I hate to disagree, Jack, but KGW didn't answer the main question anyone would have: How many people are they planning to hold here? What would be the population of people who didn't decide to go to this building on their own? Okay, they're only there 12 hours - but what's the total number?

Instead we have a speech by the government spokesperson about making things more efficient and bragging about how transparent they've been.
Then she said, "In no way is this a jail or a detention facility." That line would work better if we didn't just see people walking by in CHAINS!
What does she call them? Guests?

If anything the 12-hour turnaround just adds more of a dynamic to the neighborhood so KGW may want to nail down some numbers and edit out the government happy talk about being efficient. If we're so efficient why are we 13 trillion dollars in debt?

Still under the Oh?'s radar. BUTT, they are giving big coverage to the lemonade stand fiasco!

Sounds a lot like precinct stations, where people are interviewed and paperwork filled out. Not a place where meals are served, showers are given and visitation is allowed.
I doubt if this is moving closer to the problem for efficiency, but more a nice place for people to work.

I enjoyed the City Planner's comments: "it [SoWhat] will be a pretty dense area". It won't be pretty dense, it will be dense at 12:l FAR, like 35 story buildings. And it won't be "pretty", maybe pretty ugly. And what does "dense" have anything to do with the jail usage and the SoWhat Planning goals? That is what a Planner should be commenting about.

As I understand it, Jack, your correspondent 'leaked' the news to you and bojack blog 'introduced' the 'tip' ... at the skin of the massmedia bubble ... and injected something, Portland-sized ... bigger yet: the Feds-in-Portland-sized ... shades of Joint Terrorism Task Force JTTF incursion into PDX all over again, and who stood with 'them.' LIARS, for instance.

At some limit 'they' can't have it both ways about blogs. Massmedia vacillates between damning all the 'don't trust the internet, blogs, it's full of scams' fear-mongering, (so your respite is supposed to be to watch tv, safe, secure, stuporiffic), and on the hand selecting freelance items from blog conversations, community, networks, and broadcast-announcing the selected items to be valid, journalism on the internet.

So which is it, massmedia: don't trust the internet and don't turn off tv, or, real and valid news is on the internet?

On the Public Sphere, Deliberation, Journalism and Dignity, Seyla Benhabib interviewed by Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, 4 August 2008

Seyla Benhabib: I think there needs to be more openly conversational, public political conversational shows. What you don’t have now [in American media] are citizens, as opposed to experts, discussing public political issues. What you don’t have is public deliberation presented through the broadcast media.

... It’s certainly the case that the blogosphere and list-serves create a kind of conversation. They are quick; they move in real time and they permit the back and forth of exchange. But democracy and democratic decision making is not just about an exchange of opinions and views, it is also deliberating about how to live together over a period of time, so you need sustained commitments ....

I think that deliberation is different from information and exchange of opinion...; as Aristotle pointed out, we deliberate about what we can do.

My question is: Where is the deliberative process behind the action of setting, or jabbing, the alien-incarceration center in Portland's 'eye'? (The 'slippery slope' anxiety: Who's next to be defined as 'alien'?)

And second question, follow-up: Formally organized (i.e., 'committed') relationships between internet news-makers and massmedia news-spreaders -- would/should/could those relationships be publicly known, openly told?, like by broadcasters publicly reporting on themselves and what they're doing? ... internet 'media' report on themselves all the time and in result 'they' (blogs) have more credibility than tv, sometimes even more than graft-riddled newspapers.

Who sez there's a detention compound landing on the Willamette beneath the fortress of medical experimenters called Pill Hill ... always seeking experimentees?

I find it somewhat curious that coverage hasn't asked why they (ICE) couldn't/wouldn't/shouldn't consider simply buying the unused Wapato facility in North Portland.

Granted, there's been some recent talk of the Wapato facility being leased by the State Corrections Dept., but the feds could buy it in a heartbeat. It would also provide a straight-shot (no pun intended) to the main facility in Tacoma and/or a short bus ride to PDX for flights out.

