The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2026-07-28
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The City Life Committee met the afternoon of July 28, 2026 (2:01 to shortly after 5:00 p.m.). After approving minutes and hearing general public input — including concerns about an Enhanced Service District assessment process — the committee took up the future of the city's five performing-arts venues: staff reviewed city ownership, Metro's notice that it will withdraw from operating Portland'5 Center for the Arts in July 2027, facility-condition and deferred-maintenance findings, and plans for a new operator solicitation. It then opened the resolution to advance a new Broadway-capable venue at Portland State University and initiate planning for Keller Auditorium's future, hearing roughly thirty testifiers on both sides — new-build versus renovation, which cost estimates to trust (figures for both projects were stated inconsistently across speakers), PSU's budget deficit, venue workers' job security, and a temporary-venue alternative. No votes were taken; deliberation and a previewed amendment carry over to the August 11 meeting.
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Procedural markers in this session
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0 Ready? Okay.
1 Good afternoon. It is 2:01 p.m. On Tuesday, July 28th. I am calling to order this meeting of the city life committee. Diego, could you please call the roll?
2 Good afternoon. Morillo.
3 Here.
4 Zimmerman. Here. Avalos. Absent. Ryan here.
5 Pirtle-guiney here. And christopher, could you please read the statement of conduct?
6 Welcome to the meeting of the city life committee. To testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at www.Portland.gov/agenda/city-lie or by calling 311. Information on engaging with the committee can be found at this link. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting in person. Testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted. When your time is over, the chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony or your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption results in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave when subjected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered when testifying. State your name for the record. If you're a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifier should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
7 Thank you. Christopher. Colleagues, I am going to save most of my introductory remarks to our meeting for the beginning of agenda items three and four. But we do have one big topic on our agenda today, two agenda items that will address that topic. We'll be looking at city owned performing arts spaces broadly. But before we get there, we do need to approve our June committee minutes and hear from a couple of folks about other important topics that they'd like to make sure we consider. Donnie, I don't want we're going to make you move in a minute, donnie.
8 I got.
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9 Sorry. We'll get you quickly, I promise. But diego, could you please read agenda item one.
10 Item one, June 9th to June 23rd, 2026. City life committee meeting minutes.
11 And colleagues, is there a unanimous consent to approve the minutes?
12 Yes.
13 Okay. Councilor. Morillo. Any objections?
14 None at all.
15 Perfect. So we have approved the minutes. Diego, could you please read agenda item number two.
16 Item two, document number 2026-268. Public input on city life committee topics.
17 Thank you. And colleagues. We open up this time every meeting to hear from portlanders about topics related to the work of our committee, but not related to agenda items on that meeting's agenda to make sure that there's nothing that we're missing going on. And I think we have two people signed up today. So, diego, if you could please call up the first person, I'd appreciate it.
18 First up, melissa finkel.
19 Welcome. Thank you for being here with us today.
20 Thank you. Should I go ahead? All right. Good afternoon, chair and members of the city life committee. My name is melissa finkel and I'm a park rose business owner. Over the past month, I've personally called many businesses and property owners who would have been required to pay the esd assessment. The overwhelming response was that of surprise. Most had no idea this proposal existed, or that they could be required to pay an annual fee for the next ten years. That raises an important question how did the city determine this proposal? Had broad community support. At the July 14th hearing, the city esd coordinator pointed to mailers, public meetings and an online survey. But mailers only provide notice they don't demonstrate support. The city survey received just five responses, all opposing the proposal. Meanwhile, protect park rose has identified ratepayers presenting representing more than 55% of the proposed assessment base who oppose it. We simply ask the city to explain what objective criteria it uses to determine that an esd has sufficient community support before advancing a proposal involving millions of dollars in mandatory fees. There is also growing concern among business and property owners about historic park rose's financial condition, based on its publicly available irs form 990 filings. Before any nonprofit is entrusted with managing millions of dollars in mandatory assessments, the city should be conducting independent financial due diligence to ensure the organization is financially stable and capable of managing a long term public contract. These issues extend beyond park rose and is going to district three and four here real soon. We respectfully ask the committee to strengthen the city's standard ordinances for evaluating both community support and the financial qualifications of organizations seeking to manage esd funds. Thank you for your time.
21 Thank you for being here.
22 Next is ghaleb bin imhotep.
23 Good afternoon. Go right ahead when you're ready.
24 Yes, this happens twice. This is first, I'm in a quasi judicial meeting or hearing. Now there's a packed house. I thought this would be a little bit more personable.
25 I need you to really speak into that mic.
26 I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm very nervous. Let me begin this speech by paying homage to one of the strongest women I will ever meet in my life. What she helped me become. I can only offer my utmost appreciation for. Today. She celebrates her 47th turn around the sun. I love you, sister, with all my heart and soul, and I will that your 47th rotation. Be abundant. Enjoy yourself. Good afternoon counselors. I am ghaleb imhotep, il and I am domiciled in district four. I will be brief because in matters of this nature I have. I often have a hard time finding words to convey what I am thinking, attempting to achieve, and the motivations for them. So I'll state for the public record the answers to those three questions, backed by the trust that I have sworn an oath bound duty to uphold. Whenever I ask myself these three questions, the answers they don't change. What am I thinking about? What am I thinking about? Orion stewart mcfarland, zaire james mcfarland and cyrus armstrong mcfarland. What am I attempting to achieve a legacy for them? What are my motivations? Orion stewart mcfarland, zaire james mcfarland and cyrus armstrong mcfarland. I think you can understand the difficulty now. I have an extensive background, but I also have something else, something that will greatly benefit Portland. The moment that I shared outside of the roseland with councilor Wallace, I wish she could be here, but that moment, I don't know if she shared it with you. I'll cherish that moment for the rest of my life. I have a picture of it and I can smile about it, and I know I will forever. Before that happened, there was a woman that came from councilor Green's campaign kickoff, I guess, and she was trying to solicit for a vote, saying that he supported street dogs. And I'm thinking to myself, well, if he doesn't, I would definitely support him. And I told him the same thing that I'm going to tell you guys today. I met him, I shook his hand. I spoke to him and I love the guy. I'm asking for a small amount of support to boost this concept to the answer of what it is that I am attempting to achieve. I think it's highly feasible. The documents that I have submitted to the council clerk are for your review. There would be no greater irony than to have a street dog vendor in boston hand a guy a portlander. After the trailblazers put the celtics out of the nba finals. I do not allow any decision or action made by any one person or group of people. Decide how I feel about them, whatever I agree with or disagree with, whenever I agree with or disagree with things as I perceive them, it doesn't change the fact that I love you all unconditionally. Thank you.
