central business district

Restoring the Reputation of Downtown Portland

Wendell Cox — Wed, 21 May 2025 17:02:08 -0400

The Wall Street Journal reported on May 20 that “Big Pink,” the 42-story pink skyscraper in downtown Portland (photo below) had been offered for sale for a price 80% below what the present owners paid for the building ten years ago.

U.S. Bancorp Tower, a.k.a. "Big Pink" in Portland, Oregon. Source: Cacophony, via Wikimedia under CC 3.0 License.

The Journal repeated criticisms of downtown Portland in an article entitled “A Fire Sale of Portland’s Largest Office Tower Shows How Far the City Has Fallen,” with the following subtitle: “The once-premier building is now over half empty, reflecting how the Oregon city’s downtown is struggling with crime and other quality-of-life issues.”

The Journal reported that downtown Portland has the highest office vacancy rate of any of the nation’s 25 largest central business districts. Former tenant Digital Trends said that it left because the building was afflicted with “vagrants sleeping in hallways of vacant office floors” and that they were “starting fires in stairwells, smoking fentanyl and defecating in common areas” These allegations were contained in the Digital Trends lease termination lawsuit.

Digital Trends’ added that Big Pink became a “cesspool of criminal activity and vandalism.”

Big Pink had been built for US National Bank four decades ago. US National is in the process of leaving the building. The Journal article noted that a number of firms have moved out of Portland, which before the pandemic was considered to be among the most favored of cities among urban planners.

New Portland Mayor Keith Wilson is considered to be pro-business. Downtown newspaper, Willamette Week reported that the Mayor responded in an email to constituents: “I wish they’d covered our rapid improvements in public safety, new residents, business opportunities, regional destinations, and creatives,” Wilson wrote. “Instead, they focused on the upcoming sale of ‘Big Pink,’ an iconic part of the Portland skyline, and a business tenant who left over safety and livability concerns.”

The Mayor (who was not Mayor when the problems were the worst) is right to be concerned. Restoring a reputation for central city safety is difficult, as decades of less than desirable results have shown around the country. We wish him well.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a Senior Fellow with Unleash Prosperity in Washington and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985), which was a predecessor agency to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro). Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Hudson’s Bay, Vancouver: Mostly Empty, with Elevator and Escalator Problems.

Wendell Cox — Fri, 03 May 2024 19:02:08 -0400

The Vancouver Sun reports that downtown Vancouver’s Hudson’s Bay Department Store, a unit in what has been one of Canada’s strongest national retailers is “mostly empty” and needs working elevators and escalators. But things may be worse in the US. Downtown department store closures have occurred in many US metropolitan areas, and especially on the West Coast. Seattle’s Bon Marche has now been closed two decades, Portland’s Meier and Frank, nearly a decade later and Macy’s Union Square in San Francisco is now slated for closing in increasingly desolate San Francisco.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

U.S. Tallest Building Set for Oklahoma City?

Wendell Cox — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 11:53:40 -0500

Oklahoma City, could become home to the nation’s tallest building, at 1,907 feet, a dimension intended to celebrate the 100th anniversary of statehood. The building would be constructed in Bricktown, near the Interstate 40/Interstate 35/Interstate 235 interchange in the southern part of downtown. Details of the plan are here.

No Parking Downtown Austin Apartment Building Foreclosure due to Insufficient Demand

Wendell Cox — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 19:58:45 -0400

According to Urbanize Austin:

“An apartment complex marketed to middle-income downtown workers, especially those interested in reducing or eliminating their personal vehicle use, has been repossessed. Capitol Quarters was returned to its lender due to a low occupancy rate that made it unsustainable, developer Weaver Buildings announced this week. The property at 1108 Nueces Street underwent a deed-in-lieu transfer to North Carolina's Churchill Real Estate Holdings.”

Canada, U.S. Cities with Largest CBDs Lost Population

Wendell Cox — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 15:22:03 -0400

New population estimates by census authorities in Canada (Statistics Canada) and the United States (Bureau of the Census) show that cities (municipalities) with the largest central business districts lost residents in the year ended July 1, 2021. Currently data is available for seven of the 10 such municipalities, with US data only for cities that are also counties. Data is yet to be released for Chicago, Boston and Seattle. However, in each of these cases, the counties containing these cities lost population (Cook, Illinois; Suffolk, Massachusetts and King, Washington).

The largest loss was in the city of San Francisco, which lost 6.3% of its population, dropping from 870,000 to 815,000. This erases a decade of population growth (from 2011), when the city had 816,000 residents, according to the Census Bureau.

New York lost 3.5% of its population, dropping by 305,000. Washington fell 2.9%, while Philadelphia lost 1.5%.

The losses in Canada were less, but were nonetheless surprising, because Canadian core municipalities did not suffer the huge mid to late 20th century losses that afflicted US cities like Philadelphia, Boston and Washington. Montreal lost 2.5% of its population (45,000). Vancouver lost 1.0% of its population, which is considerable given the seemingly unending densification that has occurred there (unrivaled by any core municipality in the West that was virtually fully developed by mid-century and has had no significant annexations). Toronto lost 0.6%.

