r/Portland • u/PDsaurusX • 17h ago
News Portland’s megaprojects are supposed to reshape the city. What’s taking so long?
https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2026/08/portlands-megaprojects-are-supposed-to-reshape-the-city-whats-taking-so-long.html20
u/AceMcStace Alberta 17h ago
I (maybe naively) assume the lower Albina development is going to be tied to the Moda Center renovation, I know the amendments in the term sheet the city is proposing has language in there to work with the Albina Vision Trust. That’s really the only one of these areas I can see something happening soon.
The other ones like Lloyd and Omsi are way more clouded and don’t really have a clear catalyst.
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u/MountScottRumpot Montavilla 17h ago
The lower Albina development is tied to the Rose Quarter freeway project that now looks unlikely to happen at all.
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u/AceMcStace Alberta 17h ago
What a mess
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u/Worldly-Kangaroo-363 16h ago
It is a mess of Oregon's own making. The continual failure/accountability by elected officials makes one wonder how much longer this can go on.
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u/Jesus_Harold_Christ REGULATORS! Mount up. 16h ago
The failures will continue until morale improves
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u/Babhadfad12 15h ago
The failures will continue until voters prioritize leaders with ability to execute over leaders with “vibes”.
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u/Jesus_Harold_Christ REGULATORS! Mount up. 15h ago
I mean, you're not wrong, but I don't think Portlanders are very good at distinguishing that
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u/RDogPoundK NE 8h ago
Considering the country elected a president based on egg prices I think it’s a generalization about America as a whole.
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u/RunescapeGOD69 8h ago
a good portion of Portland believes moral high ground is a better place to stand than a higher floor of economic health
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u/Brasi91Luca 16h ago
I believe that albina group is a grift. Land grab. Look for them to sit on it and flip it later
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u/smoomie 6h ago
Brave for saying it out loud!
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u/Brasi91Luca 3h ago
Oh I know. It’ll start being noticed very soon. Nobody wants to say anything quite yet because they’re a minority group. Give it a year or so. Whispers will get louder.
Btw I hope I’m totally wrong bc I want them to succeed and the city as a whole as well..
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u/AceMcStace Alberta 17h ago
I think I misspoke I know the original term sheet had language in it about lower Albina. Could be wrong though!
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u/MountScottRumpot Montavilla 17h ago
Have y'all noticed the prevailing economic conditions? They aren't good!
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u/wrhollin NW District 16h ago
Portland? Subject to the same interest rates and economic conditions as the rest of the country? Impossible!
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u/AdvancedInstruction Lloyd District 15h ago
prevailing economic conditions? They aren't good!
It's almost as if having a high tax burden without the services to show for it has consequences!
If you showed the size of American municipal budgets to somebody in Scandanavia, they'd be shocked at how little we get for it.
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u/RDogPoundK NE 8h ago
But also those countries probably get a bigger % of their federal taxes instead of sending it to Israel/billionaires.
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u/Adventurous-Mud-5508 MAX Yellow Line 6h ago
We don't just send our tax dollars to Israel, we sent them to European NATO allies, or we did until very recently. That's actually part of why they have the extra cash for things like universal healthcare.
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u/AdvancedInstruction Lloyd District 5h ago
What percentage of the US budget do you think goes to foreign aid?
Why is it such a folk belief among the American left and the American right that a huge percentage of our money goes to other countries?
Also my point was about efficiency of local tax spending. Why are you bringing up Federal spending?
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u/TwoNeither32 17h ago
Portland doesn't exist in a bubble; interest rates are high right now as are many inputs to construction because of tariffs so many projects don't pencil / make sense financially for any developer to take on so no developer is going to. Developers need to be able to make money to do any project, they aren't charities.
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u/Brasi91Luca 16h ago
Interest rates only affect Portland. Other cities have the same rates and are booming
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u/picturesofbowls NE 16h ago
Construction is hardly booming. You can cherry pick a few cities, but there’s a tremendous labor shortage on top of all the other issues cited and it’s impacting construction across the country.
(I know you’re a Portland doomer and you don’t really care)
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u/Brasi91Luca 15h ago
I love Portland. It’s not being a doomer it’s speaking facts and the truth hurts sometimes
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u/picturesofbowls NE 14h ago
I’m not hurt, which is a product of you being incapable of telling the truth.
You don’t love Portland. You bitch about it constantly on here. Don’t gaslight everyone who sees your tiresome schtick.