27 Thank you so much for being here today with us.
28 That concludes testimony.
29 Okay, colleagues, that moves us to agenda item three. And diego, I'll have you open agenda item three. And then I want to make a few comments about agenda items three and four. Go right ahead. No, just agenda item three.
30 Thank you. Item three. Document number 2026-269. Performing arts venues. Discussion.
31 Thank you. So colleagues, over the last year we have had a lot of conversation about city assets, some more notable high profile conversations recently, but also about things like bathrooms and parks and office buildings, and generally how the city maintains what we own. Some, but not all portlanders may know that we as a city own a number of performing arts venues. That ownership means that we're in a position to think strategically about our arts ecosystem and how we support and have space for the different players in that ecosystem. We are entering into what has been about a ten year conversation about some of the needs in that ecosystem, including the future of what is now our largest venue, the keller, and what that looks like moving forward. There's also a lot happening outside of that conversation, though, that relates to our venues. So today we're going to start a conversation about the city's venues broadly, what we own, the transfer and management of those venues, which were previously managed by metro and another broad, broad pieces of background around our city owned performing arts venues. As always, we'll have an opportunity for councilors to ask questions so that we can have a strong, shared understanding of what the city owned performing arts ecosystem looks like. This is a conversation that the arts and economy committee stepped into last year, but multiple councilors on and off this committee, as well as a number of stakeholders, have asked that we have this conversation today in this committee so that we all have that background about our broader venue ecosystem. The second half of our meeting, we will be specifically talking about the work around the future of our large scale performing arts venues. There has been a ten year process, including substantial work not only by the previous city commission, but also in our own arts and economy committee last year around this topic. And that work culminated in a work group that met over the last six months, and which released a report of its recommendations just a few weeks ago. I want to thank councilors Clark and Dunphy, who sat on that work group, for being a part of that work and bringing council's voice or the voice, at least of some councilors, to that process. The work group report, which came out last month, looks at the future of large scale performing arts venues in our city. We now have a resolution before us that includes the mayor's recommendation on how to move forward with those work group recommendations. During that second portion of the meeting, we'll hear from both supporters of the recommendation, as well as folks who may have a few concerns but were a part of the process, as well as representatives of the workers who will be affected directly by any changes in our performing arts spaces. We'll also have an opportunity to hear a significant amount of public testimony during that part of the meeting. Depending on time, we will have council discussion today and consider any possible amendments. But if we don't have time, because I do want to make sure we hear as much public testimony as possible, we will plan to carry the agenda item over to our next meeting, which will be Tuesday, August 11th. I want to say a word before we dive in about the importance of this topic. I've heard from some who have asked why this conversation about spaces the city owns and invests in is so critical. We're not talking about our streets, our public safety, our parks and pools. But the city of Portland has made a longstanding commitment truly over decades to say that as a city, we value having a robust arts ecosystem, that it's good for portland's economy, that it's good for our arts and culture scene, and that it's good for portlanders. As a city, we've always made sure that there's space not only for our larger performing arts companies, but also for the smaller ones. To the extent that I recently learned that we have over 700 nonprofit arts organizations, roughly twice the size as many other cities have now, we can have varying opinions about whether that's a good or a bad thing for our city. But what I know is that it creates opportunities for artists to try creative things they might not otherwise be able to do, and creates opportunities for portlanders to engage with art that speaks to them, that represents them in ways that they might not otherwise experience. That happens in part because our city has made this concerted commitment not just through our venues, but through a host of programs to support the arts ecosystem. So as we dive into the conversation today, I hope that we can spend this first half thinking about our commitment through our venues. Just one part of that commitment to the arts more broadly and what that looks like. And then we'll dive into the more specific question before us around the work groups that we've seen over the past few years. And this most recent recommendation. So with that, we're going to jump into agenda item three. I'd like to ask our dca for community and economic development donnie oliveira and sue pack from our arts and culture office. Are you all in office? Yes. Arts and culture office. Thank you. To come forward so that we can hear some background on the state of our performing arts venues in Portland right now. Thank you.
32 Thank you chair. Good afternoon councilors. For the record, my name is donnie oliveira. I'm the deputy city administrator with the community and economic development service area. I'm joined by sue pack from the office of arts and culture. Who's not here with us right now is director montez, who's on personal leave. And I want to first start by saying, charity, I hope you're not watching this. And if you are, we're sending you good vibes and get well soon. All right. So some of the content that we're going to share with you today is very familiar. It's been presented to the committee meetings or shared in memos over the past year and a half. But we know that this topic is understandably of high interest to our community members, our our aficionados, the people that come to Portland from the broader region and state that are passionate about the arts. Our civic arts facilities are a source of pride and culture, and they contribute to our local creative economy. So today's discussion will survey a lot of topics on this issue. We'll do our best to hit the key points and can pause for questions along the way. But we're in for a bit of content. So let's let's get into it. Next slide please. So real quick, just want to cover what we're going to talk about. The chair did a great job of outlining this. But we're really going to focus on the Portland five center for the arts transition. First, we'll dive into what's going on there and really then speak to the large scale performing arts venue conversations. Next slide please. Now let's go. Yeah. Thank you. All right. So what are we talking about here? First and foremost, let's set the stage no pun intended. So there are five performing arts facilities owned by the city of Portland. And currently they're all operated by metro in three buildings. They range in size in age. Obviously, we have the larger keller auditorium, which is 109 years old. And then we also have the hatfield hall built in the 80s that contains the three smaller theaters. These facilities are home to some of our most well-known performing arts organizations, and hosts both large, larger commercial productions like broadway, as well as smaller nonprofit performances and events like councilor Pirtle-guiney alluded to. Next slide please. These facilities are important cultural assets and contribute significantly to our local economy and civic life. They draw visitors to Portland, create jobs and other economic spending, and host hundreds of public events each year. Next slide please. So first and foremost, as I said, we're going to focus at two bodies of work that the arts and office of culture and many city employees had supported. First, the process of how we got to the transition plan for Portland five and then the port. The future of the large scale performing arts. Contemplation between renovating keller and a potential new venue at PSU. Next slide. Again. Thank you. All right. Let's do some background here for the public's fyi just to set the stage here. So currently the city's relationship with metro is that we are the owners of the facilities, but have an existing iga with metro for the operations of the five venues that's been in place since the late 80s, it's been updated several times the iga. But ultimately where we're at today is we are looking at a scenario where metro's made a decision that's going to be changing that come 2027. In 2022, there was an audit contemplated by metro that identified issues with the existing model. And one of the key themes that was addressed was the challenges of addressing the facilities capital needs, the current structure. Next slide please. Simultaneously, in 2024, city council adopted a resolution that created the performing arts venue work group. This was made up of key stakeholders to evaluate the manage of the facilities. So on one hand, we had metro as the operator doing an audit and then as the