Isaac Laquedem

Portland's parting gift to a generous citizen

 

On this day in 1919, when Tom Moyer was born in an upstairs bedroom of this unassuming building in Sellwood, his father, who had boxed as "Silk Hat" Harry Moyer, might have imagined that Tom would himself become a boxer some day, and so Tom did, being for a while the second-best amateur boxer in the United States.  Harry Moyer might not have envisioned, however, that his son would go on to success in the business world as the founder of the Luxury Theatres chain, which grew to 190 screens before being acquired by Norman Lear's company Act III in 1988.  (It's now part of the Regal Cinemas chain.)  Nor would Harry Moyer have pictured his son becoming a Portland real estate tycoon, and then a quiet philanthropist who gave millions of dollars back to the city in which he lived and prospered, and donated the land and part of the construction cost for Director Park.

Late in Mr. Moyer's life, the city recognized his civic contributions, and some awards followed -- not many, for he disliked talking in public, even in the form of the words of gratitude that audiences expect honorees to utter from the stage.  "Thank you very much" was one of his longer speeches.

In 2014, on the gray November morning on which he died in his downtown apartment, the city had one final farewell gift for Mr. Moyer: it ticketed his hearse.

A fitting preparation for a protest

Stores around Pioneer Square are boarding up their windows now in their reasonable belief that this afternoon's protests of our new president will turn destructive.  I saw workers in action by 7:00 this morning.

There's something sardonically appropriate in the fact that the very first store to start boarding up, in anticipation of the protests against a candidate who lost by nearly 3 million votes becoming the president anyway, is named "Banana Republic."

Richard See and Paul Gold, the accidental millionaires of downtown Portland

            In 1903 Richard See, age 19, came to America from Frankfurt, settling in New York, where he became a hat buyer for a large department store. Three years later a Russian emigrant arrived in Portland to pursue the American dream. He took the surname of “Gold,” though not because of the legend that American streets were paved with gold. In 1908 his wife Rose and their four small children joined him. A fifth child was born here in 1910 in a house on now-vanished SW Baker Street. Joe and Rose Gold gave their children plain American names – Jack, Paul, Sam, Sarah, and Dave – and raised them in the Jewish and Italian quarter of South Portland, where Joe Gold was a junk dealer.

            In 1921 Meier & Frank lured Richard See to leave New York for Portland, and placed him in charge of the millinery department. Meier & Frank’s hat sales soared when Mr. See carried out his promise to, in his words, “make at least ten trips a year to New York, to give the women of Portland the new styles as fast as they originate.”

            Around 1927 Paul Gold opened his first millinery store with his younger brother Dave. A gregarious man, Paul readily accumulated friends in Portland’s retail community, including Richard See, who was still buying and selling hats at Meier & Frank. In 1941 another friend, a shopkeeper in the Goodnough (sometimes spelled "Goodnaugh") Building at 5^th and Yamhill, told Paul that his landlord was raising the rent and he didn’t know if he and the other Goodnough tenants could pay the increase. By coincidence, at about the same time Mr. See, who was planning for retirement, told Mr. Gold that he had saved some money and didn’t think that government bonds paid a high enough return. Perhaps, if Paul invested some of his money for him, Paul could do better?

            Mr. Gold did do better. “Paul saw what would grow,” his rabbi said when Mr. Gold died in 1981, and so he did, starting with the Goodnough. According to legend, Mr. Gold (pictured at right, foreground) approached the worried Goodnough tenants and promised that if they would pay him three months’ rent in advance, he would buy the building and not raise their rent for two years. The tenants pungled up, Mr. See wrote a check, and soon the Goodnough Building had become the first acquisition of the new firm of See, Gold & Associates. A few months later they bought a second building, the Kraemer Building at SW 2^nd and Washington.

            Pleased with their purchases, Messrs. See and Gold bought more, and eventually gave up the hat business to focus on buying downtown property. In 1944 they were able to buy the Hotel Oregon, at Broadway and Stark, for the amount of the unpaid property taxes. In 1945 they bought the Portland Garage, a parking structure at 5th and Taylor, later acquiring the rest of the block.  They acquired so much real estate that by 1956 the society page of the Palm Springs newspaper could describe them as “realtors from Portland, Oregon.”