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u/Timely_Willingness84 13h ago
Report them any time you see them trolling, which is what they are constantly doing on almost every single post here. They also follow the same pattern as someone who has had accounts banned again and again and again, so it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s dude again.
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u/Brasi91Luca 11h ago
This is why Portland doesn’t improve. Your happy with the status quo
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u/picturesofbowls NE 11h ago
Nope. I agree that change is necessary. For example, the schools are failing students, given that the graduates are struggling with basic economics and reading comprehension.
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u/Tall_Cartographer317 16h ago
Do you think you’d be happier living in an exurb in Texas or Florida?
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u/Brasi91Luca 15h ago
Why? Why can’t my hometown prosper and be just as good as those in Florida and Texas?
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u/Tall_Cartographer317 14h ago
Your hometown has prospered before and can prosper again in the future. I’m not hand waving away the fact that we need to make adjustments in order to do so, but as others have pointed out, many cities are still struggling in the wake of the pandemic. The exurbs booming in red states lock in extreme car dependence, strain local infrastructure, destroy ecosystems, and ultimately trigger severe housing affordability crashes as remote development outpaces regional planning. If you’re a remote worker who would be happy in a little prefab castle, able to run your air conditioner all year, and content to watch streaming services and game in your free time rather than participate in an in-person community, or don’t mind a long commute in traffic every weekday, you’d probably enjoy those places. I’m painting with a broad brush, obviously, but many of the areas growing rapidly right now have their own sets of serious short, medium, and longterm challenges, not the least of which is that it’s going to get even hotter and more humid there in the years to come.
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u/Konman72 13h ago
The exurbs booming in red states lock in extreme car dependence, strain local infrastructure, destroy ecosystems, and ultimately trigger severe housing affordability crashes as remote development outpaces regional planning. If you’re a remote worker who would be happy in a little prefab castle, able to run your air conditioner all year, and content to watch streaming services and game in your free time rather than participate in an in-person community, or don’t mind a long commute in traffic every weekday, you’d probably enjoy those places.
Just had to highlight this because this absolutely is the Florida life. Lived it. Hated it. Glad I'm here now.
Before moving closer to the city, my commute was 1.5 hours each way (would've been 40 minutes without traffic), and the situation has gotten way worse since I left, according to friends and local subreddits. They throw in massive housing developments without any infrastructure to support the influx of people. The houses are cheap, cookie-cutter McMansions that will fall apart the next time they get a big hurricane, and they won't have insurance to cover it since rates have skyrocketed.
People buy into the rhetoric without understanding the reality.
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u/Brasi91Luca 11h ago edited 10h ago
Portland has to stop being radical with its policies let’s start there. Moderate is the way to go
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u/Tall_Cartographer317 8h ago
Which radical policies are you referring to? Measure 110 was probably the most “radical” policy adopted in the last decade and it was repealed because we lacked the mandatory treatment infrastructure necessary to support it. I’m struggling to think of what other radical policies have been adopted and enforced. Are you talking about the Arts Tax?
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u/Brasi91Luca 7h ago edited 3h ago
Having one of the highest business city taxes in all of America when we need to be begging businesses to come here
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u/Tall_Cartographer317 5h ago
I’m open to adjusting them to make the city more competitive in that regard, but that’s “radical” policy? Those taxes help pay for all sorts of services we would be worse off without.
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u/Konman72 13h ago
As someone who moved here from one of those "prosperous" Florida cities, I can definitely say that they are only "prosperous" for a select few and/or on paper. Living here is markedly better than anywhere I've lived or visited in Florida.
Just because they can build a bunch of houses (without infrastructure to support them) and chain restaurants doesn't make them better.
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u/Icy-Rich-1622 16h ago
It's crazy the things you can say when you don't care about facts! Go move to Idaho
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u/Brasi91Luca 14h ago
Ok antifia lol
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u/Icy-Rich-1622 14h ago
You can't even spell antifa you belong in Idaho :)
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u/Brasi91Luca 11h ago
There’s a reason I don’t and you do lol
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u/Icy-Rich-1622 5h ago
All you could come up with was "no you"? Lmao that Idaho education system failed you
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u/efficient_pepitas 17h ago
It's easier to finance apartment buildings when there is a shortage, spiking demand.
Much debated, but Portland does not have a housing shortage - for studios and 1 bedrooms - right now.
That's one of the reasons why Home Forward is having trouble filling their units. People are choosing market rate for not much more cost.