owner, we sort of dove into what would be the optimal setting for efficiency and management of our facilities. The resolution directed the creation of this workgroup to really identify those those questions, do some assessments and ultimately bring together recommendations or ideas for a future state of operations. Next slide please. I just want to take a moment to name, but also appreciate and acknowledge the folks that contributed to that working group. They convened between January and June in 2025. And ultimately, this group was thinking about advancing the directive of that work work resolution. Specifically, they consider the opportunities and challenges to both the immediate and long term operations and ultimately, the planning for the future of the venues. Next slide please. One of the issues the workgroup looked at was the capital needs of the facilities. They emphasized that funding capital needs through operating budget is a poor practice and should be discontinued. And they recommended building a capital fund and beginning capital planning immediately, starting with facility condition assessments, which metro actually completed this spring. And we have some details on those. But ultimately we were looking at is if the city is going to operate or manage these facilities and operate them for the long term, we have to address head on the deferred backlog of maintenance necessary to not just keep the buildings running, but to modernize them and keep them fresh, fresh for the needs of the modern artists and visitors. Next slide please. So at a high level, the group recommended changing the two government model. Fundamentally, that's a unique to our setup and not recommended or seen across the country. The working group recommended that the city metro start preparing to dissolve the iga, and that the city, as the owner of these facilities, ultimately decide what new operating model for the facilities would be the most effective. Next slide please. During that that working group convening, they contemplated several different scenarios to further explore. Those are all listed here. And while they didn't recommend a specific alternative model, they did provide some options that we would consider and that needed further investigation. For example, the city could contract with another operator outside, whether it be nonprofit or for profit or university, to take over the functions currently managed by metro. The city could take on the work of managing the facilities themselves, or there could be a mix match of different ways we could break up the facilities to to be managed. The point being is lots of ideas that needed further exploration. Next slide please. And just for context, just to kind of paint the picture of what we're solving for here, this is a very complex system that we're talking about. And that complexity adds to the challenges of identifying next steps. So the programing is driven by resident companies such as Oregon symphony, Portland opera, Oregon ballet plus broadway across America, which which together make up much of the content. But we also make the spaces available for nonprofit arts organizations and commercial presenters who ran out on some of those open dates. When the resident companies aren't active. There's a $25 million annual operating budget that, across the whole portfolio, essentially breaks even. And we'll talk about that in a second. P5 has 450 employees, all of which are currently metro staff. Those staff are represented by six collective bargaining agreements, four of which are being negotiated this year. Metro also supports the central services for those staff in the venues more broadly, to the tune of about 4 million. So when we think about that, it's important to contemplate what the city of Portland would look like if we were going to be managing those central services on behalf of the p5 employees. I'm also just to add flavor to this. There are approximately 150 vendor and partner agreements that make up the ecosystem of how those venues are run today. Next slide please. So the process of dissolving the I g really picked up in earnest this past year. On December 31st, metro notified the city of their intent to withdraw from p5 or operations. That was completely within the realm of the iga. So it was totally appropriate. There was no surprises. So we were aware that that was happening. And then, per the iga, that set off an 18 month preparation window, which means that the transfer of the management would go into effect on July 1st, 2027. So that gives us about a year to figure out what operating structure we would want, and to ensure that we have that in place ready to go on July 1st. If charity was here, she could tell you the exact days remaining as she tracks that every day. So given this very aggressive timeline, we didn't waste any time. And due to the complexity of the system, which we covered just in the last slide, over the past several months, we've been collecting information and data to best inform the next steps of what it will look like for the city to take over this body of work. Next slide please. So first and foremost, we wanted to understand what type of options we had on the table beyond the obvious of the city taking over operations. So in January, arts and culture put out an RFP to get ideas for how we might approach this decision. We wanted to understand the concepts for operating models. We wanted to understand potential partners who was out there, who was potentially in the market to take on our venues. The responses we got back. Next slide please. The responses we got back from the RFP were very helpful in illustrating the range of options. We got nine responses, including existing nonprofits existing for profits and a proposal to create new a new entity. Several respondents had experience in large scale venue management and a few specifically in large scale venue development, which is relevant to the. Given the capital needs of our p5 facilities, most would integrate venue, current venue owners into their programing models while filling the calendar with more commercial and community centered events. The idea there is getting more out of the venues we have. That was very exciting to us all respondents addressed capital investments, indicating that either the city holds responsibility for deferred maintenance and capital improvements, or the city works in partnership with the venue operator. So the idea here is, as we're contemplating a new operator, potentially a third party operator, what the role the city would have in that operator, and identifying the needs, investing in the needs, generating the revenue for those investments to keep those facilities up and running. Next slide please. As I alluded to earlier, metro conducted the facility condition assessments that were really fundamental and helping us understand the need of our venues. In short, we have a significant backlog of investments needed to maintain current service level. And of course, that's trying to get us out as many years as possible. But we have aging facilities that demand investment soon. For example, the keller was constructed in 1918, and its last major renovation was in 1968. So investments are needed in the theatrical and building envelope systems to keep the facility running to maintain current service levels for the next ten years, the. The schnitzer concert hall is already a designated historic landmark. Originally constructed in 1927 and last renovated in 1984. So many of the assemblies and systems there are now or approaching end of useful life. Due to age and heavy use. The hatfield hall was constructed in 1987 and has been well maintained and is showing normal wear and tear, but nonetheless, it's a space that we want to ensure that we continue to invest in to maximize its its usefulness. Next slide please. So here we are today as we move towards July 27th, the next key step is honing in on the operating model. We heard from our working group last year that an operating partner should no longer be metro. So we're working through that. We learned from our RFP this spring that there might be folks with the right set of skills interested in taking on the work, and we're aware of the limited capacity we have at the city to take over management. What we did was we worked with the service area, the business operations service area with dca. Tracy warren and her team looked at procurement bhr, excuse me, human resources technology service to understand the impact to the city to take on those operations, they were able to provide some real, clear and durable information for us to to balance the weight of taking on the operations and the financial burden and capacity limitations of existing staff versus the third party operative. And so with all that in mind, we determined that the best path forward was to move forward with a request for proposal to identify a third party operator. What that looks like is in August, the arts and culture office will be launching an RFP that will invite professional venue operators to propose improved and sustainable operating models for contemplation. For us to decide by the end of this calendar year. We've talked with existing operators and consultants about this timeline. It's incredibly aggressive, but we do believe if we're to stay on track and have somebody on board, by December, they would be in place ready to go on July 1st. So we'd have no disruption of services or operations at the venues. And I'm going to stop there before moving on to the large scale venues. If there's any questions about p5.
