Nicole Williams loves her apartment in Portland’s Pearl District, a three-bedroom unit she shares with her two kids. She enjoys her neighbors and the Easter egg hunts, Christmas gatherings and courtyard barbecues that bring the building’s residents together. All that went out the window with COVID-19, which cut off activities with her neighbors and brought an influx of campers on the street .
The Portlnd Business Alliance hears about problems and solutions for downtown at its monthly forum.
Downtown Portland and its surrounding neighborhoods are facing serious problems, but they are not as bad as the national news media makes them sound and they not insurmountable although it will take full community response to overcome them.
That was the consensus of a diverse panel of business owners and managers who spoke at a remote Portland Business Alliance forum on Wednesday, April 21. Titled Re-Activating Portland s Urban Core, it focused on how to overcome the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that closed offices and increased homelessness, and the months-long series of protests that frequently ended with violence.