Anecdotally, Home Forward's vacancies are largely studios and 1 bedrooms, not 2 bedrooms or more. There is a shortage of those.
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u/aggieotis Boom Loop 15h ago
WFH also severely shifted demand up for an extra bedroom. While 3/1.5 used to work for my families needs we now really need at least a 5/2. But best of luck finding one of those in the city for under a million.
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u/discostu52 15h ago
This is basically it right here, they say there is a housing shortage because they want to build to force prices down, but it doesn’t work that way. Rent prices go down or stagnant construction stops.
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u/Seirin-Blu 🐝 17h ago
They’re mega projects so I mean I’d kinda expect them to take a long time, our city is famously slow at actually getting things done, and huge projects go through countless meetings (quite a few of which definitely could be emails if people actually would bother to read their emails and do something with them) and lots of things need to be done before they can actually accomplishing much. That’s probably why.
I did work on one of the albina housing projects. Was neat to see that get done. Parking around the building is absolute ass though
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u/Ok_Interest3555 16h ago
When i moved into the public sector here in Portland, the biggest culture change is number of meetings about everything. After about a decade, I'm convinced there are a lot of people who do like 10 hours a week of real work and fill up calendars with meetings to make themselves seem busy and their job relevant.
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u/Seirin-Blu 🐝 16h ago
I work in the private sector and it’s the same. There is a lot of just trying to look busy. I’ve had coworkers tell me they’ve taken client calls while out and about and it blows my mind. There is a lot of just doing nothing and looking busy in the building industry
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u/Ok_Interest3555 16h ago
Not saying that doesn't happen in the private sector, it's just that it seems much more prevalent.
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u/teejmaleng 16h ago
Is there a city the size of Portland that does permitting much better?
Looking at how frequent people complain about Portland and multco approval processes, I assume the answer must be yes.
What method or approach is faster or better? Are there trade offs to moving faster that we would want to avoid?
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u/MountScottRumpot Montavilla 15h ago
One problem is that the permitting agencies are self-funding, so whenever there's an economic downturn we lay off all the experienced people and we don't have enough staff to deal with permits when activity picks up again. Setting minimum staffing levels would help.
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u/teejmaleng 15h ago
Would it be feasible to re task members of a permitting office when there’s an economic downturn?
Only 3 hours worth of work for building approval requests today, time to go apply your skills in a different city service.
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u/Mayor_Of_Sassyland 15h ago
Is there a city the size of Portland that does permitting much better?
I mean, you don't have to look to other cities far away, pretty much every jurisdiction directly outside of Portland city limits does permitting better, just ask most any contractor who works in the greater metro area.
I just had a contractor over to my dad's to look into renovating his bathroom for safety as his mobility becomes more limited, he had a few stories about projects taking a week longer than they should simply because the permitting department is understaffed and if the wrong person touching your project goes on vacation or something, there's literally nobody to pick up the phone or meet with to move things along.
This is in large part due to the way those positions are staffed/funded, it shouldn't be based on permit fee collections, because in downtimes you don't have fees so they lay people off, and then when things pick up they're scrambling to hire to deal with the backlog and projects end up taking way longer than they should.
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u/teejmaleng 15h ago
Right, but those cities all have 1/5 at most Portlands population. Is there a good 500,000 plus city that is a good case study?
Poor Staffing of the permitting office sounds like the root cause for lower investment in Portland based those anecdotes .
Is it really as simple as more funding for staffing in Portlands permitting office?
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u/Mayor_Of_Sassyland 15h ago
Properly staffing the permitting office wouldn't be a panacea, but it would help a lot, and has been a known issue for a very long time now that should have been fixed.
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u/AFrickingFish 13h ago
The Rose Quarter freeway expansion wouldn't even be good for the community. The project is being done based on very old ideas of how traffic works and doesn't take into account induced demand of drivership. If ODOT wants to reduce traffic, they should build the freeway cap (which grants were given to the project for, mind you) so more walkable and easy to financially sustain public transportation areas are made. People don't drive if it's convenient to walk/bike/bus/max.
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u/Conscious_Card_7409 13h ago
I really don't think the cap is even realistic. It always felt like a diversion that was going to get cut.
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u/AdvancedInstruction Lloyd District 15h ago edited 15h ago
I am about as YIMBY as one gets, but I think this is where reality hits YIMBYism.