33 Colleagues, any questions about venues? We own the transfer of operation, the RFP that's out there, or other things related to this first part of our time today. Councilor Ryan, you look like you might have something.
34 Yeah, I just want to actually compliment the fact that we're here, I think, in this conversation about the capital, we, we've, we haven't had as much dialog about the operations. And I think this simplifies it that that there's one government entity. So so congratulations that you've been able to work that out with metro. I think what I'm interested in is what are we hoping for when we put out the RFP? What are we going to tolerate in terms of this would be a big change going from a government entity, being the hands on manager? And if I'm hearing it right, it looks different going forward in terms of this RFP that's asking for a private entity to be that we subcontract with, that would be managing the entity. So is am I tracking what you're saying?
35 That's correct.
36 Yeah. Okay. And I'm trying to guess who the, you know, the people are that are bidding, but that's not what I'm supposed to do up here. But when will I not have to guess and when will those be revealed?
37 Well, we haven't released the RFP yet. And RFP will be released in mid-august. And once we have received submissions, then we'll run through a selection process to determine, you know, the outcome. And I'm sure we'll work with procurement to find the most appropriate time to daylight. Those that submitted, you know, their their letters of interest, but that's, that'll be the, the pathway.
38 When you look at better practices around the country, are we just catching up with them by looking at this model?
39 Yeah. As a part of the evaluation, running up to the RFP, through the RFP and through the selection process, we've been working with subject matter experts around the country to just get a sense of what's the right model, right where it's where is it successful. And we've seen a lot of success around the country with the third party operator model often blended between like a nonprofit, for profit sort of dynamic that does several things. First, there's strong examples around the country of these third party operators. Having strong relationships always can be improved, but working with labor organizations. So that was something of a priority to us to make sure that RFP is clear, that we want to maintain the labor contracts that are currently that currently exist at metro. Obviously, the devil's in the details of how those transfer, but maintain our labor partnerships is a high priority. Second, we want to be sure we're maximizing every night possible at the venues. So right now we rely on our resident companies who do a great job at filling the nights that they have access to. But is there potential for more nights? Is there more commercial opportunities that we can activate those venues? And of course, as alluded to multiple times already, how are we ensuring that those spaces are available for our local, smaller nonprofits to take advantage of the spaces? All that has to be balanced to ensure that the venues are at cost recovery. I alluded to it earlier, but I want to just say it for the record, right now, the keller auditorium's performance is so largely broadway, those revenues are subsidizing the other operations. We can get to the point, though, where the other venues are at least at cost recovery. And we shouldn't we don't have to squint very hard to see an opportunity or a scenario where the venues are actually starting to generate revenue that seems very viable. We have some work to do to get there, but I think that that should be something that the city sets the north star, and we work for an operator that that can help us do that.
40 And another thank you. That was really helpful. So one problem we're trying to solve is that when I've talked to nonprofit leaders over the decades, if you will, they've said that our current operation model, they said, makes it really difficult for them to be in the black every year. Like it's one of their they call it out constantly. So was feedback from the both large and smaller venues. Was part of this decision to do this RFP? Okay. I'm really grateful that we're at this moment in time. Sorry. I kind of was mentioning this a few years ago. So this is great. Yeah.
41 If I may just add some larger context. So of comparable large scale multi-venue performing arts centers around the country. About a third are are publicly owned, but 90% are run by third party operators. That this are two government system is a unicorn. And even being a single government owned and government operated would also be a unicorn. And there, as dca oliveira noted, there are a lot of opportunities within our current model to make improvements in. In the areas of increasing venue utilization, ticketing strategy, improving our food and beverage program. And this is where there are. A good number of pro professional venue operators who work nationally and globally that could help us fast track to a improved, sustainable system, given that they will be providing for us lessons learned, best practices and helping us figure out what the pitfalls are. If the city were to try to figure it out, we would, in effect, be reinventing the wheel.
42 Thank you. These numbers are compelling. So we're we're 30% are publicly owned. Is that what you said? Yeah. And 90% are privately operated.
43 And largely non-profits. But yes, nonprofit and commercial.
44 When I say that, I mean non-profits usually. Yeah. Okay, well, let's stop being a unicorn, right? Okay. Great. Thanks.
45 Thank you. Councilor councilor Zimmerman.
46 Yeah. Thank you. Councilor Ryan got a lot of my questions in there. Don. You mentioned one of them the last time I went through a structural re whatever was 1984, which which location was that?
47 Are you referring to the last renovation?
48 Yeah.
49 Yeah, that was that was the schnitzer concert hall.
50 Okay. That was the same year I went through my last structural renovation as well. So I'm feeling a lot of kinship with the schnitzer. So and we need a little work. So I get it on this last point that we were just on with councilor Ryan. Of the 90% that are being run by a third party. Are they also markets with as much you unionized workforce as we have for our stagehands and engineers and lighting because it is compelling 90%. But I also want to understand like how that fits into the workforce, because donnie mentioned that many have a record of being able to work with a unionized workforce, but I want to get a sense out of that 90%. Is that the norm across the market, or are we a unicorn in that sense as well?
51 We know that in general, large performing arts centers use labor work with labor unions, especially stagehands. The fact that we have six labor unions, I don't have that information. That's something we could certainly provide for you how that relates to other markets. But six unions does seem like a lot. But again, union labor in performing arts centers is the norm.
52 Okay. You know, I've mentioned my colleagues on this topic. There's a lot of governing that comes to instinct based on my career. But this is one of those areas that I've got a lot of like dumb black guy in the corner questions on because I don't know a lot about the right size of different places. I've said this to many of the people in the audience, I need, I need help on this topic. So I'll probably have a lot of these types of questions as we go through the. I guess, in terms of going to a third party, managing that, donnie, if that was to be the case, what type of mechanism would we have to keep our approach with that unionized workforce instead of a recycling out or a slow recycling out to ten years later, you just don't see that face in who the workers are. What kind of how does an RFP get structured in order to do that?
