Skip to main content
The executive director of Made in Old Town, the shoe manufacturing project that’s struggled to deliver on promises it made to revitalize a wide swath of the Old Town neighborhood, has resigned.
Liz Rodgers, a longtime Nike executive who joined Made in Old Town late last year, wrote in an automated email response that she has “resigned from my role as executive director of Made in Old Town, effective immediately.” It’s not clear when exactly she resigned.
Rodgers joined the ailing shoe startup late last year as it was struggling to fulfill its big promises to city and state officials about its vision for the beleaguered Old Town neighborhood. The project’s leaders promised they would would revitalize the area by raising some public and mostly private money for a nine-building shoe manufacturing campus.
The project received a $7 million loan from Prosper Portland in 2025 and has since failed to meet the loan’s requirement for private fundraising. The project also received a grant from the Oregon Legislature, but some state lawmakers—most notably Gov. Tina Kotek—have since appeared to sour on the project after its principals used the Prosper money to unlock the remainder of the state grant money. (Kotek’s expectation was that Made in Old Town would unlock the state grant funds by matching it with private money, not taxpayer dollars from other governments.)
Despite receiving significant taxpayer dollars, the project’s leaders have since declined to provide WW and the public information about how many tenants they’ve brought in to their new buildings and how much they’ve raised in private funding to date.
Made in Old Town did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the resignation, nor did Rodgers.
