Mayor Sam Adams

Thanks to all that came to the German American Society Event to Commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall Reception at Portland City Hall.

Mayor Adams was proud to commemorate this historic, international event with such an impassioned crowd and have the opportunity to meet with the night's honored guests: German Consul General, Peter Rothen Honorary Consul, Günther Hoffmann, and Steven Fuller, Prof. of German & International Studies at PSU.

If you missed the event, or just want a second look, stop by the month long Photo Exhibit:

After the Wall – Changes in a German Landscape

November 9th-30th in Portland City Hall 1221 SW 4th

FREE and Open to the Public

The After the Wall photo exhibit showcases the impact of the fall of the Berlin Wall on contemporary Germany and German culture.  The photos were collected by the German American Society.

What caught the eye of ordinary citizens living in or traveling through Germany after the wall? A Photo Exhibit at City Hall provides glimpses of contemporary Germany, depicting some of the changes that occurred in the last decades and marking some of the places where the wall used to exist. The photographs from Berlin and East Germany are snapshots of a changing landscape and its citizens. They are small windows into a country that still grapples with the aftermath of reunification but also energetically presses forward. The exhibit runs from November 9 to 30, 2009 at various locations in Portland City Hall.

Monday, November 16 (5:30 pm to 7:30 pm) Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison (www.holocene.org)

Come watch a demo of the new site and iPhone app which enables users to find events, share their thoughts and tell the world about their experience. Plus, we'll hear some inspiring words from Mayor Sam Adams, and of course there will be several iPod Touch and other giveaways.

You'll also have the opportunity to videotape seven seconds of your life with Fliptography, watch Polaris Dance Theatre debut a piece from their upcoming show called iCHANGE and take a quick lesson on how to hula hoop from HoopShine. It's the hot new workout.

There will be complimentary hors d'oeuvres and a no-host bar.

View the HulaHub Agenda (PDF)

Free food. Free drinks. The Dandy Warhols. A-Wol Dance Troup. Viva Voce.

Saturday, November 14th

The Bison Building

419 NE 10th Avenue, Portland, OR 97232

Doors at 7 p.m.

These are just a few things you can expect to see at the Glass Ball Gala this Saturday. Presented by the Portland Youth Development Coalition (PYDC), the first annual Glass Ball event will help support new development opportunities and creative outlets for Portland youth. 

So, indulge a little this weekend. For just $40, you can enjoy local music, local art and support local non-profits all at once. Claim your tickets here.

For more information, visit the PYDC Web site.

About PYDC

The Portland Youth Development Coalition (PYDC) was founded in 2009 as a response to growing needs for creative outlets and development opportunities for Portland youth.
The PYDC is made up of Portland based non-profits that strive to make youth development our cityês priority. The organizations that make up the Portland Youth Development Coalition offer free services to all Portland youth to participate in. PYDC values diversity, youth empowerment and community building.

 Approximately 94 percent of Portland businesses have fewer than 50 employees. Undoubtedly, Portland is a small business city. At today's City Council meeting, the Portland Development Commission (PDC) unveiled that it is an agency more than capable of serving the needs and requirements of these businesses through new divisions with a dedicated staff of more than 35 professionals.

Small businesses and Portland area neighborhoods can now look to a specific section within the PDC to access resources to improve their storefronts, apply for loans and grants, seek technical assistance and access the broader economy.

“One of my priorities when I entered office was to create a division within PDC to focus on small business and community economic development,” said Mayor Sam Adams. “Byron Estes, the Director of PDC’s new Neighborhood Division, has helped to get this new division up and running and effectively reposition PDC as an organization that does much more than downtown real estate development.” 

In the presentation to Council, Commissioner Charles Wilhoite and PDC’s Executive Director, Bruce Warner, highlighted a number of key initiatives focusing on commercial district revitalization, including Portland’s Main Street program, commercial streetscape projects in areas such as Kenton and 102nd Avenue and the N/NE Economic Development Initiative.

The Mayor and PDC also announced the creation of a new business hotline, 503-865-4BIZ, which is scheduled to go live in early December. This new hotline will connect businesses with City bureaus and the PDC for questions regarding storefront improvement grants, business finance loans, permit, tax and license matters.

The hotline will complement a business Web site for Portland through which businesses will be able to process permit, tax, and license matters, view a calendar of citywide events, and find out information about organizations that provide business assistance services. A beta version of the business Web site is scheduled for release in January.

To view PDC's presentation to Council, click here.

On October 28^th, the Mayor’s Economic Development Policy Director, Kimberly Schneider, and representatives from the Portland Development Commission (PDC) presented the first of two updates on the City’s 5-Year Economic Development Strategy. This presentation was intended to bring City Council and the public up-to-speed on the development of financial resources to support the strategy as well as track progress on the implementation of the action items within the strategy.

Approved by City Council on July 8, 2009, the strategy began development in late 2008 when Mayor Adams charged the PDC with developing a targeted strategy to guide the city's and the PDC's investment in economic development. “We have needed this kind of strategy for a very long time," said Sandra McDonough, Executive Director of the Portland Business Alliance. "This is a critical roadmap that will help us restore our economy today and improve our economy down the road.”

