Why Are Businesses Fleeing Portland?

Examining claims that crime in Portland is to blame for recent business closures.

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Store Closing sign seen outside Walmart at Delta Park in North Portland, Oregon. (via Getty Images)

Walmart joined the ranks of Nike, Cracker Barrel, and regional grocery store Green Zebra when it closed its two stores in Portland, Oregon in March. Conservatives say local government’s ineffectiveness in tamping down crime in the deep blue city is to blame. 

But local business leaders say that crime plays a part, Portland’s woes aren’t that simple.

Rising crime in Portland is undeniable, with homicides and robberies increasing after its police budget getting cut from $244 million to $229 million in 2020. And businesses are suffering. Columbia Sportswear-owned brand SOREL moved its headquarters from Portland, citing safety as an issue. Nike has also complained about the amount of crime in the city. And REI announced it would close its Portland store due to “its highest number of break-ins and thefts in two decades, despite actions to provide extra security.” The Portland Business Alliance urged the local government to increase police investments in its 2023 policy agenda.

“This is what happens when cities refuse to enforce the rule of law,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted about the Walmart closings, echoing remarks at Breitbart and from journalist Andy Ngo. 

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  1. H.Allen.irish@gmail.com

    The most shocking thing in this piece is that Cracker Barrel decided to open a restaurant in Portland, of all places!

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  2. Curtis_webster

    I'm sure these factors are interrelated but crime, and tolerance for crime, exacerbates economic decline and population decline. If Portland was instead a model of low crime and civility, I don't doubt that the local economy and population would be booming and more businesses would be opening instead of closing.

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  3. Trichwages

    Thank you, Alec. Very good and in-depth.

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  4. Nathan Briggs

    I'm feeling a vibe shift out here in Portland Metro. What I think is different today than when I first moved here in 1988 is this: It was pretty gross - crack cocaine distribution fights, downtown core empties out at night. Folks strung out on heroin on the streets. We even had a skin head murder a PSU student right in downtown!! But, I was young, in love, and rent was cheap, I thought those gun shots at night were just fireworks, and the reaction to the murder spelled the end for Tom Metzger and the White Aryan Resistance (sued for 12.5m for wrongful death). So, we were in a city that was icky but the vibe was that it's on the way up. The abandoned Greyhound station that smelled like piss was gone and replaced with nice shops. The abandoned rail yards and warehouses close to downtown became The Pearl District. Money was coming in, development both private and public. We drilled a tunnel through a mountain to link up the light rail system! It was great to live here when things were going great. It's no fun to be in a city that is on the way down. That's what it feels like now. Or if you've been here long enough you worry that it's going back to where it was before (or reverting to mean?)
    It's on the cusp of getting worse or getting better.
    The vibe shift I've noticed is that the voters are picking better City Council members. Chloe Eulady was defeated in 2020 by Mingus Mapps. He immediately started working on a new city charter (Portland city govt is just 4 + the mayor, and they don't even have a city manager). Joanne Hardesty lost to Rene Gonzalez in 2022. These elections replaced two the most far left officials with practical folks that want to solve problems. I could go on and on about local government (it's a hobby of mine) but the new members and the new city charter will make the government more responsive to the voters. It will take a lot of time to turn around. Check back in about 5 more years.
    Oh one note: Portland lost population but the total metro area gained people. Portland is about 600,000 but the Greater Metropolitan Area is over 2m. People keep moving to the area.
    Lastly, I can look out my bedroom window and see an enormous volcano! How cool is that! (at least on the few days it's not raining....)

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  5. Aubrennan

    "But unlike other retailers, Walmart didn’t cite crime as the sole reason it’s leaving Portland."

    What's more interesting to me, then, is why other retailers are citing crime as supposedly the sole reason they're leaving Portland. Because if of the five retailers mentioned in the article, four cite crime as their sole reason, that would seem to undermine the "both sides can be right" thesis at the end of the article. Furthermore, the performance of those two Walmart stores actually makes crime a bigger issue for them: If your store is just barely above water, and then has to contend with 2% - 5% loss due to theft, along with all the other types of incidents that impact those locations (rioting, loitering, camping, trespassing, panhandling, auto theft, drug use, etc.) and drive away business, that can certainly make the difference between a location that can stay afloat, and one that needs to be shuttered.

    I can certainly see that other considerations might be behind these Walmart locations closing, but that might make Walmart an outlier among the retailers of Portland rather than proving some theory that conservative narratives about crime are false (or, at least, not as right as they purport to be). Walmart is the country's biggest retailer. Having that many locations in Portland is probably too many anyway. But other retailers might not have that problem. They might just barely be keeping themselves above water in the city, and losing probably 5% or more of their sales to theft and more to other crimes in a city where the government doesn't seem to care at all about stopping the criminals causing this loss and more about finding out which officers didn't like their DEI training so they can fire them is not going to help keep them around. All this to say: just because Walmart isn't ONLY citing crime as the reason behind these closings doesn't mean it isn't a major problem for other retailers and the city in general.

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    Scarlette Tarte

    Times rise and fall. Good business, bad business, changing business, crime, housing issues, tastes change, weather.

    All sorts of problems contribute. For example, lots of people who can no longer afford to live in California, have moved to Texas. It wasn't crime. Some came because they got tired of wildfires and drought.