___ora et labora___
-ob-

Actually, you weren't the first to write about this.

July 2:

http://djcoregon.com/news/2010/07/02/south-waterfront-building-to-house-ice-unit/

July 7:

http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2010/07/07/your-daily-dose-of-immigration-wackjob

Cheers,

Beth Slovic

So...inquiring minds should want to know; where, when and for how long was the public outreach on THIS project? Meetings, meetings for citizen and stake holder input, zoning review, traffic studies, BDS ????
NOT! Unless Sam is holding them in top secret, in the men's toilet, at city hall with his under age male interns.
The so called city hall gets more and more outrageous in their over reaching ways every day, and the voters of Portlandia just cruise along into financial and planning ruin!

Yeah, the writing's on the wall
the wall stops the 'immigration cells' prospects
like the Mt. Hood Freeway was wall-stopped in this town
everybody knows.

I can't quite take the subject matter seriously. It looks like a trial balloon with not enough hot air to fly, and cold water reporter-talk raining on the attempt. Flatline On Arrival. Ain't gonna be no 'immigration cells' Tower in SoWhat. Fahggedaboudit.

Yet there's a serious issue in the 'reporter-talk' and how it goes and how it went this time, 'raining cold water.' How does 'news' start?

It's about the interwork and transition from, and between, 'old massmedia' and 'new socialmedia.' Here's an instance today, a media-mode logic knot in a twisty headline hard to read, but then getting it deciphered brings head-twisting, -shaking, -gaping questioning: What's going on here? The credibility of Twitter facts -- does that trump? or is it trumped by? the credibility of the NYTimes quoting Google's pre-'recorded future.'

Who's news is on first? No, what's news is on first, who's news is on second ....

Strupp Stuff: My Media Mix, August 06, 2010 9:33 am ET by Joe Strupp

New York Times Stands By Google Story Refuted On Twitter
twitter.com/NYTimesComm/status/20411588472

And here's another one, test-marketing an accreditation trial-offer of 'humanized' reporters, Star Bucks Rogers & Rosies, and whether first-person news can out-cred cubicle-person 'news.'

Coffeeshop Newsrooms Yield Stories, Sources, Understanding of Journalism, Posted by Mallary Jean Tenore, Aug. 6, 2010

The next time you visit your favorite coffee shop, consider how it would look if it were transformed into a "news café" -- a place where journalists would work on stories and interact with patrons to find ideas, cultivate sources and show them how stories are reported.

Build trust within the community

Colleen Curry, editor of Freehold InJersey, a community news blog run by the Asbury Park Press and Gannett, works out of Zebu Forno Cafe in Freehold, N.J., several hours a day, five days a week.

The coffee shop agreed to let Freehold InJersey create a "newsroom" there, which consists of few chairs, a computer the public can use to look at the blog, and a sign that says "The Journalist Is In."

No one has to get past a receptionist at the front of a newsroom to talk to Curry. In the coffee shop, she's readily accessible.

Somehow the phrase "let Freehold InJersey create a 'newsroom' there" makes me think of Consti2tional Convention letters, tracts, handbills and pamphlets that circulated among ourselves, seventeen generations ago, in commonwealths, colonies and states along the Atlantic coast, B.C. (Before Constitutioned). New Jersey print shops were strategic 'lynchpins' in Colonial news circulation. Some printers/publishers were gooder than others, by popular acclaim.

So for social news ... to blog, or not to blog -- is that the question?

What wall is the writing on that says don't build no stinkin' white 'federal-zeitgeist' elephant in SoWhat, nor elsewhere hereabouts.

You were not the first to release this story, but you WERE the first to misrepresent the truth about the facility - at least KGW checked the facts. It is indeed NOT a "prison", nor "jail" as your article stated. Instead you elicit hysteria and make yourself out to be nothing more than an alarmist. I guess we have to decide when thinking of mass media whether we are reading something factual or the National Enquirer.

