The James Beard Market: a Recipe for a Rejuvenated Downtown Portland?

The James Beard Market holds sentimental value for me because it was the pet project of my close friend Ron Paul, who did not live to see his vision realized. I also just plain love food markets! So I was excited when Jessica Elkan, executive director of the James Beard Public Market, announced that the market will open in 2025, some twenty-five years after it was first proposed.

The Market will feature 40 small businesses including a fish market, butcher shop, restaurants, a bakery, local farm stalls, a wine shop, a teaching kitchen, and an event space. Unlike the farmer’s markets we already have, it will be open all year round. The secured location is the historic Seller building and another adjoining building, on 6th and Alder, near Pioneer Square. All stores will accept SNAP payments in an attempt to keep pricing reasonable for everyone.

As excited as I am, I will believe this project when I buy my first fillet of Alaskan salmon. The James Beard Market has been through many false starts before, in the process running through millions of donated and taxpayer dollars. This time the location is secured and a lot of funding is in place, but not all. The budget is high: over 20 million to buy and renovate the space, including an atrium, grand staircase, and rooftop event space.

More important, no matter how beautiful the finished space, and no matter how yummy the products sold, the Public Market is not going to be a success unless downtown Portland is a place people want to be. I think ideas like this are going in the right direction: office workers are not going to return to downtown like in pre-Covid days. And online shopping has replaced much traditional retail. Re-purposing these empty spaces for fun and community building spaces such as a food market or art installments is a great way to go, and something many other cities have done to revitalize their downtowns. But, I repeat: downtown has be someplace people want to go, somewhere bright, clean, and safe, like it used to be.

This requires an enforced daytime camping ban, an end to open drug use, presence of adequate security, cleanup of litter, and removal of walled up windows and graffiti. Re-introducing Fareless Square might not be a bad idea also.

There’s a lot of talk about housing being a basic human right. And it is. Everyone has the right to shelter and a hot meal. What people do not have the right to do is take over the streets with tents, or use and sell drugs openly, use the streets as a bathroom, or scatter there garbage everywhere. Lost in the discussion, and sometimes (deliberately?) forgotten by the homeless/help industrial complex, are other rights. What about the people who work hard every day to keep their lives reasonably together? What about the rights of the 40 some businesses in the proposed market and the staff they employ? What about the rights of the shoppers and eaters? What about the rights of tourists to our city and the people that serve them?

We need a more expanded, holistic concept of rights if we are to rebuild a healthy city. We need a committment from city government to maintain clean safe streets as a first priority. I’ve visited city markets in places as far flung as Barcelona, Palermo, and Goa. If these disparate places can maintain safe and vibrant public places, surely we can too.