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Downtown Portland was bustling Saturday afternoon, at least by recent standards. Many storefronts, which had been barricaded for months, were wide open and small groups of shoppers, tourists and families thronged, taking advantage of the good weather and showing up in the stores to buy trinkets and gifts. memories.
Little has been said about the various issues plaguing Portland’s business heart during Saturday’s downtown events, which were billed as a grand reopening for a downtown area that has faced serious challenges since the start of the year. the coronavirus pandemic. Pioneer Courthouse Square, meanwhile, took on the vibe of a big outdoor party as hundreds of people lined up on the brick steps for a Pink Martini concert.
Heather Bar sat down to soak up the sun in Pioneer Courthouse Square just before noon as her young son performed nearby and crews worked on setting up the stage.
Bar, 27, said she lived downtown but moved when the pandemic hit to get more space. She said she returned on Saturday, in part, to feel a sense of community.
“We just needed to see people’s faces,” she said.
A few blocks north, a crowd of around 100 gathered around 1:30 p.m. for a reopening ceremony near the North Park Blocks where city commissioners Jo Ann Hardesty, Carmen Rubio and Mingus Mapps cut off. an ornamental red ribbon to welcome diners to a new food cart pod.
The pod, which houses 18 of the 55 food carts that were moved from Southwest Alder Street when construction on a new hotel began there, would serve as an anchor to revitalize the area, Mapps said.
“Today is the start of a new Portland,” Mapps told the crowd as the Unipiper circled the block playing his signature bagpipe.
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Downtown Portland has been a shell of itself for many months, hit first by an exodus of office workers who started working from home when the virus took hold, and then by months ongoing protests, which have at times turned destructive, and a steadily increasing presence of homeless settlements.
More recently, the Old Town district of Chinatown and the surrounding area, the epicenter of downtown nightlife, has seen a wave of violence.
Early Saturday morning, a man was found seriously injured after what appeared to be a stab wound near Southwest Third Avenue and Pine Street. He later died in a hospital.
In a separate incident early Saturday, a man was shot in the lower torso amid a verbal altercation at Southwest Fifth Avenue and Washington Street. The person who shot him then took out a knife and slit off his shoulder, police said. The man was seriously injured and taken to hospital, but was expected to survive.
A week earlier, on July 17, someone opened fire on a crowd of people waiting near the row of food carts along Southwest Third Avenue near Harvey Milk Street. Seven people were hit by gunfire, including Makayla Harris, 18, who died of her injuries.
Mapps, the only city official to publicly comment on the recent downtown violence on Saturday, said the causes of the rise had developed throughout the pandemic and solutions would take time.
“It took COVID a year and a half to send us into this spiral of gun violence,” Mapps said. “We’re not going to come home overnight.
Mapps said places like the new food basket will help boost public safety.
“Gun violence has proliferated because the public has moved away from public spaces,” he said. “Withdrawing people is part of a larger vision. “
Makayla Caldwell, a 24-year-old independent filmmaker who was filming the event, was in the crowd at the basket pod event. Caldwell moved to Portland in 2018 and about six months later found herself living on the streets. She has partnered with a nonprofit called Outside The Frame, which trains homeless youth and provides audio and video mentoring.
Caldwell no longer lives on the streets, but saw a massive influx of homeless people when the pandemic struck.
“Everywhere else all of their departments closed and people had nowhere to go,” Caldwell said. “Whatever stability they had, it was gone. It’s truly sad.”
Back in Pioneer Courthouse Square, sweaty people lined up for free Salt & Straw ice cream as Pink Martini took to the stage, and paramedics stood in a tent offering free COVID-19 shots as the kids played with oversized sets from Jenga and Connect Four.
“I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the reopening of our city than to gather here to listen to some music,” Rubio told the crowd, just before China Forbes, lead singer of Pink Martini, took off. embarks on interpretations of “Home on the Range” and “I Worked on the Railroad”.
“It is,” said Rubio, “this is who we are as Portlanders.”
– Kale Williams; [email protected]; 503-294-4048; @sfkale
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