Murmurs: Lender Signals Repo of Ritz Tower

LENDER SIGNALS REPO OF RITZ TOWER: The lender to Block 216, Walter Bowen’s gleaming West End skyscraper, sounded an ominous note about the property in an earnings report Monday. In supplemental information for investors, New York-based Ready Capital said the best strategy for its $503 million construction loan would be to take possession of the property, instead of waiting for repayment. “Ownership is [the] best net present value outcome for RC,” Ready Capital wrote in a 25-page supplement to its fourth-quarter earnings. Ready Capital CEO Thomas Capasse went into more detail on a conference call. “While the original strategy was to refinance the construction into a bridge loan, the current appraisal and other factors favored ownership and serial asset disposition on the components as the best net present value outcome,” Capasse said, according to a transcript of the call. Translation: foreclose on the 35-story building and sell it in chunks. Block 216 has ground-floor retail, five floors of office space, a Ritz-Carlton Hotel and Ritz-Carlton Residences. Ready Capital acquired the Block 216 loan in March 2022, when it bought Mosaic Real Estate Credit LLC, the building’s original construction lender. Like so many downtown towers, Block 216 has struggled to land office tenants. Just 23% of the office space is leased, according to Ready Capital. Nor has Bowen been able to sell many of the 132 Ritz-Carlton condominiums. Only 8% have sold, according to Ready Capital’s earnings report, at an average of $1,105 per square foot. Ready Capital said it plans to stabilize the three components of the angular glass tower, then sell the office space and hotel portion within two years. Unloading the condos will take three years, Ready Capital said. Neither Block 216 management nor Bowen’s company, BPM Real Estate Group, returned calls and emails seeking comment. Ready Capital’s press office didn’t return an email. Nor did its chief financial officer, Andrew Ahlborn. One bright spot: Block 216’s retail space, where a food hall called Flock opened in January, is 100% leased, Ready Capital said.

CITY TO PAY JOURNALISTS HURT BY POLICE: The Portland City Council is poised to approve a $938,000 settlement with four journalists and two legal observers who alleged police attacked them with flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets, and tear gas while they covered the 2020 George Floyd protests and riots. The six plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, include two photojournalists who have regularly contributed to WW, John Rudoff and Sam Gehrke. They sued the city in June 2020, alleging that police officers’ effort to “intimidate the press and suppress reporting on the police’s own misconduct offends fundamental constitutional protections and strikes at the core of our democracy.” The lawsuit alleges police officers used unlawful force against a slew of local journalists, including reporters from The Oregonian and the Portland Mercury as well as freelancers, some of whom covered the protests for Willamette Week. The council is expected to approve the settlement March 5.

PPS SLASHES SUMMER CATCH-UP SCHOOL: Portland Public Schools will significantly reduce its summer learning program that targets children performing below grade level and helps them catch up before the next school year. The Summer Acceleration Academy has diminished in size and scope in recent years as money has dwindled. The latest cut—from serving K–5 students across 67 elementary schools to K–2 students across 18—comes as the district faces a $40 million budget shortfall for the upcoming 2025–26 school year. Darcy Soto, PPS’s director of learning acceleration, says the district can allocate only about $1.6 million to the program this year, compared to $4.5 million last year. Now that federal relief dollars have subsided, the district will use state funds from two sources, the 2019 Student Success Act and the 2023 Early Literacy Success Initiative, to run the summer academy. “We understand that such a dramatic decrease in SAA programming will create hardship in many of our school communities,” the district wrote in a March 3 email to parents. Families who still qualify will be notified March 10 and April 1 to apply.

PORTLAND SCHOOL BOARD SEATS WILL BE CONTESTED: The May 2025 election could shake up the current Portland Public Schools Board—four contests are on the ballot, and two incumbents will have challengers. Herman Greene, a pastor at Abundant Life PDX in North Portland, faces Rashelle Chase-Miller in Zone 4. Chase-Miller is an educator and literacy advocate who works at SMART reading, an Oregon nonprofit that helps kids to build home libraries and provides volunteer reading support in schools. She’s locked in the support of two of Greene’s fellow board members, chair Eddie Wang and vice chair Michelle DePass. Greene, meanwhile, has earned the favor of board members Julia Brim-Edwards and Gary Hollands. Hollands, a businessman who runs a trucking company and represents Zone 5 in Northeast Portland, is himself up for reelection. He faces challenger Jorge Sanchez Bautista, 18, a McDaniel High School student. Both have secured endorsements from board members DePass and Patte Sullivan, but Hollands has the additional support of Greene and Brim-Edwards. Chase-Miller and Bautista have both cited their support for the Portland Association of Teachers.