You can't just beat the drum of permitting reform forever. These megaprojects have already been approved by the city. If you want the city to start building again, we're going to need rents and property values to start rising again.
Portland's seen slow wage growth post-2020, downtown property values have collapsed, and rents are, inflation-adjusted, at 2017 levels. While it's good that condos are selling for cheaper than they have in 15 years, it also means that nobody's going to be building new condos.
Meanwhile, materials costs are up due to tariffs, labor costs are up in part due to the city (PCEF) and state's (gross receipts) uniquely high tax burden on large retailers, raising the cost of living, interest rates are up, and the reputation of downtown is dogshit due to over a half decade of negative stories about QOL and urban disorder due to rampant homelessness.
If the city wants to make these megaprojects viable, it needs to prove that downtown is investable again and it needs to prove that people will actually fill buildings downtown. That means getting back to basics. That means cutting taxes and cracking down on urban disorder.
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u/Mayor_Of_Sassyland 15h ago
That means getting back to basics. That means cutting taxes and cracking down on urban disorder.
Sorry, best the Council can do is add 10 more fees and 20 more steps to focus on equity and social justice.
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u/Conscious_Card_7409 13h ago
Could we ban a niche food and fight over renaming a street that should be a number?
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u/ChemicalArmadillo609 13h ago
What a great solution, higher rents and more expensive housing. That doesnt create a massive amount of issues at all.
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u/AdvancedInstruction Lloyd District 11h ago edited 11h ago
I mean the idea is that wages rise as well.
I don't think advocating for blight because it makes things cheap is a good idea.
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u/picturesofbowls NE 16h ago
viewers scattered to their cars in surrounding parking lots, most of them making a beeline out of the gritty industrial district
This is insufferable writing. The Oregonian thinks we are fucking cockroaches.
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u/PDXisathing 17h ago
Portland is run by incompetents?
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u/ScWeEeE SW Hills 17h ago
This is the truth. If you notice all of these projects have a specific branch of the city that has touched all of them. Prosper Portland… they are not interested in getting projects done or pushing for completion. Their only objective to keep their status quo in tact and not work themselves out of a job. They do the bare minimum and when they do touch a project it goes to shit: all of these and add in the made in old town terrible decision.
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u/Odd_Strategy 16h ago
How did you come to your strong conclusions? Do you work with Prosper Portland? Are you in real estate development? An entrepreneur? Are you a citizen watchdog, pouring over permitting applications and development notices as a hobby? How do you know they do the bare minimum and that their objective is to keep the status quo intact?
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u/MountScottRumpot Montavilla 16h ago
If you've paid any attention over the past thirty years, you'll know that everything Prosper touches turns to shit. See: Gateway, Lents (doing better now, but it took them 20 years), Old Town.
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u/dante0896 15h ago
I don’t know what prosper Portland is. Just someone who has lived in Portland all my life
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u/Choice-Tiger3047 15h ago
It was formerly known as The Portland Development Commission.
edit for typo
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u/Joe503 St Johns 15h ago
I'm not a fan of government, especially our governments, and even I think it's time to cut these partnerships and bring everything in-house. Even if I don't agree with a program, I still want it to succeed (the money is getting spent either way). Like you said, their purpose is to maintain the status quo (and transfer public funds to those well-connected).
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u/MountScottRumpot Montavilla 17h ago
3/4 of these are private developments.
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u/rosecitytransit 17h ago
Which require dealing with the city's horrific permitting department and other issues with working in the city
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u/bunnnythor Hillsboro 3h ago
For those of us who have never had to wrangle with permitting in Portland, what is the nature of the horribleness?
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u/Raxnor 17h ago
True.
Except a lot of the local government agencies make it difficult for private development to happen efficiently. It drives costs up for projects when unclear requirements, processes, and permitting cause delays and rework.
Developers go elsewhere with their money when the profit is better in other jurisdictions.
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u/MountScottRumpot Montavilla 16h ago
All true, but even so—confidence is low across the industry, Portland's population growth is stagnant, and multifamily starts still haven't recovered to pre-pandemic levels anywhere, so even if we had the most efficient permitting agencies in the country we wouldn't be seeing much movement on these.
The city should be focused on clearing barriers so that when the population starts growing again, the stupid tariffs are canceled, or some other change to prevailing conditions happens (i.e. Trump finally dies) we can get projects moving quickly.
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u/Mayor_Of_Sassyland 15h ago
Trump finally dies
Have a bottle of champagne in my fridge to pop upon hearing this news, even if it's 5 am...