Instead we have a speech by the government spokesperson about making things more efficient and bragging about how transparent they've been.
Then she said, "In no way is this a jail or a detention facility." That line would work better if we didn't just see people walking by in CHAINS!
What does she call them? Guests?

The federal PR flunkie is not responsible for what KGW's cowboy video editor decides to do with B-roll footage. There's no way to know if the guys in chains were under ICE detainment, or some meth-head scumbags on their way to arraignment at the Multnomah County Courthouse.

Actually, you weren't the first to write about this.

Actually, Beth, I never claimed that I was. The DJC article -- published at 2 p.m. on the Friday of Fourth of July weekend -- was acknowledged by me yesterday. Try to pay closer attention.

And thanks for reading the Merc's blog for me. I don't read it. The coverage there was pretty scant -- no mention of any holding cells -- but at least it was something.

Thanks, "crow" -- posting from GBD Architects, no less!

NetRange: 67.208.101.48 - 67.208.101.63
CIDR: 67.208.101.48/28
OriginAS: AS36687
NetName: GBDARCHITECTSFBB

Are the taxpayers paying for your time trolling here?

If this facility is to have "holding cells" then in my book that qualifies as a jail, or detention center, or prison, because the folks that are being "held" cannot just leave any time they want. Guantanamo is a jail too!
Just my opinion, but it is all the same to me!
It is a scam and and a waste of tax dollars and it stinks!
Thanks for airing the story, Jack. Not many of us read the DJC regularly.

They really thought they could keep this under the radar, over the summer, until it was too late to turn back. I'm happy to have played my part in preventing that.

People in handcuffs -- behind bars -- awaiting court appearances -- but it's "not a jail." Uh huh.

Maybe it's like Otis on Mayberry RFD and they can come and go if they want.

Hmmm.... the way kiddie hall is on a roll, we should rename this to the City of Thorns....

And crow.... you do know that JackBog is an attorney and your babble about misrepresentation is getting to that line of libel and slander.... though given where you posted from, your integrity is already highly dubious... I hope mommy and daddy, I mean your employers, take the belt to your bottom (dish out some HR discipline) for your stupidity

I know of several rather well connected folks who were planning on moving into the new old folks home down there, Bella something-or-other...and I have forwarded all of these posts on to them. They were most! interested that their potential new neighbors would not be 'cafes and shoppes' but an enormous new ICE center, with prisoners!

Nice work Jack.

Kudos for bringing this to people's attention. Bojack's story may not have been the first but this is the blog of record when you want to read about underhanded shenanigans by the city and the powers that be in the Portland metro.

This story has legs... as it should. KGW did a good follow up.

Man would I be upset if I bought a condo down there.

Keep digging Jack.

Portland native, its the Marabella. I know of several dowagers planning on moving in, now they are upset and thinking otherwise. They'll get their money back, they have good attorneys.

Things are heating up and Portland's Planning is showing it's true colors. Crow is one of the bosses at GBD-Gordon, Beard, Grimes.

The Oregonian tried to find out the number of people who will be "guests" at the facility and it's so classic...Nobody wants to talk about it! I bet they know where the budget money's ending up down to the nearest 10 grand, but as to the actual people involved? Sorry. That's too much of a mystery.

I will say when I went to try and keep an Iranian waiter from getting deported, the place in the NW was jamming. People - friends of the various "guests" - were literally sitting on the floors.

As I imagine you'll get at the next council hearing on this. But let's be fair to our local area leaders. They are feeling a little shy right now. You would be too if you just got beat up around the world by a 7-year-old girl selling lemonade.

I'm thinking the new Portland buzz term isn't "sustainable living" - it's "tone deaf."

Maybe now they can a get a decent deli to locate there: Federal prison guards eat alot of sandwiches. Better yet, if it's halal we can serve the recently arrived terror suspects too.