"WHAT'S UP WITH ERIK?"

Three years ago, Sarah Shaoul moved Retread Threads from Southeast Clinton Street to downtown Oak Street, where her used-clothing store joined a cluster of funky independent shops. "It's a unique area," she says of the strip just south of West Burnside that's home to businesses such as the Crystal Ballroom and Spartacus. "That's what I hate to lose, the individuality of this neighborhood."

Shaoul and others are increasingly nervous as the City Council prepares to hear a proposal on June 21 to change the rules for new buildings in the western edge of downtown Portland.

Proponents say the zoning should be changed in order to bring about the condos needed to keep downtown healthy. Critics, however, call it a gentrification plan that threatens not only independent businesses like Retread Threads but also 1,000 affordable rooms for low-income West Enders.

Caught in the middle is City Commissioner Erik Sten. Long a champion of housing for the poor, Sten is siding with those pushing the rezoning plan: an influential group of developers, businesses and property owners called the Association for Portland Progress. It's a position that baffles Gretchen Kafoury, Sten's mentor and predecessor on the council.

"What's up with Erik? I don't get it," says Kafoury. "I'm ready to send him an email saying, 'Do not break up our friendship over this issue.'
I am really troubled by this."

The fuss is over a 62-block area that stretches from PSU to Powell's City of Books, from the Park Blocks to I-405. The city's planners have long intended the West End to be downtown Portland's bedroom. But the condos have not appeared.

APP, led by parking magnate Greg Goodman, says 15 blocks should be rezoned to ditch the requirement that all new developments include housing. Goodman argues that an office tower or two would spark interest in investors and jar the West End out of its lethargy, thus leading to more apartments and condominiums (see "West End Story," WW, Dec. 15, 1999).

Opponents question APP's argument that new housing will only appear if you don't require it. "It doesn't make any sense. It's like a Jedi mind trick," says Ian Slingerland of the Community Alliance for Tenants. "They're saying, 'Make the zoning commercial and we will develop more housing.'"

Sten, the Luke Skywalker of Portland's progressive political forces, bristles at the suggestion that he has crossed over to the Dark Side. He says he's trying to save affordable housing, not trash it. His argument: Rezoning would be OK if the city and business interests commit to a policy of "no net loss" of affordable housing downtown.

"I'm trying to form a coalition of downtown business interests and housing advocates, to save affordable housing," he says. "And I see delivering business interests as part of that. Hopefully they bring political support for housing."

Key to his strategy, he says, is a new downtown urban renewal zone to generate new taxes to help preserve affordable housing being lost under existing zoning.

But Kafoury and Slingerland say that Sten's proposal rests on several questionable assumptions.

First, Sten assumes that the proposed urban renewal zone will not accelerate the loss of affordable housing--when in some places, such as the residential hotels in the Burnside Triangle, it clearly will. Second, he assumes that whatever commitment downtown business interests make to support affordable housing will be kept. And third, he assumes that an urban renewal zone would generate enough money to save threatened buildings before they are lost.

A citizens advisory committee and the city's appointed Planning Commission both studied the APP plan, and both rejected it. City planning director Gil Kelley also opposes the plan.

And yet the APP plan has a good chance of passing. The sole voice of council opposition comes from Mayor Vera Katz. "You can't have a vibrant community without residents living downtown," she says. "If we are at all jeopardizing housing with [the APP's] approach to zoning, then we should not do it."

Sten admits his strategy is neither perfect nor without risks.

"I don't have any silver bullet here that's going to save the
housing," he says, "This is the
first round in maybe a 15-round fight."

The West End is home to 2,700 housing units defined as "affordable." That's 80 percent of the affordable housing downtown. The most at-risk from gentrification are about 1,000 operated by private landlords.

Not all housing advocates oppose the APP plan for the West End. Richard Harris of Central City Concern recently sent the city a letter supporting the plan as long as the city promises to replace any lost housing.

WWeek 2015