Michael Martin Thought Portland Officials Wanted a Black Contractor to Tear Down the U.S. Post Office. He Was Wrong.

In just a few months, a contractor will demolish the old U.S. Post Office in the Pearl District, a key step in the city’s largest and most ambitious development project in decades.

Nobody was more excited about the demolition than Michael Martin, owner of Northwest Infrastructure, Portland’s only Black-owned demolition firm.

Martin recalls watching last year as Prosper Portland, the city’s economic development agency, hammered out an aggressive community benefits agreement with labor and social justice groups, ensuring that minority-owned firms and workers of color would get their fair share of work in rebuilding what the city calls the Broadway Corridor.

Martin was understandably eager when he learned that minority firms would get preference in demolishing the post office, a 14-acre property at 715 NW Hoyt St., which Prosper purchased in 2016 for $88 million.

“Prosper Portland is the real deal when it comes to fixing the past,” Martin remembers thinking at the time.

In February 2020, when Prosper requested proposals for demolishing the building, Martin felt confident. His firm had done demolition jobs for the city of Portland, Portland Public Schools, Portland Community College and TriMet, partnering with the some of region’s biggest contractors.

On April 7, 2020, Prosper Portland passed him over and awarded the contract to a firm not certified as a minority contractor.

After Martin filed a formal protest of the decision with Prosper Portland, the agency rebid the project and, on Dec. 17, awarded the work to the same firm.

On May 12, 2021, Martin filed a lawsuit charging “disparate treatment” and “improper interference with Northwest Infrastructure’s contractual relations by certain Prosper Portland employees.” The lawsuit, pending in U.S. District Court in Portland, seeks $5.5 million in damages.

He alleges Prosper went to extraordinary lengths to prevent him from winning the contract. In sworn affidavits, two evaluators Prosper Portland asked to independently rank the bids say agency staff pressed them to change their scores.

“It was a very heated discussion where it appeared some of the evaluators were biased against [Martin’s] NWI,” Kelly Haines, a senior project manager at Worksystems Inc., wrote of an Oct. 13, 2020, meeting that Prosper Portland convened. “I felt pressured to change my scores. I refused.”

Prosper Portland says Martin’s lawsuit is “baseless.” Agency officials declined to be interviewed, but provided a statement.

“[Martin’s] narrative of a disconnect between our words and actions when it comes to equity is false,” Prosper said. “Our handling of the RFP process to select a contractor to demolish the main building was transparent, equitable and complied with the law.”

Prosper says 70% of Prosper’s business assistance grants in the past five years went to firms owned by people of color, and the agency spent $107 million with minority-owned construction firms.

Maurice Rahming, owner of O’Neill Electric, another Black-owned contractor, says he’s astounded by what happened to Martin’s firm.

“I recognize that there is a lot of racism and bias in the world,” Rahming says. “I will just accept that and let it go. Not Michael.”

Martin, 50, grew up in Portland, went to high school in California, and came back home to start a career. After a couple of terms at Portland Community College, he entered the construction field. “I always found heavy equipment fascinating,” he says.

After working his way up through an apprenticeship program, he launched his own company in 2005. He employs 15, is a father of seven, and is also a Church of Christ minister who enjoys driving sand rails in the Oregon Dunes.

Martin has done smaller jobs for Prosper Portland before and is currently demolishing part of the city’s Columbia Boulevard Wastewater Treatment Plant, a job bigger in dollar terms than the post office. And the Broadway Corridor project was promising, particularly given Prosper Portland’s stated commitment to equity.

Prosper has a complicated past. Since its founding as the Portland Development Commission in 1958, the agency developed 25 urban renewal districts. Some, such as the Pearl and South Waterfront, sparked enormous growth on fallow ground. Others, including the areas around Legacy Emanuel Hospital and in the Albina District, resulted in the destruction of Black neighborhoods.

In an attempt to atone, the agency embarked on an equity-focused strategy in 2015 and changed its name to Prosper Portland in 2017.

“Faced with mistrust and accusations of exclusion and dishonesty, Prosper Portland leadership recognized the need for change,” the agency wrote in its strategic plan. “Advancing racial equity is essential work for each of us.”

In the past few years, Prosper has worked to redefine itself, with a focus on helping smaller, historically disadvantaged businesses. The Broadway Corridor provided an opportunity to display its commitment to righting historical wrongs.

Even though COVID crushed demand for office space, Prosper moved forward with plans to clear the post office site. It chose a company called Northwest Demolition & Dismantling over Martin’s firm.

Northwest Demolition was not in fact a certified minority owned business, however, as Prosper preferred. (It was acquired by the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, owned by Native Alaskans, making it a minority-owned business but had not attained certification. The firm did not respond to a request for comment.)

In his lawsuit, Martin details three further rounds of bidding—each one ending in bitter dispute. His most noteworthy allegation is that he scored higher in an independent assessment of which firm was most qualified—but Prosper asked panelists to reconsider their rankings. When the panelists refused, the lawsuit says, Prosper simply named a new panel.

Over time, Martin felt increasingly certain that Prosper would never award him the full demolition contract.

“I knew they were going to split the job,” he says. “They’d give Northwest Demolition the building and give me the dirt.”

His fears came true. In September, Prosper announced its intention to do just that: Northwest Demolition, the Alaskan firm, would get the more lucrative contract to demolish the building, while Martin was slated to haul away contaminated soil, a much smaller job he says is worth about $250,000.

“It’s like there’s a big building to be built and a doghouse to be built,” he says, “and they’re telling me, ‘You build the doghouse.’”

Martin says Prosper Portland ought to live up to its professed commitment to give firms like his a shot to build their businesses. He’d much rather be hitting the post office with a wrecking ball than battling Prosper in federal court.

“Why can’t I have this job?” Martin asks. “I won it fair and square two times, then they moved the goal posts.”

Correction: This story originally attributed Prosper Portland’s statement to Executive Director Kimberly Branam and referred to Northwest Demolition as “white-owned.” In fact, it was a Native-Alaskan owned firm not certified as minority contractor. Prosper preferred but did not require certification. WW regrets the errors.