            They became famous for never making counteroffers. If you quoted them a price for your building, they would say only “yes” or “no.” Would-be sellers learned to name their best price first. See, Gold & Associates continued to buy downtown property – like potato chips, no one can stop with just one – sometimes trading up, rarely selling. One exception was when they sold the block at 5^th and Taylor to Georgia-Pacific for an office tower, a deviation that Mr. Gold rationalized to his partners by pointing out that the property across the street that See, Gold & Associates owned would go up in value when G-P built its skyscraper.

            Messrs. See and Gold transacted their business from offices in the New Fliedner Building at 10^th and Washington. (It was called the New Fliedner Building because it had replaced the original Fliedner Building in 1907.) Mr. Gold could often be found at a corner table at Danny’s Delicatessen at 5^th and Yamhill across from the Farmers Market, where thick pastrami sandwiches fueled negotiations. In between acquiring buildings See, Gold & Associates found time for other ventures, including buying and operating the Pacific Department Store and Powers Furniture Company. Mr. Gold also flirted with the restaurant business, investing in one of Portland’s first Japanese restaurants and operating a downtown bar called the Harvester.

            Richard See died in 1979 and Paul Gold died in 1981. In their 40 years in business, they had owned buildings, separately or together, on every downtown avenue from 1^st to 11^th and on every downtown street from Salmon to Stark.  Last week the final property was sold, bringing to a quiet close a remarkable 75-year story of Portland real estate history.

            Messrs. See and Gold owed their success to Portland’s postwar growth – the streets of downtown Portland turned out to be paved with gold after all – but also to the happy accident of both being in the hat business. Had Mr. See bought shoes, or had Mr. Gold sold suits, they might never have joined forces to become rich together. Sometimes clothes really do make the man.

Kesey Square: Sometimes the Eugene City Council needs a vacation, or a great notion

The center of Eugene features an small (4400 square foot) city-owned open space officially known as Broadway Plaza and commonly called Kesey Square, after the statue of Oregon author Ken Kesey that's prominent there. Kesey Square hosts films, performance art, and festivals; it also hosts, not so intentionally, transients and street people.  A Eugene group has proposed to buy the plaza and build a five-floor building with stores on the ground floor and 35 to 40 apartments above.  In response, the city council invited anyone interested to submit redevelopment proposals for the plaza, which were due on January 15.

The Eugene city council faces two small glitches in its redevelopment effort.  One is the combined political will of the Eugenians (?) who love the quirky plaza even with its problems.  The other is a clause in the deed by which the Eugene urban renewal agency gave the park to the city.  Eugene is no stranger to old deeds getting in the way of new projects, and those old cases are about to get some new company.

When the urban renewal agency gave the property to the city, it stated in the deed that it was dedicating the land to the public for a park.  The word "dedication" is a magic word not just for candidates and cornerstones, but also for conveyancing.  The street in front of your house was likely not just given, but dedicated, to the public by a long-gone developer.  Chapman Square and Lownsdale Square in downtown Portland were dedicated to the public.  The fun with dedication is that Oregon law regulates how cities can undedicate (the technical word is "vacate") dedicated public streets, avenues, boulevards, alleys, and plats -- and how to vacate "any public square or other public place."  ORS 271.080 allows a city to vacate a public place if enough neighbors petition to vacate the place.  ORS 271.130 allows a city to vacate a public place at a public hearing without a petition from the neighbors, unless -- and here's the hitch -- unless the owners of a majority of the nearby area object in writing.  The Knower of All Things says that some of the nearby property owners will object, and the city council won't find them to be merely merry pranksters.

The Laquedem Plan to honor Anatole France with low-income housing

Tokyo is so dense a city that commercial spaces are even squeezed into the arches that support commuter trains.  As I read yet another story about how Portland's pro-density policy encourages property owners to tear down older houses (often rentals) and replace them with newer (owner-occupied) townhouses, I pondered what the city and TriMet will do with the space underneath the new rail/bike bridge that connects the South Waterfront to OMSI.  At that point Anatole France's famous line came to mind: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."  (That last bit is not often enforced against people who run hedge funds.)

