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COMPETING KELLER TEAMS LOBBY CITY HALL: Quarterly lobbying reports that reveal who’s trying to curry favor with the Portland City Council show that two groups vying for control of the future of the Keller Auditorium met regularly with city officials this spring. The Halprin Landscape Conservancy, formed by several downtown developers, wants to renovate the existing building. That nonprofit is in a heated and increasingly public standoff with Portland State University, which proposes to build an entirely new performing arts center on 4.25 acres currently occupied by a little-used, university-owned hotel. The Keller renovation would cost an estimated $400 million. PSU’s proposal would cost an estimated $600 million. The two parties have squabbled over the merits of the dueling proposals, and both have taken their quarrel public in recent months. PSU spent $26,000 to lobby the city this past quarter, the bulk of it on the Keller, meeting with all five city commissioners’ offices multiple times. Meanwhile, representatives from Halprin met with each city commissioner’s office at least once between April and May. The City Council is set to decide which proposal it favors this fall.
MORE TIRE TROUBLE: The company shipping shredded tires to Asia from an old grain terminal on the Willamette River isn’t paying its trash bill, according to a complaint filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court by Hillsboro Landfill Inc. Castle Tire Disposal LLC owes the landfill $90,645.52, according to the lawsuit, an amount that includes late charges of $2,157.51. “The defendant has not paid this sum, nor any part of it,” the complaint says. The alleged late payment is the latest sign of distress for the owners of the old Louis Dreyfus grain elevator next to Moda Center in North Portland. Late last month, the owners put the troubled property up for sale for $6.5 million. The elevator is owned by Castle Arden 1 LLC, which is controlled by Castle Tire owner Chandos Mahon and his business partner Beau Blixseth, son of Oregon timber baron Tim Blixseth. Castle Arden bought the grain terminal for $2.9 million in February 2021. Castle Tire has been trucking shredded tires to the terminal and loading them on ships to Asia, where they are burned for fuel. The tire venture has suffered a few blowouts. In May 2023, a three-story pile of rubber caught fire at the site, then reignited at least three more times despite liberal dousing by Portland Fire & Rescue. Afterward, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality fined Castle Arden for piling too many waste tires on the site without a permit. Hillsboro Landfill is a unit of Houston-based Waste Management Inc. Neither Castle Tire nor Mahon returned emails seeking comment.
SALEM LEADERS URGE SUPPORT FOR POSTDOCS: Leaders of the Oregon Senate and House of Representatives sent a letter July 30 to administrators at Oregon Health & Science University urging them to sign a labor agreement with newly unionized postdoctoral researchers who have been pressing OHSU for nine months to raise wages and make other concessions. Negotiations soured late last month, prompting 286 researchers represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees to authorize a strike. OHSU says it pays the researchers according to standards set by the National Institutes of Health. The union says the starting NIH wage, $61,008 a year, doesn’t cover the cost of living in an expensive city like Portland. Senate President Rob Wagner (D-Lake Oswego) and House Speaker Julie Fahey (D-Eugene) agree. “While it’s true that OHSU is aligned with the National Institutes of Health’s compensation model, the cost of living in the Portland metro area means that those national levels of compensation aren’t adequate to attract and retain the researchers who are doing important work,” they wrote in their letter to OHSU board chairman Wayne Monfries, university president Danny Jacobs, and chief research officer Peter Barr-Gillespie. A group of state senators and representatives sent their own letter, too, citing Jacobs’ $1.6 million salary and the extra $700,000 in retirement pay that OHSU recently awarded him. “The reality is that in two weeks, Dr. Danny Jacobs earns roughly the same as a postdoc researcher earns in a year, but in spite of that shocking disparity, the board awarded him an additional $700,000 toward retirement,” the legislators wrote. “We cannot support such a glaring disparity of income and respect.” Jacobs acknowledged the letters with his own, telling lawmakers that NIH will raise researchers salaries to $70,000 over four years.
ALLIES PAY RESPECT TO GOLDSCHMIDT: Family and friends of the late Neil Goldschmidt paid their final respects Aug. 4 to the man who served as Portland’s 45th mayor (1973-1979) and Oregon’s 33rd governor (1987-1991). But Goldschmidt will also be remembered for his yearslong sexual abuse of a young girl named Elizabeth Dunham (“The 30-Year Secret,” WW, May 12, 2004). A crowd of about 250 gathered at Congregation Beth Israel in Northwest Portland to remember Goldschmidt, who died at age 83 on June 12. Former colleagues and longtime friends, including onetime stock brokerage firm owner Jerry Bidwell, financier Irving Levin, former Goldschmidt gubernatorial aide Kathleen Saadat, and Goldschmidt mayoral aide Alan Webber (now mayor of Santa Fe, N.M.), as well as stepson Neilan Snowden spoke, focusing on Goldschmidt’s accomplishments. Pink Martini bandleader Thomas Lauderdale played piano, and Levin played the cello. None of Oregon’s five living governors attended the event.