Sep 29 2007
Portland Public Market leaves station before arriving
Good news last week — the long planned and often stalled Portland Public Market came a step closer to finding a home…no, not in Union Station…this time the goal is to land in a rehabbed version of the ominous and gloomy 511 Broadway building across the street from the station. This site was on the short list for a long time, but expensive logistics stood in the way. Now, with Melvin Mark in the picture as developer of the site, the whole thing looks feasible. Details here from the O, WW, The Trib and other important Portland media.
Meanwhile, at Friday’s City Club meeting, a panel focused on local markets and the local food economy.
If folks were expecting some kind of a dust-up between Park Kitchen’s Scott Dolich (representing the Portland Farmers Market) and Ron Paul (the force behind the soon-to-be James Beard Portland Public Market), it didn’t happen. At one point, Dolich wondered aloud why local producers were not a part of this panel. Good question. But this is the City Club, son. We’re on the TV and we only have an hour.
Paul described the Public Market mission to provide not just locally grown food, but also responsibly produced products from beyond the province, screened and vetted by the market for “authenticity.”
[Pause: Sounds a little like what New Seasons does. Of course, New Seasons is a business. We’re talking here about a public market with small food providers housed in it. But what if all local markets did this as a matter of course? Well, the argument goes, you don’t see the grower face to face at New Seasons. Back to our story…]
Nick Fish, speaking from the audience, pointed out that Pacific Northwest College of Art had been eying the same site as a potential new base of operations in the Pearl. Basically the notion is: what a shame if one good tenant should supplant the other. Ron Paul, speaking from the stage, said that the parties are exploring various ways to work this out, including co-location in the refurbished 511 site. Each noted his personal support of the local arts.
Later that day hundreds of Public Market supporters kicked off a fund raiser with beverages atop the Smart Park garage near Union Station. Heavy rain poured down at first, keeping the $50-a-head crowd marooned one level from the roof. Then the view was beautifully lit by a setting sun. A freighter took on grain at the elevators across the river, cranes blinked over new construction, the OCC towers caught a last flash of sun, big pink glowed on cue and the Broadway bridge blinked to life. Our talk turned to the radical recent change in this neighborhood. We remembered the rail yards, the loading docks, and the cryptic murals beneath the Lovejoy ramps. It was a tax-deductable Portland moment.
Soon it was just plain cold and damp. The crowd seemed in good spirits as they shuffled over to Union Station for the food. The doors opened to rank-and-file donors at 7:30. The place was packed in minutes.
The scene was akin to a battle of the bands, featuring several of Portland’s increasingly famous chefs playing two songs each. (Earlier at the City Club, Ron Paul had called the coverage in Wednesday’s NY Times “…over the top, almost giddy.”) Caprial and John, Phillippe Boulot, Greg Higgins and Cathy Whims cranked like line cooks, prepping and passing paper plates from behind folding tables. Vitaly Paley’s crew could barely set down a single serving of his dungenous crab salad before a forearm shot out and snapped it up, leaving his table seemingly bare for the first half hour.
The food and wine was, of course, really good. But you had to get the hang of the hall. Polite folks instinctively queued up clockwise in a single file around the hall. Mostly, they stayed hungry as the line stalled. A few seasoned charity function vets employed commando grazing tactics. A nicely-dressed fiftysomething woman stood on her toes and called out as a friend approached the food tables at a right angle, “Score two of those pork things for us!”