This is all of those PDC mixed-use TOD projects that the planners love and that no one would build without handouts. Great, now even more bad ideas will get built.

And won't that be great for the regular local businesses trying to compete?

The preoccupation with mixed use is insane. The problem with mixed use is simple. First, it costs extra money to combined residential and non-residential construction into one building. Secondly, you get an oversupply of retail. A healthy ratio is 15 sf of retail per person. For a building on a city block here, you are looking at probably 30,000 sf of retail. Unless 2,000 new residents to the city (not relocating persons) move in, you are creating oversupply. A typical high rise here has about 1.7 people per household and, say 16 units to a floor. The building would have to be 74 stories high to create the demand for the 30,000 sf of new retail.

Where I lived in NYC nobody wanted to live in a building with retail (or worse restaurant) on the ground floor. Bugs, noise, security issues, etc. The good apartments were on the streets (rarely mixed use) and the crappy ones were on the avenues (mixed use) -- although most of those buildings were offices.

There can't be a chance in heck this passes.

But who is the sponsor of the bill?

This really is an insulting development. There is no doubt in my mind that the PDC, Metro and TriMet are lobbying for this.
After decades of subsidizing the mixed use "Transit Oriented Development" in pursuit of the model for the nation "vision", instead of admitting failure they now want to add more subsidy to them.
And many are inside Urban Renewal Districts that rely upon these very property tax proceeds to retire the UR debt. Many more are being planned for the Milwaukie Light Rail and Lake Oswego Streetcar stations. I've heard officials talk about them as if they are all successfull and they can't wait for more. Claiming the light rail and streetcars make it. You know. All the linchpin and leverage blatant lies.

I'd like to see officials held accountable for perpetrating these TODs in the face of chronic failure.
Between this and Monroe's bill to expand UR use and debt the madness is reaching for new levels.

A legislator sent me this:

"The reason that it doesn’t tell you who sponsored the bill is because it was dropped as a committee bill.
This process allows an individual sponsor to remain nearly anonymous. Instead the assumption placed on it is that the committee agreed to pass it through."

Slime is covering all things.

The reason taxes are so high for some of us is that others don't pay taxes...And that's legal.

The New York Times reported recently that the city of Harrisburg, PA defaulted on municipal bonds in part because almost half the property in the city is owned by non-profits and is exempt from property taxes.

However the non-profits are not exempt from the benefits the property taxes pay for.

Leona Helmsley was right: Only the little people pay taxes.

I can see this being abused. A lot of commercial buildings will start building "caretaker apartments" in a loft above their location to qualify as a mixed-use structure.

Before long, WalMart, Target, Fred Meyer, Safeway, Albertsons, Winco, IKEA, and the other retail giants will start building "retail dorms" where some of their employees can live just feet away from work in the same building, not unlike firemen who live at their fire station during shift. It's mixed use!

Before long, WalMart, Target, Fred Meyer, Safeway, Albertsons, Winco, IKEA, and the other retail giants will start building "retail dorms" where some of their employees can live just feet away from work in the same building, not unlike firemen who live at their fire station during shift. It's mixed use!

You're joking, but in truth your idea has the current mixed use model beat in two ways: it actually succeeds in locating residents near their workplace (which condo, er... apartment bunkers cannot guarantee), and it connects the subsidy with the supposed benefit provided (in this case, providing your own employees with housing close to work). We should be so lucky!

The mixed use obsession is costing obscene sums and providing little or no demonstrable benefit. Portland's densest neighborhood, the Northwest District, is mostly detached housing--many of these divided into two or more units--with retail corridors. This neighborhood, for better or worse, achieves the urban form many have in mind for dense redevelopment without (for the most part) the ugly, overbuilt buildings. I'm ignoring this neighborhood's flaws for the sake of discussion, but these flaws wouldn't be solved by plopping bigger, mixed use buildings in there, either.

I do wish there was less conflating of the general objectives of redeveloping to improve urban form with the bad ideas we've been led into in their name. But I can agree that the priority here is to put a stop to the bleeding before attempting another surgery.

Before long, WalMart, Target, Fred Meyer, Safeway, Albertsons, Winco, IKEA, and the other retail giants will start building "retail dorms" where some of their employees can live just feet away from work in the same building, not unlike firemen who live at their fire station during shift. It's mixed use!

A frightening concept, plausible with social engineering? Cheap labor with “retail dorms?” Children taught to embrace this way of life, for the good of the planet?