Reality Arrives At 333 SW Park Ave.

...and Homelessness Inc. stubs a toe.

Every major progressive cause around here has a remarkably predictable life cycle…

• A “crisis” is proclaimed…

• A “solution” is proposed by (just coincidentally)…

• …self-interested political players…

• …who (lubricated with gobs of money) convince voters to do something utterly stupid…

• …whereupon laws are passed, bonds sold, taxes raised…

• …even more bucks return to crisis promoters, bigly…

• …stuff goes wrong…

• …politicians, media cheerleaders develop amnesia…

• …rinse, repeat.

This is the short version of what’s behind the sudden closure of the county’s sparkling new downtown daycare center for bums, aka the grandiloquently named Behavioral Health Resource Center. The county had already spent over $24-million to get the “respite” for bums open. And $-millions more to staff it.

As it turned out, there was very little “health,” on offer and the “behavior” of its clients had obviously overwhelmed the center. At least they got the last term correct (although “magnet” might have been a better word-choice). As WillyWeek noted…

…business owners are asking the county to do more to keep the neighborhood around the center free from some of what its clients bring with them, including threats of violence and drug use.

They kinda/sorta got their wish after the center closed for two weeks, as the county spokesperson put it, elliptically…

…Julie Sullivan-Springhetti says the center will “undergo building improvements regarding security and staff training,” and “there were some programmatic and infrastructure needs that needed to be addressed, and this is the time to do it.”

…whereupon the city’s media, used to playing stenographer to county pronouncements, averted its gaze. No one bothered to ask what “some programmatic” stuff might be in play. As for infrastructure, as we’ll soon discover, there isn’t much the county could add to the Center in that department. Gold faucets, perhaps?

The Center had already spent tons ‘o’ money on custom furniture, artist-designed fencing, lighting custom-designed to calm the jittery druggies, murals…nothing was too good for the downtown zombies.

The whole perplex fell into the long, lugubrious tradition of machine politics, patronage and downtown property, with a whiff of polite corruption—a no-go area for media.

So—c’mon. Let’s take a journey into the really deep weeds.

Start with the building and hold this question in the back of your mind:

Why was the county—and, in particular its board chair, Deborah Kafoury (of the mini-dynasty of pols and attorneys)—so hellbent on buying and then pouring $-millions into a derelict building?

Here’s some history to consider…

333 SW Park ave was built in 1907; at some point there was a “department store” in the architecturally mediocre cube; but, then again, students of Portland history might note that it was in a neighborhood renowned for open gambling, prostitution and rackets presided over by the cops. County records (talk about deep weeds!) are sketchy about the long chain of ownership, but a previous owner during the early years of the century was an entity known as the Modish Coat & Suit Mfg. Corp., a small real estate subsidiary run by the Modish Corp., owned by Robert N. and Judith K. Magid, headquartered in Lake Oswego.

In the late 1990s, an era when the cops frequently raided the gay nightclub scene under pressure from now-sainted Mayor Vera Katz, a new gay club, Rage,opened in the building as an offspring of the now-legendary The City club. More police raids chased the club’s proprietor, who sold to a new owner, Doug McLeod, who kept it going for 14 years as The Escape. Same format; same customers.

In September, 2016, The Modish Corp. sold the building to an entity known as 333 SW Park LLC for $2.95-million…not bad for a building of its age, lacking seismic upgrades and who-knows-what-else. Plus whatever two decades as a gay club left behind.

The 333 LLC had been organized that same month. It promptly shut down Escape. As WillyWeek reported, in high dudgeon…

The Escape hosted its last dance night four months ago at its downtown location on Southwest Park Avenue, after club owner Douglas McLeod says he was only given 22 days notice to move out and find a new space.

…and, in a fascinating aside…

The space once housing the Escape is currently being used as a temporary homeless shelter, restricted to people who identify as male.

