Portland's historic North Park Blocks are a green oasis between downtown, Old Town and the Pearl.
Yoga in the Park extended through September!
R2C Group will be hosting the 2nd annual ‘Yoga in the Park’! No sign up necessary, bring a mat, and join us at Park and Davis! Feel free to invite friends, neighbors, and coworkers. Yoga in the Park will be hosted on the following days 12PM-1PM: September 5th, 12th, 19th and 26th
Big shoutout to our Park Blocks neighbors – R2C Group
BY KATU.COM Staff and Lincoln Graves, KATU News
PORTLAND, Ore. — A Portland wine bar is closing its doors after being damaged “beyond repair” by the “influx of homeless campers … drug use and other crimes.”
Remedy Wine Bar, which has been located on Northwest Everett Street by the North Park Blocks for three years, made the announcement on Facebook Tuesday.
Bar owner, Michael Madigan, first noticed the issue last summer.
“It was literally one day last June,” said Madigan. “I turned the corner and there were over 40 people camping right in this one block outside.”
Madigan says the problem only grew as the summer went on. KATU News reported on the issue several times during August and September.
“Along with the camping came drug deals and drug use and people having sex,” said Madigan.
As colder, wetter weather began to settle over Portland, the issue faded. But for Madigan, the damage was done.
“Basically, our guests stopped coming because it became a very uncomfortable environment,” he said. “We never really recovered from that. Our business dropped by over 50 percent year to year and it still hasn’t recovered because people stopped coming to this part of town.”
Madigan knows homelessness can be a complex issue. He says his real issue is with how he believes the city is responding to the growing problems.
“The solution to the homeless problem is greater than what’s happening here on the park blocks,” he said. “The issue we had as a business community last summer is that the city didn’t do anything to correct it and for months it was a campground and free-for-all down here.”
Madigan plans to reopen Remedy Wine Bar in a new location in the future. Their last day at the Everett Street location is Jan. 30.
A historic city park should be an asset to adjacent businesses. But the city’s failure to address the deterioration of the North Park Blocks has claimed another causality. Remedy Wine Bar announced that it will close on January 30th.
In an announcement Remedy writes:
We’re sad to announce that Remedy Wine Bar will be closing at the end of this month, but we do intend to relocate! We have decided not to renew the lease at our current location overlooking the North Park Blocks due to the pervasive camping in and around the park throughout summer and fall of 2015, and the related crime issues, that went largely unaddressed by the city. We have little confidence things will be different this summer.
This past September, Glyph – a North Park Block’s cafe closed after deteriorating conditions in the park negatively impacted their park-side business. Glyph’s owner noted in the PDX Eater:
In the past, we’ve had homeless people and everything was fine. This summer was different. Palpably different. And I don’t know why that was. It had a different element… that is, a new more difficult element moved in… .
Mayor Hales and Parks Commissioner Amanda Fritz ignored the conditions in the North Park Blocks for most of last summer. Their failure to address growing concerns about safe and livable parks has consequences.
The following email and photograph was sent to Mayor Hales by a concerned Emerson School parent on Sept 1st.
Mayor Hales,
It was a grim scene outside Emerson Elementary today for the first day of school. See photo for a sampling. By 9:30am the surrounding North Park Blocks were full of debris, off-leash dogs, marijuana smoke, nudity, aggressive behavior, and public intoxication.
It is unacceptable that students are exposed to this dangerous and unchecked atmosphere. The Park Blocks feel explosive. This is not what any public park should feel like, especially one that is home to 120 elementary students.
Please join me one morning this week as I continue to document the reoccurring unsafe situations. I’ll be there from 8:30am onwards.
Update: The Mayor is coming to walk the North Park blocks Thurs 9/3 at 8am.
By
PORTLAND, Ore. — Portland Mayor Charlie Hales met on Tuesday with a group of community leaders and concerned North Park Blocks neighbors who gathered to address concerns for safety and livability in the city’s historic park. The mayor’s office called today’s meeting more of a “listening session.”
