In the seven years I've lived in Portland, it seems that there have always been far too many retail vacancies downtown and NW. This year seems worse than ever. Sad to say but downtown Portland seems to be losing whatever vibrancy it had.

...and the CEO of Borders is a Portlander.

look. blight. time to throw more money at the problem!

I was downtown with my wife on Saturday and it was dead. We were two of maybe 10 other customers at the Pioneer Place mall at about 6pm! By contrast, there was a huge drum circle/Ska band outside that attracted a hundred street kids. I'm sure the bomb plot had an enormous effect, but being in the capitol of homeless kids feels weird. If you're trying to create that romantic feeling with your wife, trust me, having street families spanging you twice a block doesn't create the right vibe. Nobody physically accosted us and I'm sure we weren't in serious danger, but it was uncomfortable. Also, the prices seemed high, and we had to pay $5 to park on the sketchy 5th floor of a parking garage with a broken lift and pee in the stairwells. We stayed about an hour, only spent about $100, and finished the evening by eating at one of our favorite places in SE Portland and doing more shopping around there afterwards.

Hey, look over here at what to the place Sak's ... It's H&M, Sweden's own version of Walmart!

"time to throw more money at the problem!"

I think you've seen the future of Portland downtown. Even less money for potholes, parks, schools and higer water rates, all because we need a vibrant downtown.

Even though everything CoP is doing downtown is slowly killing it.

Hmm--yet I keep reading that the market for commercial space downtown is still vibrant. What gives?