The story goes that the bus company hired a new driver and sent him out to work the thinly-traveled Riverside Drive route. The first day he came back with $50 in the farebox. The second day he came back with $46. The third day he came back with $53. The fourth day he came back with $750.
"What happened?" said the supervisor. "We’ve never had that much money on the Riverside Drive run in an entire week, let alone one day."
The driver replied, "Hardly anyone was riding on that route you sent me on, so today I took the bus over to Northwest 23rd and drove there all day. That street’s a real gold mine!"
This story came to mind when I read the Tribune’s story Friday about the Portland Development Commission and its sort-of subsidiary, the Portland Family of Funds. PDC formed PFF to acquire and administer about $100 million in New Markets Tax Credits, a federal program designed to encourage development in poor neighborhoods. (The article calls them "economically troubled neighborhoods," but let’s be direct.) PFF started a project at NE Alberta and Killingsworth and another at NE King and Shaver, but they haven’t gone well. PFF itself pulled out from being a tenant at one of them and has moved into rented office space downtown. Now it wants to buy the Mekka Building (better known as the Fliedner Building) at 10th and SW Washington and renovate it for its own offices. The reason for changing its focus from North and inner Northeast Portland to downtown? It’s easier to make money doing real estate projects downtown than in the poor areas of Northeast Portland.
That’s a great reason for a private developer to do projects downtown. It’s not such a good reason for a government agency, or quasi-government agency (I still can’t figure out what exactly PFF is), to lose sight of why it was formed.