The presentation on October 28^th, which you can find on the strategy’s Web site, served as a quarterly update and included a recap of the strategy itself, which focuses on a three-tiered approach to job creation efforts: (1) Maximize Competitiveness, (2) Urban Innovation, and (3) Neighborhood Business Vitality. Because of the volume of content, the October 28^th report focused on Goals 1 and 2, citing key achievements to date, such as: recruiting Revolt Technologies to establish their US headquarters in Portland, City Council adoption of Open Source Resolution (in part to support our burgeoning software industries) and lobbying the federal government for $20M for the Oregon Sustainability Center. The report also included action plans for the coming year and 2-5 year periods.

A report on Goal 3 from the PDC Neighborhood Business team will be presented to Council at the City Council meeting (item 1585) this Thursday, November 12^th. (This City Council meeting was canceled due to lack of quorum).

Read the Mercury’s article on the October 28^th presentation and the strategy itself and the Mayor’s efforts at implementation.

Mayor Sam Adams’ last day in Japan focused on energy and design, with the goal of shaping innovative opportunities for the city and building Portland’s design portfolio.  He met with Sanyo Homes, a modular home manufacturer, to explore a potential expansion to Portland. Senior executives from Sanyo Solar, currently operating a plant in Salem, participated in the meeting to explore synergies between solar and home building technologies in the U.S. market.

The Mayor then visited Tama Art University, Japan’s leading design school.  There he met with teachers and students in the Department of Product and Textile Design. 

The school has an existing exchange program with the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and the Mayor propsed a cooperative agreement with Portland that would serve as a step toward the goal of establishing an international design center in Portland.

His final meeting was with executives from Delta airlines, where he drove home Portland's commitment to direct flights between Portland and Japan (See: iflynonstop.com). In the evening, the Mayor hosted a dinner for leading business, government, and university contacts.

Carol Duong lives in Portland, Oregon and her primary transportation choice is a bicycle. Why does Carol bike? Check out the video to find out!

Why I Bike - Carol Duong by Paul Peterson.

Mayor Sam Adams and PDC went on an electric vehicle (EV) offensive today with Portland State University President Wim Wiewel and PGE’s Economic Development Director, Charlie Allcock. All three met with leading EV manufacturers to secure Portland’s position as the top choice in the United States for EV launch sites and long-term development. Oregon was selected as one of five test markets under the eTek federal grant, and is expecting the first delivery of EVs from Japan in Fall 2010.

Mayor Adams started the day at Mitsubishi Motors, where he urged the compay to determine a launch date for their new iMiEV. Mitsubishi executives indicated that the target date will be December 2010.  Mayor Adams stressed that Portland is making great strides on EV infrastructure, and Portlanders' readiness to make the shift to EV. 

The Portland delegation continued by bullet train (Shinkansen) to meet with Nissan executives, cementing Portland’s position as the rollout city for the Nissan LEAF. Mayor Adams stressed the city’s benefits as a long-term partner for EV development and distribution in the U.S.

From there, the group met with counterparts in Yokohama to exchange best practices for carbon reduction and electric vehicle infrastructure. Yokohama City and the greater area of Kanagawa Prefecture were recently recognized by the Japanese government as a national leader in climate action. Mayor Adams invited representatives of the city to Portland to develop a more formal relationship based on shared goals.

Tokyo Kasei, a major investor in Portland, hosted the Mayor for dinner. Also known as TCI, the company relocated to Portland from California, and employs more than 300 Portlanders. The company president has agreed to help represent Portland’s interests in Japan.

Mayor Adams has made a commitment to increasing graduation rates by 50% and doubling the number of young people who go onto post-secondary education and training. We know that in order to reach this goal, we need to see improvement for all students, particularly students of color who are dropping out at the highest rates.

Locally, 34% percent of youth ages 16 to 24 are youth of color, nearly 1/3 of our youth. Less than half of them graduate from high school on time and even less go onto post-secondary education. If students are to graduate high school, they must first reach academic proficiency at the very basic levels.

The reports below highlight the gap in academic achievement between African-American and Hispanic youth in comparison to their Caucasian peers. This is a gap that has been persistent for more than a decade.

We, as a community, can choose to sit on the data, or we can use it as an impetus to make real change. We can use it to make real commitment to our community youth who need our support. This is not about placing blame. Rather, these reports focus on the problem and leave it to us to develop actionable solutions that yield results.

For the better part of 2009, Portlanders have participated in a lively debate over the future of Memorial Coliseum. We have known that it will take investment to make needed improvements—but what are those improvements, and how much will they actually cost? We’ve known that Memorial Coliseum is now on the National Register of Historic Places, but what does that really mean for the process in moving forward? Now we have answers.

The Rose Quarter Stakeholder Advisory Committee (SAC) has been careful not to move forward without a full understanding of the area, its background, relevant policy and plans and the true status of Memorial Coliseum. The Memorial Coliseum Baseline Conditions Report, prepared by ECONorthwest, paints a clear picture of the opportunities and challenges we face in determining the future of Memorial Coliseum.

The report examined profitability, historic status, needed improvements, costs, related revenues to the city and funds available to support re-use concepts.

Some highlights:

In all, it was concluded that Portland’s Memorial Coliseum serves an important market niche for our region, and can continue to do so more profitably in the future with the right vision. Visit www.rosequarterdevelopment.org to share your ideas for the future of Memorial Coliseum and to stay involved in this process.