon Medical Association. Check out www.OrMedAssoc.org for the results, and watch for legislation to crack down on deadbeat insurers.

* You can't keep a good woman down. In 1998, super-lobbyist Ellen Lowe, a.k.a. "The Church Lady," retired from Ecumenical Ministries after decades of fighting for the huddled masses. Now she's back,
working for the secular Oregon Law Center.

* Julia Brim-Edwards, wife of state treasurer-elect Randall Edwards, decided over the holidays to run for the School Board seat being vacated by Ron Saxton. Brim-Edwards won't file until next week but has already lined up endorsements from Saxton and his predecessor, Marty Howard, and signed up crack consultants Mark Wiener and Liz Kaufman to help with her campaign.

* The Oregon Arts Commission awarded coveted fellowships to several local artists and writers, including Jerry Mouawad, Miranda July, Catherine Egan, and WW's own Susan Wickstrom for her novel, The Dumbgirls Bridge.