Downtown San Francisco Happy Hours; Thursday is the New Friday

Wendell Cox — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 15:05:16 -0400

Chase DiFeliciantonio reports in the March 28, 2020 San Francisco Chronicle that efforts to attract office workers back to downtown San Francisco, and consequently to restore the busy “happy hours” at bars are faltering. “Monday and especially Fridays are seeing less foot traffic downtown, which makes midweek after-work happy hours more likely. Some people still working from home are also choosing neighborhood saloons closer to home rather than venturing to other parts of town.”

A financial district bar owner characterized the phenomenon of a packed bar after work is “not dead, but in a coma.”

A bartender aid that “Thursday is the new Friday.”

The article also referred to research findings predicting that workers will use “three midweek days for in-office work, while working remotely on Mondays and Fridays.”

Meta (Facebook) Leases All Office Space in Austin's Tallest

Wendell Cox — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 19:13:58 -0500

The Austin Business Journal reports that Meta (former Facebook) has leased all 33 office floors of the under construction Sixth and Guadeloupe Tower, which is due to open in 2023. The building will be Austin’s tallest building, at 66 floors and a height of 873 feet and is located downtown.

This will make the building the fifth tallest in Texas, behind the Houston’s JP Morgan Chase Tower (former Texas Commerce Bank), the Wells Fargo Plaza, and the Williams Tower, the tallest building in the United States outside a central business district (located in the Houston Galleria). One downtown Dallas building is also taller, the Bank of America Tower, which ranks third in the state, following Wells Fargo Plaza.

The building is mixed use and will have 349 residential units. It will be interesting to see how many Facebook employees will be able to afford living in the building, which would eliminate physical commuting almost as much as remote work.

Downtown Austin is developing rapidly and now is indicated by Cushman and Wakefield to have about 13 million square feet of office space (before Sixth and Guadeloupe), about equal to Cincinnati’s strong central business district. In this regard, Austin is following earlier models of dense downtown development in Calgary and Charlotte.

Downtown Austin is experiencing a building boom, which as of 2022 will have opened 15 buildings 400 feet high or more since 2010, when there were only four. In addition to the Sixth and Guadeloupe Tower, there are a number of new residential buildings planned for the Rainey Street District, adjacent on the east to downtown.

Austin was the fastest growing among the 56 major metropolitan areas (more than 1,000,000 population) in each of the last two decades. From 2010 to 2020, Austin added 567,000 residents, a 33% increase. Austin attracted 337,000 net domestic migrants between 2010 and 2020. This is more than all major metropolitan areas except for Dallas-Fort Worth, which is three times as large, and Phoenix, which is twice as large. Most of the new Austin residents settled in the suburban counties, which accounted for about two-thirds of the metropolitan area’s net domestic migration.

For decades, Austin has been playing a larger information technology role. Meta lease, and the new downtown “Google Tower” (Block 185) add significantly to this development.

Downtown Calgary: Not Overbuilt, But Under-Demolished?

Wendell Cox — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 20:02:24 -0500

North America’s largest post-World War II central business district has just received unwelcome news (Note). Writing in the Calgary Herald, columnist Chris Varcoe (“Staggering $17B drop in value of downtown towers fuels search for solutions”) reported that downtown property assessments were down C$1.1 billion in a single year. This is a continuation of a long term trend, in which values of 160 properties dropped by more than two-thirds since 2015. Calgary, headquarters to much of Alberta’s oil industry, has been hard hit by the decline in oil prices and provincial oil production. Over the past year, part of the decline seems likely to be related to lockdowns and the general movement of many people to exurbs and farther.

Varcoe reported the present vacancy rate to be 34%, with five buildings “completely empty.” Ominously, an industry professional said: “The problem is we’re not overbuilt; we are under-demolished.”

Read entire article here.

Note: With the decline of transit and increased auto use, emerging large metropolitan areas have generally not built dense central business districts similar to their World War II predecessors. There are two notable exceptions, Calgary and Charlotte. Cushman and Wakefield indicates that downtown Calgary has about 44 million square feet of office space. This is about twice that of the second largest post-WW2 CBD, in Charlotte. Downtown Calgary has slightly more office space than downtown Philadelphia, with a metropolitan population about four times that of Calgary.

Downtown San Francisco: Vacancies Could Accommodate up to 133,000 Employees

Wendell Cox — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 19:24:51 -0400

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the office vacancy rate has reached 20% in downtown San Francisco. Socket Site reports that this is the equivalent of 12.7 Salesforce Towers. Salesforce Tower is the tallest building in San Francisco and is the centerpiece of the new Transbay Terminal, which has been named the Salesforce Transit Terminal. Socket Site estimates that this is enough space to house between 98,000 and 133,000 employees. This is between one-third and one-fourth the pre-pandemic employment level of downtown San Francisco, the fourth largest central business district in the nation.

Downtown Employment Estimates

Aaron M. Renn — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 11:00:13 -0400

Robert Manduca, who made an extremely detailed map of job locations in the US back in 2014, recently published a paper with estimates for central business district employment for US metropolitan and micropolitan areas.

Manduca utilizes an algorithm to delineate CBDs as areas of contiguous job density. This creates a standardized calculation of downtowns that allows comparisons across regions. This is very useful because there is no standardized definition of downtowns.

You can download a spreadsheet with summary information about every MSA. In some cases, the largest employment area is suburban, so you’ll see the CBD classified as “suburb” in this case. (The spreadsheet is of the largest employment center in each metro).

Read the rest at Heartland Intelligence.