53 Yeah, thanks for the question, councilor. I'll start and sue, please refine my response. It's one of the priorities, as we're developing the RFP process, to ensure that there's a smooth transition, both just in the operations, but also in ensuring that the the metro currently, metro staff who work on this, who are represented, that they're well taken care of in this new structure. Our RFP, without getting ahead of our procurement colleagues, will be designed to capture that information, that requirement. It's our the, our facilities. We get to determine the structure by which those facilities are managed, including this labor component. So that's that's one piece that I'll add. And the second thing that's fundamental to this is that we haven't done a great job yet as a city, as the manager of facilities, looking at opportunities for improvement, efficiencies and of labor staff, like how do we, you know, sue brought up the food and beverage element. Are we are we getting the most equity out of these facilities? And so there's opportunity for growth that I think would just be a boon for everybody, including our labor partners. Okay.
54 The other thing I would say is the intention would be that our operating agreement with the third party group, the city, would still have decision making authority in many areas. And so things like pricing or employment or our goals and values, budget, authority, things like that. The city would be collaboratively involved in and would ultimately need to approve.
55 Okay, thanks. That's all I have for now.
56 Thank you councilor. So councilor Zimmerman touched some on a couple of the questions that I had written down about labor. As we're looking at the RFP that will be going out, it sounds like next month, you know, it's it's clear to me that there are a lot of upsides to having the public management. We're able to ensure that we have that that hands on relationship with our our workforce there and making sure that those are high quality jobs. We are able to ensure space for the small companies and protect the small venues that are sometimes hard to keep afloat if they're not part of a system with larger venues. It also occurs to me that as we move to a potential for a third party operator, there are other upsides, both programmatic and financial. How are we ensuring through the language in the RFP, that we're able to maintain the current upsides and that the city can also capture some of the future upside that we're not entering into a situation where the city is maintaining venues, that we have less control over, and a private entity is gaining all of the financial or programmatic upside. And we're kind of left holding the the difficult things.
57 Take a first stab at the RFP answer more broadly.
58 Yeah. I mean, there are many ways we could structure a deal with the third party operator. One approach is to have a flat management fee plus a percentage revenue share. That is an incentive to increase revenue. So that is typically the model for operating agreements with third party venue operators. So that's that's something that is kind of a base that we're refining and massaging.
59 Great. Thank you. And I appreciate hearing a little bit more detail, like I said, to to councilor Zimmerman's questions around the labor agreements and ensuring that we do have that continued upside moving forward as it relates to labor. And it sounds like from what you said previously, also a continued commitment to the upside for our smaller theater companies as well. Councilor Ryan, did you have one more question before we move on?
60 Thank you. That is thanks, chair. It says 30% are publicly owned. That's what you said, correct?
61 One third. Yes.
62 Yeah. One third. So 70% are privately owned in other cities. I just want to see I just want more information. So I'd like to see like examples of that. And then I want to get to p five which is currently under metro or under merc.
63 Metro governed by merc.
64 So I think what we're trying to do with this action is get rid of some clutter up at the high end. I don't think that's really benefited everyone on the ground. And so what does that look like. So what happens to p five. What happens to merc when we become the operator. Well ahead of my skis.
65 Merc will continue to exist. Merc is a committee of metro, so they'll.
66 It's beyond performing arts. Yes, I know that it oversees the convention center and expo center zoo, correct.
67 I don't I don't believe the zoo. I think it's just expo. It currently still manages p five oversees p five. But so once the operations of p five leave metro merc will remain doing metro you know, functional responsibilities and the p five staff. In this particular case we are making the recommendation to move forward with a third party operator. So the staff of metro that do that work will move to this new operating entity that the city will oversee through contract.
68 That could be privately managed.
69 That is the model that we're okay.
70 And merc merc scope of work might narrow and not include performing arts venues.
71 Well, it would not. It would no longer include the performing arts venues because they'd be fully under our.
72 Okay, so we're not inheriting merc.
73 We're not inheriting.
74 I think I just needed to hear that in the public record. Okay, great. Nothing against merc. I'm just hope that we're moving towards some efficiency here.
75 I'd like to add also as a part of the RFP and an operating agreement, we will state an intention to form a an advisory body that will provide some oversight so that there'd be community and stakeholder representatives who also have a voice in how we operate.
76 That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Thanks.
77 Thank you. Councilor dca oliveira, I believe you have more presentation for this agenda item before we move to the next. Is that correct?