In 2017 the Next Portland website, now gone the way of all useful data sources in Portland, reported that the 333 LLC was seeking a permit for…

Shell and core only seismic upgrade; storefront redevelopment; addition of new 5th floor and roof deck; new roof; accessibility improvements…

Funny thing about LLCs: the Oregon Secretary of State’s files for the business give no details about anything or anyone in the enterprise; the only name mentioned (as “organizer”) is one Dina E. Alexander, who is a well-connected property broker with Radler White Parks & Alexander. She was hip deep in the redevelopment of the South Waterfront District and, later, repped the city in the $31-million development of Providence Park, home of the Timbers and Thorns. Big deals.

As Superlawyers magazine put it…

“Public-private partnership work is the sort of niche I have now…”

And here she—or someone—was buying a bedraggled, elderly, grunjy old building on a non-fashionable corner downtown.

Whereupon, in the subsequent county records (those weeds again), she seems to disappear.

Enter a new player: architect Thomas Cody, president and chief executive officer of project^ , where he is praised as…

…successfully developed 35 projects ranging in size from $3 million to $300 million, and he has completed over $400 million of mixed-use development within the last eight years.

(Curiously, project^ wasn’t the architect for the Behavioral Center…go figure.)

It was Cody who signed the contract with the county on Jan. 18, 2019 for the sale of the property. Price: $4.30-million. Which means that, within a year, the building, with a rather limited rehab (if, indeed, it had ever been carried out—the purchase agreement states that 333 LLC should leave behind windows and elevator equipment “stored” in the building), in a rapidly softening downtown market, had very nearly doubled someone’s investment.

Wow.

And then the money-gusher erupted. As we reported back in 2022, the county wasn’t done buying property. First, in order to provide a place for bums to lounge outdoors (as if they weren’t already), the county paid $1.5-million to Anchor Properties, which owns scads of apartments, for a sliver of land used for parking.

The lot was then landscaped (expensively) and wrapped in a custom-designed and constructed fence. There was Astroturf for the bums’ doggies to poop on. (One wonders who pulls clean-up duty among the many folks working at the Center.)

Then, because workers at the Center now needed a place to park, the county did a quick deal with the Goodman downtown property dynasty (their original fortune based, ironically, on parking lots) for $3.096-miillion. Not bad: that deal penciled out to $500 per square foot, which is more than the average per square foot price of fully finished condos in the slumping Portland real estate market. .

And then, $17-million worth of remodeling kicked-in.

Nothing too good for the folks slowly destroying downtown. Even the Goodman dynasts finally had to scream in protest.

To no avail.

Something else was going on, as you might recall: Prop 110, which blew up in the state’s face—and supplied a continental drift of junkies to our town.

In 2019, The maniacs behind the measure were now gearing-up, which makes one wonder if Chair Kafoury, not to mention whoever lurked behind 333 SW Park LLC, knew what was slouching toward Oregon to be born.

Thanks, in large part to big money ($4.2-million from the combine of George Soros, the Zuckerbergs and the ACLU) , the proposition’s proponents overran feeble opposition. Yah, yah, yah, there were promises of 16 regional “recovery centers” by 2021 that would dry out and clean up the coming wave of addicts…and we all know what happened.

Let’s take a trip back in time to the 2020 Voter’s Pamphlet, and a more innocent era. And here we’ll find a strange connection to 333 SW Park’s woes.

I’m sure you read all 36 pages of the fine print (which forgot to mention fentanyl as a drug to be unleashed).

If you thumb through the text, just after the obligatory Racial & Ethnic Statement, you’ll encounter the voluminous Arguments For and will see a name under ten bundled endorsements: Janie Gullickson, “Chief Petitioner, Yes on Measure 110.” And sometimes, “Executive Director, Mental Health and Addiction Association of Oregon.”

(By the way: have any of the hundreds of endorsers apologized for the mess?)

Ms. Gullickson has a fascinating biography. Here’s the way “Liv’s Recovery Kitchen” spun it:

Janie has been convicted of more than 12 felonies. She spent five years in and out of county jails before serving two years in prison. It was there she was given a second chance. Janie enrolled in the job readiness program run by Goodwill. The program helped her get back on her feet, but more than that, it changed her life. Today, Janie is now the executive director of the Mental Health and Addiction Association of Oregon (MHAAO), a peer-led organization that is committed to promoting self-directed recovery and wellness for all individuals.