Hence the Laquedem Plan to honor Anatole France.  It occurs to me that the Tillikum Crossing project gives us a striking opportunity to achieve several goals at once, if we construct affordable housing underneath -- not next to, but underneath -- its western approach.  We can meet a need with housing that is convenient to transit and walking distance from downtown and the inner east side.  We can give that part of the city a more international flavor.  We can provide an opportunity for the city and the South Waterfront developers to keep their broken promises to provide affordable, working-class housing in the area.  The land is cheap -- free, really -- and services are all available.  A wag with Isaac's sense of humor might name the housing project "Anatolia."  The literary among us could take that as a reference to the Anatole France quotation about living under bridges.  The commercially minded might take the name to refer to an area that is part of a larger turkey.

Isaac to Council: Spend all of the unexpected money on roads and sewers

One consequence of giving money to a committee of persons who represent different interests is that they will quickly find ways to spend the largesse several times over.  The City of Portland discovered in January that it believes it will have $19 million more in revenue in the next fiscal year than it had planned to receive: $4.6 million of recurring revenue and $14.4 million of one-time income.  At the end of January the council voted 4-1 (Commissioner Saltzman dissenting) to adopt a policy proposed by Amanda Fritz to allocate at least half of the extra money (so about $7.2 million) to "infrastructure maintenance or replacement," meaning "emergency preparedness, parks and recreation, and transportation."  This policy will apply not only to fiscal year 2015-2016 but also to the three following fiscal years.

Within a week after the council adopted Commissioner Fritz's resolution, the Housing Bureau made a pitch to receive all of the remaining $7.2 million.  Not coincidentally, the Housing Bureau operates under Commissioner Saltzman.

It's a wise idea for the city to devote some more money to maintaining what it already owns instead of building new things and starting new programs such as the Office of Equity (a project of Commissioner Fritz, as it happens).  I'd like to encourage the council to resist every temptation to allocate any of the unexpected manna to any new project or program -- not just the $7.2 million that Commissioner Fritz's resolution requires to be allocated to maintenance and replacement, but the entire $14.4 million. I would allocate half of the $14.4 million to patch and repair roads and the other half to repair sewer and water lines underneath the roads before they're patched and repaired.

Until the city repairs the potholes and cracking pavement that it already owns, it shouldn't be building any more.  Similarly, until the city brings its parks up to par, it shouldn't acquire any more.  Feed the pets we already have before buying new ones.

Drivers of electric vehicles have more juice with the city than homeless people with cell phones, but you probably knew that already

One of the oddities about our local attitude toward electricity is that the city gives a dollar or two of it away free to anyone who wants to charge his or her electric car (though the driver has to pay for a parking space while plugging in), but will prosecute someone who nicks 0.6c worth of the stuff to charge a cell phone.  It might be that the city is willing to subsidize car owners to commute, but not subsidize phone owners to talk.  Or it might be that few who own electric cars are among the homeless who need a phone for safety.

Portland's streets - the question the council should be asking voters

The Portland City Council, having awakened to find that the city's streets are falling apart, has scheduled an advisory vote for May to solicit the public's opinion on how to best tax homeowners to pay for repairing the streets.  The council will then adopt the winning proposal and move on to determine how to tax nonresidential property.  Options include an income tax, a property tax, a gasoline tax, and others yet to be named.

The particular history is that in 1988 when the City Council first realized that Portland's streets were deteriorating, the council considered allocating 28% of the utility franchise fees that it receives to street maintenance and repair.  At the time, the city needed $38 million to catch up on street repairs.  The council set 28% as a target, but never achieved that target; in the first 8 years the council sent 12% of the utility fees ($29 million) to the transportation department for street repairs, instead of the 28% ($67 million) that the target called for.  The amount of money that the council chose not to send would have caught the city completely up on street repairs and the city would not now be facing a cost of $200 million or more to catch up.