78 Correct. And this will just tease up the next item. So we'll just we can move through this. So we're going to shift.
79 We'll hear the rest of this presentation. And then we'll take a quick break before we open the next agenda item.
80 Perfect. Great. Thank you. So we're shift now to to focus on on one of our facilities, the keller auditorium and the work over the past few years to ensure that we continue to have a broadway capable venue in Portland. So the keller plays a crucial role in our local economy. The commercial events at keller, such as broadway performances, bring in revenue that supports the whole p five system, and the. Keller is the only broadway capable venue in Portland and our region. Next slide please. There's been a lot of activity contemplating the keller auditorium over the last six years. It's really important for us to to take this time to acknowledge that the city of Portland has been looking at keller in the future for quite some time. As we approach the end of its current useful life. We started doing some evaluations, starting with a report in 2020 focused on seismic issues that determined that the. Keller needs some. Interventions to ensure that we don't have a major impact due to a potential seismic event, and so we need to address that. In 2022, conversations began in earnest around renovating the keller to address those issues, other deferred maintenance, and also to bring the facility up to modern standards for the performance venue of its type. The city and metro at the time contributed resources to support those conversations, with external partners, taking the lead to develop a concept to renovate the keller auditorium. In 2023, the city began exploring options for a new facility as a parallel to that conversation, with the goal of having a full suite of information needed to determine the best next steps for both the performing arts venue and activities in Portland, but also for the keller as a city asset. At that time, there was an RFP that was run, and Portland state university, excuse me, put their name in the hat as a potential alternative location for a public facility. And after a competitive process, they were selected as the best alternative location given the other options. At the time, it was when I name it that lloyd center had submitted a proposal as well. And and you were just contemplated that their master plan that did not include a venue, they've since gotten a private sector venue that's under construction right now. Next slide please. So before we get into some of the next steps, I just want to take a moment to just really emphasize what would happen if we chose to renovate the keller, which would require closure. One of the important pieces of conversation that happened in this in this contemplation of the future large performing arts venue, was concerns around a temporary closure during the renovation. We've got some help pulling some information together, but and we did a study. But what we showed was that closing the keller for two years without finding another venue that could host broadway shows during that time, would be a significant economic hit to our region. There would be lost income for those workers who would expect to to be in the facility for those two years and then need to move on to new jobs during that time. So we also have loss of workforce. And, you know, in our region, there'd be lost public revenues from those events. Of course, noting the role that broadway plays in supporting the whole p5 portfolio. And there would also be broader impacts of impact related to the indirect economic benefits that go from the venue's existence, including local area businesses, etc. But most importantly, perhaps, is that the resident companies at the keller, the Oregon ballet theater and the Portland opera would be affected, and the report identified the risk of long term impacts as attendees shift to other entertainment venues, including outside the region. The long story short is and we started to contemplate the future of keller taking the time to renovate and pausing operations. Their performances. There was a nonstarter both for our economy, the sustenance of broadway and our other resident companies, but also fundamentally, our ability to continue to drive the benefits of our downtown from the venue. Next slide please. In October of 2024, the city council adopted a resolution that directed the city to contemplate a strategy for two broadway capable venues. This was the goal of. This was to prevent the prolonged closure of the keller, but was also to take advantage of an opportunity for us to partner with one of our anchor institutions, Portland state university. It directed staff to better understand the opportunities, do some more analysis, the pros and cons of a two venue strategy, and to determine the appropriate seat count for broadway capable venues and potentially additional details that we'll talk about in a second that we did undertake. Next slide please. So briefly, I just want to talk about the two projects that were contemplated in that two venue scenario that we were looking at. The idea for the keller would be to renovate the city owned facility. This was originally proposed by the halprin landscape conservancy, who was the the took the lead in that 2022 renovation concept that I shared earlier that was financed by metro and the city. The concept included, you know, a new facade over southwest third avenue. It was targeting that 2700 to 3 000 seat range that the keller currently hosts, and had an estimated cost of about $290 million. At the same time, the new facility would be introducing a brand new facility. Of course, it would be a part of a larger condo structure that would include a smaller academic theater, a conference center, a hotel on a four acre site on the PSU campus had a little bit of larger target seat count for that larger facility, and had an estimated cost of about $447 million. This is an opportunity for me just to acknowledge that at this time, we were sincerely looking and partnering both with halprin and PSU to sequence out a scenario where we built a PSU facility and we contemplated a future keller venue that was still thriving and meeting the demands of our of our arts ecosystem, but we had more details to discover. Next slide please. One of the requests of the resolution that we thought was, was material was to do a transportation study for both the renovation at the keller site, but also the construction of the new PSU site. That study was completed last summer, and it helped to identify opportunities and challenges for both sites. But there were no fatal flaws. It was also difficult to do a complete study of the PSU site because we were working with. Naturally without complete information, because the PSU concept isn't as fully developed. But what we did learn was that, you know, there was a significant opportunity here for us to to work with both our transportation bureau and the state's department of transportation to contemplate further details. As future phases of the project evolved. Next slide please. We also undertook was a market feasibility study. The goal of this was to determine the market demand for a two venue scenario. I just want to note that when the original two venue scenario was contemplated, starting in 2023 and into 2024, we were not predicting that there would be two privately owned music venues being built on the east side, and that had a material impact on the market feasibility, given what we knew in 23 versus what we know today. The study was completed by hunting partners, who is a nationally recognized real estate team with expertise for these types of facilities. The study found, ultimately, that the market could really only support one broadway capable venue. They targeted 3200 seat as the sweet spot for us, which is currently larger than the current keller can realistically host and ultimately, given some of the data that they discovered, they made a recommendation that the city pursue a broadway capable venue at PSU. Next slide please. Following up on that, we asked the partners to do a further study related to the economic impact. And ultimately, the key takeaways are here. A a new venue at PSU would yield more attendance because of the size. There'd be operating venue efficiencies. Then the renovated keller. I think I'll just go ahead and editorialize that. Say that a renovated keller would also be an excellent venue, but when comparing the two, there's. There was slight benefit to the PSU project. Next slide please. One last note because it's come up in the past, just want to acknowledge it that in the. In the full session in 2025, the Oregon legislature adopted senate bill 5505, which allocated bond dollars to the PSU project. This is material because a chunk of those bonds would go towards the construction of that larger condo project on the four acres that I mentioned focused on the community and academic theater on the site. But the a portion of that would also go to broader infrastructure, whether it be parking or infrastructure on the site that would directly benefit the broadway capable venue. Next slide please. As a part of the resolution that was adopted in 2024, the service area was directed to stand up a technical advisory committee. And so next slide please. And so what we did here was we put out a request for qualifications for 11 professionals to be a part of this this steering committee. We were looking for expertise in architecture, construction, finance, etc. Really asking folks who had less skin in the game, so to speak, but more technical expertise to provide us with an objective perspective on this decision. We were looking for their subject matter expertise, not just on the market at a whole, but specific to the sites that were being contemplated. It was a great group to work with. I was very fond of their commitment and their diligence, and they met six times over over the course of the spring of 2026. Next slide please. Oh, eight times. Excuse me. Ultimately, the committee was provided with presentations, studies, reports that ultimately informed their recommendation. The body did engage with both the project proposers, helper and landscape conservancy and PSU to get more details on the specifics of those projects. And we also invited broadway across America to come in and answer questions from the technical team. They went on site tours, and ultimately they completed their work last month, and we'll talk about that in the next presentation. Next slide please. Parallel to that was another group that was called by mayor keith wilson. This was a parallel group that was convened of elected officials. Our cultural and downtown leaders, labor representatives and stakeholders who had more direct skin in the game, so to speak, related to the venues. Many of the folks here will be part of the conversation later, but I want to just share that I was very grateful for the time these all these folks took to provide the mayor and the office of arts and culture with their guidance, their wisdom, their experience on these two topics. They brought a lot of, of dynamic information to this, these proceedings that allowed us to have a rich conversation about the pros and cons of moving forward with, with the PSU facility or the renovation. Next slide please. Similar to the steering committee, we had meetings through the spring of 2026. We covered a lot of the same details of the steering committee, but in a tighter timeline. They received all the studies that the steering committee did as well. Next slide please. And that, I believe, wraps it for this particular presentation. Councilor. Councilor.