A flip through the MHAAO’s federal 990 forms (required of all non-profits), hints that Prop 110 might have saved Ms. Gullickson’s operation. And not a moment too soon.

In 2019-2020 (the MHAAO’s fiscal year), the organization took in $2,026,899, but produced, after salaries and expenses, a loss of $128,986.

Then came Prop 110 in November 2020. Things looked up for Ms. Gullicson’s non-profit…

…a jump from $2-million to $5-million in one year.

And then came the big contract (amount never mentioned in any county propaganda), and the MHAAO’s concept of management, which Ms. Gullickson explains thusly…

“We honor lived experiences. We support people wherever they are on their journey, free from judgment, or agenda.”

…”lived experience” being, well, a progressive dog-whistle, usually used to bump someone to the head of the handout/ power line. The county explains it as…

The day center is staffed by peers who know what it’s like.

…and if you know what “it’s like,” please drop us a line.

It’s difficult to get a sense of just how the MHAAO operates from its website (which, typically for non-profits, says not a word about its finances, beyond an appeal for donations). The organization says…

Peer services for those experiencing mental health and / or addiction challenges are provided at no cost within the greater Portland, OR metropolitan area…

And it runs a list of job openings, such as…

..which leaves one with the feeling that MHAAO is sorta like an ex-junkies’ employment agency. Which raises any number of questions:

• How “ex” are the junkies?

• What’s the drop-out rate of these “peers”?

• Are there enough cleaned-up druggies to staff a big operation like the county’s day-care center?

• And: did the county bother asking these questions?

Meanwhile, the county doubled-down on the “lived experience” mantra…

Multnomah County has hired a social worker with lived experience to oversee operations and support the peer-led nonprofit chosen this spring to staff the facility’s Day Center.

And we got…

Alexandra Appleton, formerly the shelter equity and inclusion analyst for the Joint Office of Homeless Service.

From “analyst” and equity apparatchik to manager of a $-multi-million center. Might these hires have something to do with the Center’s sudden breakdown?

As the county spokesperson told WillyWeek…

…the county heard from MHAAO that center staff “needed more training at the same time that it became clear the building needed physical improvements, including around keys and badges, graffiti abatement, IT equipment installation, [and] technology that allows us to respond to overdoses.”

Training for staff will include how to administer Narcan, the overdose-reversal drug; how to administer treatment to clients without increasing their anxiety; and when to call the police.

Not to be cynical—but isn’t this what the MHAAO was supposed to know about when it got the nod to run the Center?

One suspects that the folks being paid to run the show got over their skis, as reflected by the Trib’s Joe Gallivan in his gush about the center (under the headline, Downtown and downtrodden? Help is on the way)…

[Christa Jones, senior manager of the Community Mental Health Program] said they fully expect people to come in seeking help who are intoxicated or using drugs and for the place to get very noisy.

"It's not a treatment or detox center or sobriety center…”

Try telling that to the bums in a line around the block, waiting to get inside the tastefully decorated refuge. Then, rested and refreshed—maybe even “referred”—they spill out into the neighborhood. Where businesses are trying to survive the ongoing decline of downtown. They’re complaining, but no one’s going to spend that kind of money on Bum Daycare and shut the joint down. Live with it.

Meanwhile, there’s yet another non-profit player that might be added to the payroll: Urban Alchemy, straight outta the tent-cities of Los Angeles (and trailing a few lawsuits), also slotted by our desperate mayor to run whatever becomes of his Wheelervilles. With the ACLU licking its chops.

We predict it will take more than a few new IT gizmos and keys and whatnot to shape up the Behavioral Health Center. Let’s face it: there is nothing in this Kafoury boondoggle that has anything to do with actually getting bums off the street.

Instead, it’s designed to make street-life—at least downtown—palatable. Nicer. Easier. And free! (Taxpayers being another matter altogether.)

The moral of our tale: Homeless Inc. needs customers.

They’ll get more of ‘em.