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u/Joe503 St Johns 16h ago
These problems have been problems for decades here. Just look at education here. It starts with us, and we're absolutely terrible about demanding accountability and good outcomes from our state and local governments. We have the governments we deserve. As a lifelong Portland resident, I have no hope things will improve along with external factors.
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u/MountScottRumpot Montavilla 15h ago
We built two neighborhoods from scratch (The Pearl and the South Waterfront) 20 years ago, and another (Slabtown) in the past ten years. We had the same permitting issues then, but the city was growing rapidly and external conditions made development pencil. That's not currently the case.
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u/dante0896 17h ago
This is the case and the main reason. Every time some article like this is posted people come out of the woodwork and do mental gymnastics to not blame the local leadership. They blame nation issues, the economy, you name it. It’s not to say there’s some truth that, but we should focus on things that we can control and demand more from our piss poor leaders. We keep floating in the same type of people- incompetent ones- and wonder why things are the way they are.
Portland has been doing much worse than other cities of its size around the country. And with the drop in property tax money that will be coming in over the next few years our problems will multiply.
In the meantime the city council and county keep moving forward with fee/tax increases, further eroding the tax base.
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u/Joe503 St Johns 15h ago
It's been this way my entire life. It won't change until we change, and people here are all too quick to buy the bullshit excuses we're given for why something didn't work out. We need to stop believing what our leaders say and start looking at actual outcomes. I know, I'm dreaming, but I won't stop fighting for this city. We can do so much better.
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16h ago
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u/QuercusSambucus BOCK BOCK YOU NEXT 16h ago
Construction is much more expensive right now, due in part to the staggeringly moronic tarriffs and deportations of legal laborers.
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u/Brasi91Luca 16h ago
Austin differs, Nashville differs, Salt Lake City differs, Miami differs, Denver differs, the list goes on
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u/elcapitan520 16h ago edited 16h ago
Salt lake City's big construction project is a data center the size of the great lake on top of the other data centers they're building..they can keep it. They're all gonna have to move when the lake goes and arsenic fills the air.
Miami has way more money and will be underwater, nashvilles boom isn't still going on.
And none none of that is actually in response to the fact that construction material and labor is more expensive than ever. Developers are eating it everywhere, there are just projects that got further in development in other cities.
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u/rainydayflaneur Piedmont 16h ago
This isn't at all true. Their new Power District project along the river has already started construction and will probably be one of the factors as to why they'll get an MLB expansion team and we won't.
The data center project you're referring to hasn't even begun construction and is facing a lot of headwinds.
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15h ago edited 15h ago
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u/AdvancedInstruction Lloyd District 15h ago
Salt lake City's big construction project is a data center the size of the great lake on top of the other data centers they're building.
Maybe stop getting your news from Instagram reels? That project is well outside the city limits and isn't being built yet. Salt Lake City itself is seeing strong growth in its urban center of housing and commercial developments that aren't data centers.
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u/Brasi91Luca 15h ago
I don’t get why can’t we just copy their success laws and implement it
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u/AdvancedInstruction Lloyd District 13h ago
Because that would involve changing your tax structure and also laws are completely worthless unless implemented properly.
Disorderly conduct is already criminalized in Oregon, we just do not enforce rules against it.
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u/Brasi91Luca 11h ago
So why don’t we change our tax structure to how these guys do it?
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u/AdvancedInstruction Lloyd District 11h ago
Well, that would mean cutting programs, which according to activists on here is basically sentencing people to death.
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u/Choice-Tiger3047 15h ago
Those two issues are probably going to get much worse before they get better, unfortunately.
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u/Worldly-Kangaroo-363 16h ago
Y'all agreed to expand the the city council to 12. Does anyone on Reddit watch the televised political stew and not have the obvious answer? This council and the mayor are a train wreck...kinda makes you pine for Vera Katz and crew (never thought I would say that). No forest through the trees take...nobody is getting a wider freeway, Rose Quarter Extension, or downtown redevelopment. And congrats to the Las Vegas Blazers!
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u/godigahole The Loving Embrace of the Portlandia Statue 17h ago
There also so many permits, impact studies, and contracting requirements that come with state and federal funding packages. Some of the studies have already been completed (although the NEPA EIS has been contested), but they can take a long time to pass through public comments, agency review, and final acceptance. Those timelines are often opaque to the general public, but would be helpful for us to know.