81 Thank you. Dca oliveira. Are there any questions on this second part of the presentation? We're going to hold off on questions about the recommendations themselves, but about the workgroups, the studies, the work that went into that.
82 Yeah.
83 Okay. Go right ahead, councilor Ryan.
84 Thank you. Chair, you mentioned the two tables. There was one that had less people with special interest, if you will, transactional interest. And the other one was the mayor's table, which clearly had more of that. Did they agree with each other?
85 We're going to talk a little bit about that in the next slide. I think there was shared ideas and principles in those conversations. Yeah.
86 Okay. And I got ahead of myself. You didn't tell us what they thought.
87 Yeah. We're doing another. The next item has the next slide. Sorry, sorry for the suspense. Councilor.
88 And when you said the transportation study was approved, if you will, or that there didn't seem to be any, is that with both of the sites?
89 Yeah. The study was done both at the renovation site for the keller auditorium and related to the construction of the PSU site, acknowledging that the PSU site will have more phases that will need more information to have a more robust detailing. But the key takeaway from both of those studies were there were no fatal flaws on a theater or venue, excuse me, at either one of those sites.
90 And finally, to the estimates of costs for 290 million for 40 million with the PSU one who who? Fact checked those figures.
91 That was an independent consulting firm.
92 Independent consulting firm. Who was the. Who's that?
93 We could get you the name of the consulting firm.
94 That's that.
95 We can I don't have the the the name of the firm, but I at the moment. But I'd be happy to get that for you.
96 They're pretty independent. All right.
97 Okay.
98 Can we make sure we get that from the office to all committee members, just in case folks have additional questions about their background and work? Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions, counselor?
99 No, I look, I do look forward to looking at the studies that were mentioned. Yeah. But it sounds like we're going to get more information in the. Is there another presentation?
100 There is. So we are going to, in just a moment, take a 15 minute break. When we come back, we will open up agenda item four, and we'll hear a presentation specifically about the recommendations of those two work groups. I'm hoping that in that presentation we'll hear a little bit about the, the the places where the recommendations were aligned and the places where there may have been some dissension in one of the workgroups and not in the other. We'll then hear from three panels, one from folks who had some concerns with the recommendation, one from folks who supported the recommendation, and one from workers who are directly impacted by this. And then we will hopefully have about 45 minutes for public testimony.
101 Okay. Thank you, chair.
102 So we are going to take a 14 minute break, and we will get started right at 315 so that we can get through the rest of our work today. I'm sorry. Yeah. 315 thank you.
103 They did a venue cost estimate for listing site PSU.
104 I'm sorry. Sorry.
105 Because they're so close.
106 Calling the meeting back to order. If everyone can take your seats, we can go ahead and get started. Thank you.
107 I did do it again. We hit that sucker not maintained.
108 So. And I will just note as we get back in that we do have councilor Morillo joining us remotely. So she is listening in on our proceedings today as well. Diego, could you please open agenda item for.
109 Item four, document number 2026-270, except the future of large scale performing arts recommendations to advance a new broadway capable venue as part of the proposed proposed performing arts and culture center at Portland state university, and initiate planning for the future of the keller auditorium.
110 Thank you. So this will hopefully flow seamlessly from our last conversation. We heard about the process that led up to and the work of a couple of work groups over the last six or so months. And we will hear now about the recommendations. Out of those work groups, we have a resolution before us with recommendations from the mayor's office on how we implement those next steps. We will then hear from a couple of panels to get a little bit more background on the recommendations themselves and the work of the work groups. We will hear from a panel with a few of our colleagues who have been involved in this work, and then we will move to public testimony before we jump into the presentation. Councilor Morillo. Your hand is raised.
111 Oh, yeah. Thank you so much, chair. I just wanted to say for folks in the audience that I'm here and I'm listening, my cat had to go to the vet and I'm just kind of monitoring him today. So apologies for that. But I am very cognizant. I know these two options are a really big deal for our community. So just wanted to say that for anyone in the audience. Thanks.
112 Thank you. Councilor. Morillo. And I know it's hard sometimes when your remote making sure folks know that that you are that you do care about the really important points before the committee today. We appreciate you making sure to still be a part of this conversation with us. Dca oliveira. Thank you. We turn this back over to you at this point.
113 All right. Thank you, chair. Real quick, we want to answer counselor ryan's question about the the consultant.
114 Yes. So your question regarding who did the costing analysis for the two venue proposals, and that is venue consulting group that was conducted in may 2024. And the information is available online on the future of large scale performing arts web page.
115 Okay, so real quick, we're going to pick up from the conversation, from the last presentation to talk about the recommendations from the two committees, and then discuss the directives and the proposed resolution. Next slide please. All right. Starting with the steering committee, again, this was the our technical advisory committee that met over the seven months, eight times as we shared. They culminated their meetings in June of 2026 and made the recommendation to to the deputy city administrator of community economic development. That's me. And the group recommended a two pronged approach. First, they recommend that we build a new broadway capable venue at PSU and make that as part of their larger campus concepts around the performing arts and cultural center. And simultaneously, they wanted us to create an actionable plan to reimagine the keller auditorium. So the thinking at a very high level is we we begin the planning for the new PSU site with the Portland state university team and that. But simultaneously begin to contemplate the future of the keller site. So when the PSU sites live and those broadway acts move over to PSU, we are prepared to reimagine the keller and that new iteration, whatever it may be. Next slide please. The ex officio table I met and had a very spirited conversation. And while not consensus like the steering committee, a majority of the ex officio table did make a recommendation and the recommendations. As such, they recommended that we take a similar two pronged approach advancing the PSU performing arts center. They want to ensure that we maintain broadway show at the keller. While this is in development, and they want us to initiate planning for the future as a modern 1200 to 1800 seat venue. Same concept applies here. As to the steering committee. When the PSU venue becomes operational, the city should be prepared to transition broadway productions there and immediately begin the renovation of the keller into a venue tailored to that particular mid-sized market that the Portland city needs and our arts performing culture needs. All right, next slide please. So the overview of the proposed resolution, the resolution in front of you today advances those aligned recommendations for a two pronged strategy. First, it would direct the city to advance a new broadway capable venue at PSU, capitalize on the state's funding commitment and the prior work that the PSU team had done. This would be include initiating planning for the future of the auditorium as well. It would contain specific next steps for both of those facilities. Next slide please. So specific to the PSU venue. First, we would stand up a staff project team of technical experts to work with PSU to complete the pre-development work, including a detailed financial plan, the philanthropic strategy, and the initial phases of the project and the project. Construction management. We would
