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Prosper Portland has selected a new executive director following the resignation of Shea Flaherty Betin, who stepped down from the economic development agency at the request of Portland Mayor Keith Wilson.
The agency selected Cornell Wesley to lead the bureau. Wesley most recently served as the director of the Department of Innovation and Economic Opportunity for the city of Birmingham, Ala. Prior to that, he worked as an economic development representative for Oklahoma and North Texas for the U.S. Department of Commerce. He earned an MBA from Mercer University in Georgia.
If his appointment, first reported by The Oregonian, is confirmed by the Prosper board of commissioners on Wednesday, Wesley will be taking over a bureau recently engulfed in controversy. As WW and other news outlets have reported, interim director Shea Flaherty Betin engaged this spring in a public fight with two city councilors, Jamie Dunphy and Mitch Green, who sought to strip Prosper of its $11 million in general fund dollars, a proposal that ultimately failed.
Flaherty Betin also engaged in a group chat with the full roster of agency staff in which Prosper leaders wrote disparagingly about members of the City Council. Those messages were first reported by WW in June.
Shortly thereafter, in late June, Wilson asked that Flaherty Betin step down from his executive director role. Flaherty Betin opted to leave the agency entirely, rather than assuming a lesser role.
Though the agency’s recent troubles have taken center stage, Prosper for close to a decade now has struggled to get its financial footing. Its decadeslong practice of creating tax-increment financing districts across the city went out of favor in the late aughts as it became increasingly clear that some of the districts had contributed to pricing out longtime residents of those neighborhoods.
Without the TIF districts as its revenue driver, Prosper gradually had to downsize staff and sought other methods of funding its economic development initiatives, which have had mixed success. In recent years, the agency backed the sale of land on the Central Eastside to two local developers to build a $50 million music venue managed by the promotional giant Live Nation. The project, abhorred by local music venues and promoters, contributed to the friction between city councilors and Prosper leaders.
Should the board approve Wesley’s appointment, he’ll begin work in early August. “I am thrilled to be joining Prosper Portland at such a pivotal time for the city,” he said in a statement.