I like the idea of the council asking the voters for their thoughts, except that the council is asking one question too few.  Instead of merely asking how the voters prefer to be taxed -- rather like the choice that Utah used to offer to condemned criminals, asking whether they would prefer to be shot or hanged -- the council should also ask the voters whether they agree or disagree with the choices of twenty years of city councils to divert money from street repair to other projects -- that is, whether the voters agree or disagree with the council's view that it's more important for the city to subsidize the Portland Public Schools and the Regional Arts Coordinating Council than to maintain the streets.

Tom Moyer (1919-2014), the Portland Development Commission, and the American Dream

In 1933 Tom Moyer dropped out of the ninth grade to pursue his dream of becoming a boxer.  Boxing was one of the family businesses; his father, Harry Moyer, had been a boxer, his older brother (also named Harry) boxed, his younger brother Larry would box for a while, and two nephews then unborn, Denny Moyer and Phil Moyer, would become nationally famous as boxers.  Boxing had an element of theater to it; Tom's father Harry acquired the nickname "Silk Hat Harry" by showing up for matches wearing a silk hat and daring his opponent to knock it off.  When his opponent punched at his silk hat, Harry Moyer would slide under and aim for the chin.

By 1940 "Tommy" Moyer was the second-best amateur welterweight boxer in the United States, ranking behind only Sugar Ray Robinson.  He became the top-ranked amateur when Robinson turned pro.  Later turning professional himself, he won 22 professional bouts, losing none.

He left boxing behind to work in the other Moyer family business, operating movie houses.  Years before, his father had become a projectionist, and then rented a theatre to operate with the help of his wife and children.  In 1964 a dispute about whether to build more theatres split the family, and Tom Moyer (no longer called "Tommy") started in business for himself.  He quickly took advantage of two trends: the suburbs were growing, and people in other cities were building multiplex theatres.  He built the Eastgate Theatre (the first multiscreen theatre in the area), then the Southgate and the Westgate.  And he kept on building; by the time he sold the business twenty-five years later, his chain had become the 10th-largest theatre chain in the United States and the largest held privately by one family.

When he sold in 1989 at the age of 70, he started a third career as a real estate developer.  He had built a lot of theatres, but no other large projects.  He started with a bang, participating in developing the 1000 Broadway Building in downtown Portland.  (People who don't know its name call it the "Ban Roll-On Building" after the shape of the silvery mechanical shelter on the roof.  It's the city's 14th-tallest tower.)  When his partner couldn't make the building pay, he took it over and turned it around.  Then in 1999 he built the Fox Tower, the fifth-tallest tower in Portland, and in 2009 broke ground on the Park Avenue West Tower, soon to be Portland's 4th-tallest building.

An unassuming man, he would casually say that he "lived above the shop," in the manner of a storekeeper.  "Above the shop" meant an apartment on the top floor of the Fox Tower, from where he could see most of the city in which he'd made his fortune, and where he died on November 28 at the age of 95, having lived long enough to see the first of the glass and wall panels being attached to his latest tower.

Mr. Moyer died two weeks too soon to read about the Portland Development Commission's decision to grant a $27 million subsidy to the Zidell family to redevelop the Zidells' industrial land near the Ross Island Bridge with 1.5 million square feet of new buildings.  That's a lot of space -- it's about 35 acres of floor area, to be laid out and financed with advice from the wisest and best-educated of our local consultants -- and the PDC members may be forgiven for believing that they've committed $27 million of tax money wisely.  In the midst of their self-congratulations the commissioners might reflect that Tom Moyer built 1.5 million square feet of office, retail, and residential space in downtown Portland, and achieved his brand of the American dream, with a government subsidy that was $27 million less than the Zidell project, that is to say, zero.

How to make clear the city council's attitude toward police shootings

You've undoubtedly seen the signs on construction sites that read "X days without a preventable accident" or "X days without a worksite injury."  One modest way to encourage a change in attitude in the Portland Police Department would be for the City Council to post a sign in each precinct house that reads "X days without a citizen fatality."  As of today I believe X equals 328.