'Who in their right mind would start a business in Portland, Oregon?'

Epoch Times:

Businesses are shifting operations from downtown Portland, Oregon, or scuttling plans to open stores there because of the near-nightly rioting and protests that have gone on since May 28.

Portions of the city are boarded up. Rioters, who often gather around 9 p.m. and don’t disperse until early the next morning, had caused tens of millions of dollars of damage or lost business by early July.

While many Standard Insurance employees have been working from home since March because of restrictions related to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic, some continued to work from its downtown headquarters until recently, a spokesman told The Epoch Times.

“Many of those employees who had remained in our downtown offices have now been temporarily moved to our Hillsboro campus to ensure their welfare in light of continuing safety concerns and property damage downtown,” the spokesman said in an email. “Several employees and security contractors have been assaulted near our downtown offices in recent weeks and months, and that contributed to the decision.”

Other business owners who planned to open stores in Portland despite the pandemic have put those plans on hold or terminated them due to the unrest.

“We were actually going to open two stores in Portland, and then all this happened,” Joe Raetzer, co-owner of Steepologie Teas, told The Epoch Times.

Asked whether “all this” meant the pandemic or the unrest, he said: “Just purely the unrest. The riots.”

Steepologie also shut down its downtown Seattle location because of rioting there; an employee was assaulted inside the store.

In an interview with The Epoch Times’ affiliate NTD Television, Uncle Fabe’s owner Fabian Gordon said he knows business owners who have started to sleep at their stores.

“They’re talking about going up on the roofs of their buildings with guns. They’re terrified. People are setting fires. When’s it going to happen to them?” he said. “They’re heavily armed and they’re all very afraid.”

Gordon said city and state officials seem to be handling the situation by hamstringing the police and pointed to the new prosecutorial policy of presumptively dismissing charges that include riot, disorderly conduct, and interfering with officers.

“The leadership are obviously cowards. There’s just no other way to put it,” he said. “Who in their right minds would come to start a business in Portland, going forward? Who in their right mind? Why would you? Why would you visit?”
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“If you know a retail or office broker, give them a call and ask them how many clients they have are trying to leave. The number is like nothing I have seen in 42 years of doing business in downtown,” Greg Goodman of the Downtown Development Group wrote.
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There is an incompetent response to the criminal activity from state and local officials.  The mayor of Portland may be one of the most incompetent in history.  The prosecutor's office has helped the criminals by refusing to prosecute them.  The officials have given Antifa and BLM free rein to commit crimes large and small.