Abandoned in the heart of the city
i know there are abandoned buildings and lots all over the city of portland. take a drive in any neighborhood and you’ll begin to see what someone has just left for dead. it may a building or a vacant lot or an abandoned gas station.
well, in the 1 mile between n. skidmore and n. portland blvd on n. interstate, there are a total of 10 abandoned buildings or lots. one lot is on n. killingsworth and is to be developed, but is currently vacant. all the other buildings and lots are in some sort of disrepair or just plain boarded up.
why, on a street where MAX came in 3 years ago and joe average can’t afford a house is there so many abandoned properties. someone owns them. someone is paying the taxes (or at least i assume they are.)
what to do? and we see this all over town too. on ne MLK, on Sandy, on burnside - heck, daily i see abandoned buildings and lots in the heart of downtown. strange huh?
check out the photos of the 10 abandoned properties.
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Chances are the person who ownes them doesn’t live in Oregon anymore but is still holding them as an investment. Also, the gas stations might be poluted and the owner doesn’t have money to clean it up. Sometimes the buildings are used but for storage or industrial type businesses that don’t need a storefront presence.
If they are poluted-
Yes the PDC can help with this but it doesn’t come close to covering more than a small portion of it. If you can’t self finance the project (mean pay for all of it out of your own pocket) its difficult to get financing for a poluted piece of land.
So - got a million dollars cash to buy the land and clean it and then hope to have just barely enought to get started on construction? Oh, and better hope what your project is supported by the neighborhood - a permit battle sure would make the project unlikely to succeed (Albina fuel left the city over developing their poluted site next to the Hollywood FredMeyer the city made it so hard).
If you really want to find out whats up with these properties go to the PDC’s website and they have an address finder which conveys alot of information. It might tell you directly whats up with these properties. http://www.portlanddev.org
yeh, i assume most of the buildings are either polluted or not structurally sound. yeh, it takes some serious money to get a property ready for development with no promise it will succeed. yet, i have read about properties in the city that were cleaned up not by PDC, but by state and federal grants. a couple of those were on MLK. funny thing is - there’s still no development on the property after 5 years.
there are a couple of buildings on the street that could be pretty cool if repainted and brought back to their original charm. yet there are those types of buildings everywhere and one has to pick their battles.
thanks for the link. i know portlandmaps.com is also a great resource.
Having worked in commercial real estate several years ago, the reason for so many abandoned buildings in the area is in fact the polution and the high costs associated with clean up. Many property owners cannot afford to get the properties up to code so they can neither sell nor develop a lot of these buildings and lots.