    I am moving to Portugal because of the politics in this nation, because of rising gun violence and because women are not treated equally nor respected by a large segment of this population. Books are being banned, there is an attempt to make LGBTQ people invisible. I have a summer home in Vermont I am keeping, because it's a liberal state and America will always be home, but I am taking our kids and grandkids and getting them out.

    One big reason is the inability to see there is never one cause for anything, and because of religious nationalism.

    All of these things ARE happening, and they are happening in different degrees all over. Homelessness is rising, and it's not just because of addiction or mental illness, but also because we don't have enough housing stock that is affordable to lower income people.

    We have myriad problems, all of you are aware and we are doing nothing about them. All of you here at the Dispatch are better at handling complex subject matter than many others here in this country, understanding it's not simply a matter of "woke mind virus" or MAGA morons, or AOC or MTG, but instead problems with myriad issues overlapping.

    And no one seems to want to do anything about all these issues, except to "own" each other over them.

    Not interested. I am fine with figuring out what led to things, but the focus can't be on that, it has to be on fixing the problem. We can't seem to do that anymore. And I can't tolerate dysfunction.

    I hope that this improves. I hope the next generation says "this is BS" and is able to make things better. I hope that Americans find their way again. I am just too old now, and want to live my retirement is peace. I don't want all this strife.

    I wouldn't mind if I felt progress was being made, but I feel we are stuck. And that makes me sad.

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    1. Avatar photo
      WKDawson

      In a way, it could even be Amazon. It costs a lot more in overhead to have employees and a place to present things in a way that appeals to customers; compared to warehouses, packagers, and delivery vans. Moreover, when people go to the shop to see the presentation and buy from Amazon because it is cheaper, they are making the shop pay the "tax" and letting Amazon put the shop out of business.

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    2. Hikingguy

      I hear you. My adult kids are preparing to ride it out. One has some property in SW Oregon and two of the others live in Chicago-which, as my oldest son points out-is right by the biggest source of fresh water in North America. Their plan to stay put-their mutual aid networks are all in place and humming. My daughter in law is doing a Victory garden and teaching others how to grow food in the city. They are all independent trending leftward and they all have guns and spend time on the range.

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        Scarlette Tarte

        No place is perfect, of course. But something truly awful has taken root in our country and I am fearful of it for my granddaughters especially.

        And I don't have a trans kid, but if I did, I would be very, very frightened for them.

        I grow a garden all year round. It's a great habit/hobby to cultivate. As you gain more experience, you often find you can not only feed yourself, but several others as well. Nothing, but nothing makes you feel as independent as being able to grow and harvest your own food. Community gardens are great for neighborhoods to develop as well. I hope your daughter teaches the entire city how to do that.

        And thanks for the mention of lefties with guns. No, we don't own entire arsenals (well, I do, but I am a collector) usually, and we don't pose with them for our Xmas cards, but we do have them. Cons thinking we don't has always puzzled me.

        Just because we want a few regulations around them, doesn't mean we don't have them.

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    Jimtung

    I live within the city limits of Portland, and I find the homelessness and (yep) filth pretty appalling.

    That said, I was surprised to run an errand in the Pearl this Saturday and I wanted to get a snack at St. Honore Boulangerie, and so my kids and I walked around Pioneer Courthouse Square and Director's Park, and it wasn't soooooo bad. Here's hoping it gets better from here (I'm not holding my breath.)

    FELLOW PORTLANDERS - reply down here if you want a Dispatch event in PDX! Heck, we can do it in Wilsonville or somewhere so we don't have to pick our way through the homeless camps.

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    1. Hikingguy

      We were at the last Waterfront Blues Festival before COVID hit and it was a very pleasant venue. We're signed up to be there this year for Grace Potter and The Mavericks and are hoping for the best. A warm summer evening by the river watching the fireworks: it's the best of Portland for sure.

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  8. Philip.R.M.Hunt

    It s not the crime, it the homelessness and resulting filth.

    My wife and I lived downtown PDX and loved it but moved out to the suburbs in 2005 to get more land for gardening. We would still regularly go back to downtown for cultural events and shopping. Not so much anymore. We are not scared of petty crime. Aggressive panhandlers avoid us - we are both over 6 ft, I am former military and we both carry ourselves in a way that is not mean but conveys we are not pushovers. We would regularly shop at that downtown REI then grab lunch at one of the many interesting restaurants or food carts. However we got tired of stepping around sidewalk campsites and their filth, including human excrement. We now drive double distance to the Bridgeport Village REI.

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  9. Sean Smith

    Businesses are leaving for the same reason people are leaving: Portland is rapidly becoming unlivable. You don't have to take my word for it--just spent 10 minutes driving through downtown. It beggars belief. Wonder how they're going to fund all of their giveaway programs once they no longer have a tax base. Something tells me they're going to at least try to distribute the costs among those of us who have sense enough to live outside the metro counties. Wish the whole damned place would slide into the Willamette.

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    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    In regression analysis, it's relatively rare for a single variable to account for more than 15-20% of the variance in the data. There are always many things going on.

    A useful analysis would be to compare two stores in two locations that are similar in most cases other than with the crime rate. If there is a significant difference, then calling out the crime rate is acceptable. But I don't have time to do it.

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