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Ever get tired of the neighbors in your building? They come home at all hours of the night, leave little passive-aggressive notes on your door, and their footsteps sound like a stampede of wildebeest on your ceiling. Well, consider the Ritz-Carlton Residences! At last count, about 118 of the tower’s 132 condominiums are empty, so you can live that Omega Man lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of, starting at just $920,000 for one bedroom. WW’s continued look into the architects of this splendid isolation most recently considered Barclay Grayson, the lieutenant to Walter Bowen who spearheaded the development (“Five-Star General,” March 26). Here’s what our readers had to say:
Steve Herring, via wweek.com: “What good does this article do? Portland needs investigative journalism to dive into where the hundreds of millions of public dollars are going for homeless services which are clearly not being responsibly spent. The Block 216 project did not use public dollars—it was a risk taken by private money. As of today, it also has not failed in spite of all the gleeful energy WW seems to wish to expend in writing articles about its as-yet-happened demise.
“Stop wasting your resources and energy on soap opera-level drama and start writing about where the public money is going. How about diving into where the nearly three quarters of a BILLION dollars annually is going for public defenders in Oregon when there’s a supposed crisis in having public defenders available for all the people charged with crimes in this state?
“I’m disappointed that this is what we have to pass as news here.”
Bill Mckenzie, via wweek.com: “This is a huge story for Portland that should be getting lots of attention. BTW, COVID didn’t kill the Ritz-Carlton. As others have commented, the whole project misjudged the Portland market from the beginning. It has never been a high-end, sophisticated, flaunt-your-wealth place. The demise of Portland’s Saks Fifth Avenue store in 2010 showed that. As Kathleen Healey, senior associate broker with Urban Works, said at the time of the Saks closure, ‘Saks didn’t quite fit in with our fleece and flip-flops.’ Neither did the Ritz-Carlton.”
Dustin Anderson, via Facebook: “It’s almost like the people told them over and over this wasn’t the place for your tower of rich.”
zzxcvnssubg, via wweek.com: “I don’t understand the need to report hit pieces on these people. Digging up all the dirt you can to smear someone. Unless you can point to actual fraud in luring in investors, this was a gamble that failed. The two Portland men are both paying the price in selling off all their assets. The investors had their opportunity to research the potential risks as well. Not all real estate projects work out. This one is obviously a failure.”
Arthur Rotbart, in reply: “Are you kidding? This is a huge story, and the so-called ‘dirt’ on these two is called journalism. This monstrosity of a building is emblematic of the failure of downtown, a testament not to a ‘failed gamble,’ but to greed, poor planning and severely blurred vision.”
Jake Chadwick, via wweek.com: “An occupancy permit should have been contingent on the affordable housing payment being made. The whole waffling on ‘would they put the units in or pay the fee’ never seemed like anything more than a delay tactic. The project never had a chance with COVID, but I always questioned a project that required hotel customers and condo buyers that were never organically in the Portland market in the numbers required to make this project go. The condo prices required Bay Area, Seattle, Vancouver, B.C., etc., buyers to come into the market. It’s a nice looking building and hopefully someone can make it work long term at a lower cost basis. We’ll see.”
DON’T DROP, SCAMPER
I very much appreciated your article about URMs and Portland Public Schools’ response about retrofitting [“Sticks and Stones,” WW, March 26]. I have given frequent lectures in the Portland area on this very same subject. And I’m frustrated by the lack of a governmental effort to seismically upgrade, not only PPS’s facilities, but all URMs within the city. I’m sure you’re aware of the state of California’s successful effort in this regard.
I’m writing you today on a related topic; namely, the adage to “Drop, Cover and Hold” when an earthquake is felt. True, if you’re already feeling the shaking, it’s too late to do much else (than to Drop, Cover and Hold). However, ShakeAlert may give Portland residents a 49-second warning should a Cascadian subduction quake strike off the coast of Oregon. If you find yourself in a URM when the ShakeAlert signal is sounded, to “Drop, Cover and Hold” may be the wrong thing to do. Rather, those 40 seconds could give the time to scamper out of a URM just before the shaking starts that might ultimately collapse the structure you were just standing in.
Bill Burgel
Professional geologist
Portland
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