Post Office scam is falling apart


I see that the development company that was supposed to start turning the old Portland Main Post Office site into the next canyon of soulless cr-apartment bunkers has pulled out of the deal, leaving exactly zero people with any money who are willing to participate in the project. You can't blame them. Just look at that neighborhood. It's home to way too many mentally ill people and derelicts, and now the bullets are flying even in the toney Fake New York known as the Pearl District, just a few blocks away.

As has been pointed out by many people with more clout than I'll ever have, the huge lot in the back of the old Post Office is the perfect site for a managed homeless camp. It is ready to go right now. A managed camp could have, and should have, been established there months ago. But no. It's sacred ground, reserved only for the developer weasels. Weasels who don't even exist, apparently.

Add it to the long list of things gone wrong in "prosperous" Portland. Yet another phony promise of "a new, vibrant neighborhood that is equitable and inclusive." A complete and total pipedream for a downtown that no longer seems viable. Nothing's going to be the least bit "vibrant" down there until the tent dwellers are off the sidewalks and out of the parks.

Comments

  1. Not sure I'd ever accuse you of all people of being insufficiently cynical or unimaginative of possible scenarios...but if shit really gets bad-->worse, doesn't that make it cheaper/provide more grist for the mill for the developer weasels to get the thing for free/gifted to them + benefits and promised tax breaks and then get the city/police union to just let things get so effing bad/foisted onto the rest of us that likely enough, given time, Portlanders get in bed with a total codified fascist or real estate weasel + policing enforcement side-kick to 'clean things up' just as the property deed has been transferred?

    You've seen the Sinclair broadcasting COMO4 'news' 'Seattle is dying' documentary, no?
    The real estate weasel framed as the 'solution' to these incompetent liberal squishes/bleeding hearts (not that I always disagree with that characterization in part) & police union bagman could not have gotten more of a glowing 'expert' spot in that 'documentary.'

    Look to some other big cities (which I think you're pointing to their failures and experiences) like NYC, Chicago & Hell.A (who's rejects and yuppie scum we can't get enough of that are fleeing the draught and mushroom cloud of their ruined homeland and the more privilidged of which can't do anything but ruin this one too minus paying an appropriate tax on entry if the uhaul van & NIMBY HOA to make you change to make things more to their liking (theres no pleasing some people)...I digress)
    .
    Look who they elect when they want 'hope & change' when they think it's getting bad (not wrongly) & the 'seattle is dying' message...Rudi Guliani the hardass, 'stop & frisk' Bloomberg, Rahm Israel lobby/Mosad trains our cops 'I covered up a bunch of cop murders' Emanuel, Eric Garcetti who's failed upwards after using LA county Sheriff to beat the shit out of people.

    That'd be my strategy on the side of big finance capital/global oligarchy in the tax-free leveraged foreign investment real estate scam/money laundromat/rentier mill & vicious class war.
    They can afford to bide their time & wait / bribe the right people you gotta think?

    Don't forget it was that scumbag Richard Blum, husband of their sleazy rep in SF that middle-manned this brilliant privitized give-away of tax base supported centrally located USPS properties that uh...actually provide services people might want or need...money orders, PO boxes, public banking, small parcel shipping or customs form fill-ins minus brokerage fees/markups?

    They might not have the brightest or most personable service reps at the counter or computers newer than 1993, but $14-20 to send anything for person to person small parcel wholesale is what it is currently at UPS or FedEx, more if the person lives out in BFE, USPS is the only thing holding that down, they're at a competitive disadvantage with the retirement funding requirement & the postmaster general DeJoy is a walking pile of FedEx stock & cargo flight petrodollar subsidy.

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  2. Sorry for the long comment...I really don't know if I'm using the format or it's audience appropriate.
    I guess I'd just say it's likely going according to plan rather nicely...depending on the point of view/who would answer honestly if they had to?

    Why pay your own press man/start your own news corporation to make up headlines George Hearst style in Deadwood when it's bad enough people will shoot each other & make exactly the news you want or why pay for demolition/permits/environmental when it might get burned down for free Larry Silverstein twin towers style by a stray..uh...whatever.

    Or why pay some hoodlums to shoot up some run down, but pretty & practical irreplaceable building materials turn-of-the-century houses in the 1st ward of Newark Tony Soprano style to get squatters out/get the properties for cheaper/demolish them sooner, when it would seem people will do it at random, no charge?!?

    Addendum: while making late night drops for a semi-local overnight mail order business for loading dock drop-off right before getting off for paychecks & then later medical devices to doctors & dentists, interviewed a lot of assembly line USPS package sorters, higher volume drivers just as they were going on break at the new airport way regional facility for all of OR/SW WA when I could catch them to see what their general thoughts and experiences were of the new facility.

    For the workers the new facility has almost no windows, the conveyor belts are crazy fast, it's sinking into the columbia slough and a paved hell scape and a lot of them that live on the west side or closer in NE have way worse commutes or public transit to get to work, and have to drive a ways to go out to lunch if they want to/escape their windowless concrete paved hell-scape/giant concrete bunker.
    Many said basically the same thing; their commutes got worse/no services out there, working conditions got worse & the miss the old location (as did I...easier to access for a smaller van for person-person wholesale & I'm in Multnomah Village, so obviously 1 freewway run to the pearl late at night is waaaay better than a bunch of security check points & driving all the way to the airport for a last minute bunch of overnights).

    Truck drivers like it better being out by airport way industrial/easier to get the trucks in and out on the big roads/more spread out/no rich yuppies to run over and get sued or get locked up in the pearl with no parking, short blocks and no urban planning at rush hours.

    Just yet another way to mine the riches of what once was a good city/nice place to live, had something dimly resembling community & a centrally located public service. The swirls are getting faster and tighter in the bowl...

    Whattyagonnado, railroad is the original oligopoly, not like they are going to natinalize it and sort the mail on the trains anymore or moderize that to something even better, but still ship it or speed up rail transport of people or freight or small parcels or make it easier for people that make and fix things to live where they work artisianally or near where they work industrially safely with good transit & some green space/parking should they need a car with a safe commute.

    Still think they prolly got us good in ways I have yet to envision/has yet to come to fruition making us buy it twice as the city before giving it away to the 'right' people with various planners/consultants/metro layer of bureaucracy & PSU patronage unpaid internships in between / buy our own shirts back off them this time next week style!

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  3. "Weasel Waiting Room"
    "This page (square of real estate) is intentionally blank!"

    Just haven't figured out the price/terms/how to crack this nut/get their best deal...yet...

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  4. It could be a humiliating Afghanistan withdraw scenario before the weasels even really wet their beak...doubtful...

    ...gotta feel for them, much like just about every senator/congressperson taking defense contractor bribes in the money laundromat/installing govt somehow more reprehensible than the Taliban...everybody's dirty & got a lot riding on this...lots of consultants, idiot cousins in govt, how to scam the public for maximal dollars for the longest time & grab their golden parachutes before blame, & of course, maximize dollars & corporate capture after sale & really crack this nut maximally/make it all work?

    This is the city that 'works' (jerks?) afterall...

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  5. Or utilize shorter sentences with a wee bit more punctuation.

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