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As Dr. Steven Holt promoted the benefits of ODOT’s plan to expand Interstate 5 through the Rose Quarter to the Black community at monthly public meetings, he also filed a defamation lawsuit in 2022 against the Urban League of Portland.
The lawsuit stemmed from a different matter, in which Prosper Portland, the city’s economic development agency, hired Holt in 2020 to help run a committee of mostly Black Portlanders working on racial justice matters. Prosper, like ODOT, had carved up Albina beginning in the 1950s to develop Legacy Emanuel Hospital and Memorial Coliseum.
Today, Prosper is desperate to find a use for the Hill Block, a sprawling 1.7-acre site in North Portland that once housed thriving Black businesses but was flattened for Legacy’s use in 1969. It has lain fallow ever since.
On Jan. 9, 2020, records show, a female Urban League staffer arrived at a Hill Block committee meeting led by Holt.
At the meeting, the woman wrote in a Jan 14, 2020, complaint to Prosper Portland, Holt made inappropriate comments about her body.
When Prosper was slow to respond, Urban League of Portland president and CEO Nkenge Harmon Johnson got involved.
“On multiple occasions [the Urban League employee] has been the target of unwanted and improper comments about her physical attractiveness and sexuality from the facilitator [Holt],” she wrote in an April 8, 2020, email to Prosper’s HR director. “Some of the comments were made in an open forum in the presence of Prosper staff who said and did nothing. Of course, the facilitator is also paid by Prosper.”
Prosper officials told Harmon Johnson they had admonished Holt for his behavior and considered the matter closed. (However, records show Prosper continued to hire Holt for consulting work and has paid him nearly $300,000 since the incident.)
In 2022, National Urban League president Marc Morial planned a Zoom meeting with Portland-area Black contractors to celebrate the work they would be getting from ODOT on the Rose Quarter project. (Raimore Construction, a Black-owned Portland firm, signed as a contractor on the Rose Quarter project in 2020.)
Morial asked Harmon Johnson to join the event and informed her that Holt would be moderating. She didn’t like that.
“Be advised that the moderator for this event [Holt] is someone who is excluded from the [Urban League of Portland] office,” Harmon Johnson wrote back in a March 9, 2022, email. “Among other things we have filed a complaint against him for harassing a member of my team.”
In her email, Harmon Johnson suggested she took issue with Holt’s motives as well as his conduct.
“In short, ODOT is pitting Black contractors against Black community leaders, hoping to win support for a smaller, cheaper highway expansion,” she wrote.
Morial canceled the event. When Holt found out, he sued the Urban League in Multnomah County Circuit Court on June 7, 2022, seeking $7 million in damages. In his initial complaint, Holt included two details about his compensation: He claimed he was to be paid $5,000 for the Zoom lunch event—and he feared he might miss out on a $200,000 contract with the city of Portland.
“These baseless allegations were spread with the intent of causing harm to the reputations of plaintiff Holt and plaintiff Try Excellence, and such allegations continue to circulate and spread throughout plaintiff Holt’s professional and personal communities, causing ongoing harm to plaintiffs’ reputation and business,” the lawsuit said.
ODOT spokeswoman Rose Gerber says the agency learned about the lawsuit in June 2022. “ODOT does not have a comment on that lawsuit,” Gerber says. “Try Excellence LLC has been a valued contractor in facilitating the meetings of the Historic Albina Advisory Board.”
After Holt sued the Urban League, Harmon Johnson added more context in an Aug. 4, 2022, court filing. “Because of earlier misbehavior toward another Urban League of Portland employee,” she wrote, “I had earlier banned Mr. Holt from the premises of the Urban League.”
The case moved to federal court and proceeded through 2023. During that period, Try Excellence has continued to thrive.
In fact, records from another lawsuit Holt and Try Excellence filed earlier this year in Multnomah County show that on July 10, 2023, Holt signed a contract for community outreach with the city of Portland’s Community Safety Strategic Plan that would pay Try Excellence $832,000 over the coming seven months. (Try Excellence ultimately got paid $279,190 on the contract, according to a city spokesman).
That kind of cash makes people who’ve been involved in working public safety issues scratch their heads.
“That’s a mind-blowing amount of money,” says Pastor Robin Wisner, the former co-chair of a citizen panel advising on the Portland Police Bureau’s settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice on the use of force. “I’m really not sure what his skills are. How do you have a strong pulse on the community if you don’t live here?”
At any rate, Holt’s lawsuit against the Urban League backfired.
Harmon Johnson and the Urban League filed an anti-SLAPP motion against Holt, a legal maneuver to discourage frivolous lawsuits. U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman granted the motion in January and, on Aug. 5, ordered Holt to pay Harmon Johnson and the Urban League’s attorney fees and court costs of $101,682. (Holt is appealing.)
“The results confirm what I’ve always thought about Steven Holt,” Harmon Johnson says. “Holt and his company tried to bully me, Urban League’s board directors, and people who have never even met nor heard of the man, all because our employee reported his disgusting behavior to Prosper Portland.”
Holt declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Read our cover story: ODOT bets on a man of faith to sell a controversial transportation project.
Correction: This story originally said Try Excellence LLC received $832,000 from a city contract. That contract amount is correct but Try Excellence actually received $279,190. WW regrets the error.