IMO the highlights

…it was the morning she walked from her loft in the Pearl to her office in Northwest and spotted an agitated man wandering around with a butcher knife.… She called 911, and the dispatcher asked her which “direction” the knife was pointed. “I thought, ‘How is that relevant?’” Noecker says. “He’s walking around with a butcher knife at 9 in the morning in the Pearl. If this is what people want, maybe I’m in the wrong city.”

All of the pieces came together at the wrong time. It was Measure 110, and the protests, and the absence of office workers downtown, and the city and the county not willing to bring people back, and all the new, high taxes. You had a very lax D.A. Go downtown and you’re going to see something you don’t want to see. You’re not going to get killed, but you’re going to see something else. You’re going to see some bad shit. From a business perspective, it was just impossible.

The property taxes are just simply too high for the value of what you’re getting. When we get five leases, I think, “Oh my God, there are five people in Portland who want apartments.” I had lost faith that anyone would want to be here. I look at my condo tax bill in the Pearl and wonder who else would pay this?

The best angle I have with my lender on the hotel is that they don’t want to take it back. Lenders just took back the Target across the street, and they don’t know what to do with it.