116 Develop a project commitment agreement with psg by December 1st of this year that establishes the scope, schedule and governance framework for the project and a shared commitment between the city and psg to develop and implement this full capital funding strategy. And of course, we would designate pre-development steering committee to participate in the process as needed. I want to take a moment here just to really the opportunity here with the city and one of our key anchor institutions of downtown. Not only is PSU a vibrant place making space in our downtown, but they represent the southern part of our downtown's economic vitality. And this is an opportunity for us to leverage their pre work that they've done at the state, the work they've done in design to really partner with one of our key institutions and our central city. I want to just also offer that to this point. Psg has been a great partner, not just on this topic, but on many projects that we've worked on with them, and we continue to want to emphasize that. This is what it looks like for Portland to rebound in our downtown, is investing in the anchor institutions that are going to be here for a very long time. Next slide please. As a part of the proposed resolution, we do contemplate next steps for the keller. It was clear that programing will continue while development of the broadway capable venue at PSU is ongoing. So we want to make sure that we keep that venue up to up to date and and running effectively and efficiently with our new operating team come 2027. We also want to begin the process for planning for the future of keller. So we have a clear plan for outcome after the PSU facilities up and running. We want to ensure we're conducting community engagement, the market study, and financial analysis necessary to do some of that design work to ensure that the next version of keller is the thing that our performing arts ecosystem needs, and whether that's 1200 seats or 1800 seats. That's something we want to do some more research on. I really want to emphasize this, that the keller is a city owned facility. We don't want to see it mothballed. We have no intention of letting this thing get into disarray or disrepair. We have a responsibility to maintain it, to keep it an exceptional venue to date. And we have an opportunity to really reimagine not just the keller, but that whole that whole ecosystem of the district from where the keller located, the schnitz, including the PSU facilities, that sort of performing arts venue ecosystem, has a real opportunity to be a district of of play and activity and economic vitality. And I think that's something we should lean into holistically. The resolution also reflects that we have an opportunity here to work with PSU but maintain our own assets. And I hope that's taken seriously, not just by you all in this committee, but by our partners. This was never an either or option for us. We always knew that we were going to invest in keller. This was an opportunity to look at the keller in a different light and simultaneously partner with the Portland state university team on a future central cultural center. And I believe that wraps it up. And I want to make sure we leave time for our esteemed colleagues, but happy to take questions if necessary.
117 So, colleagues, we do have a few panels, but if there are questions about some of the technicalities, the specifics here that are relevant before we get a little bit of color commentary from others, let's get those now. Okay. Seeing. Yes, councilor Ryan.
118 Did you say the keller's 1200 1800? Right. That's the estimate.
119 It's really an idea, councilor. I don't want to I'm sharing that as an example of the range that a new keller might look like, but we want to do a feasibility study and really do an assessment of what our market needs to ensure that the next keller is meeting the demand that we have.
120 Yeah, I think we can agree that we don't want it mothballed. How big is new market right now? Is that you say 808, 88, 80. Okay. Thanks.
121 Dca oliveira was the the 12 to 1800 range, if I'm remembering from previous conversations, is kind of the the gap where we don't have any other public venues. Is that correct?
122 That's correct.
123 Okay. Thank you. If there are no other questions, we are going to move to our first panel. And in doing that, I want to thank you both for all of the background and also just flag that we may have other questions later when we get into our committee discussion. That probably won't be until our next committee meeting, but we might get to it by the end today. So please don't go too far. The first panel that we are going to call up is karen wittman from the halprin landscape conservancy and lynn thorson from the downtown neighborhood association, who have been part of the conversation around the the keller auditorium specifically, and what that part of our both our downtown core and our theater ecosystem, our performing arts ecosystem, look like. Thank you both for being here today. Welcome. And I'm not sure who wants to go first, but jump right in.
124 Yeah.
125 Hi, I'm lijun thorson. Thank you for inviting me to speak on behalf of the downtown neighborhood association as its president. After much research about three years ago, the dna took a position supporting refurbishing the keller because we believed it was the best decision. From an urban planning perspective. Our commitment is even stronger now from a fiscal perspective. Our commitment is even stronger now. We are asking you to reject the mayor's resolution to build a performing arts center at PSU, while redesigning and preparing to build a smaller auditorium at the keller. It is the wrong plan and this is the wrong time. There are just too many unanswered questions. Would there be demand enough for three venues? A broadway capable venue at PSU, the smaller venue that they're also proposing on their site, in addition to a 1200 to 800 seat auditorium at the keller. How much would the PSU concept really cost? Not just the cost of design and construction at taxpayer expense, but also the ongoing cost to the city's annual budget of the condominium financial arrangement? How will the two new privately owned venues currently under construction impact demand for performance space? And would the PSU concept subsidize the other publicly owned p5 venues like the keller does? Now we need answers. Support for PSU by the mayor's ex officio table was not a majority. I was on that committee. Of the 14 members who submitted their culminating questionnaires, only seven endorsed building at PSU. Of the remaining seven, six stated that more information about cost and funding is needed and the seventh abstained. This is public record. The city owns the keller and its fountain park, and the city must maintain them. Regardless of the decision the council makes, the. Keller already has a coexisting neighborhood of residents, coffee shops, businesses, offices, cafes, bars, restaurants, hotels and parking facilities. We are asking you to reject the mayor's resolution, but I don't like the word no. Before committing the city and the taxpayers to this complex project of unknown cost and unknown funding, please say yes to an affordable future for the keller auditorium and the fountain. Say yes to the affordable fix. Spending 10 to $15 million to complete deferred maintenance and extend the life of the keller. This affordable fix will not disrupt performances and the income they generate. That's very important. Then, when the city is healthier financially, refurbish the keller. Thank you.
126 Thank you. Go right ahead.
127 Good afternoon. My name is karen whitman and I'm representing the halprin landscape conservancy and all of those advocating to renovate the keller auditorium. We oppose the expensive, impractical recommendation. It's about the total price tag, about $1 billion for both projects. And it could take a decade to become a reality. The city has no money at this time to commit to full funding for the PSU project. The color is now headed for a 12 to 1800 seat reduction. Again, no study and no cost estimate. Pay attention because taxpayers are asked to make a commitment without answering the most basic questions first. Who's paying for it and how? No public discussion has explained how the city would absorb this commitment. As we struggle to maintain our infrastructure and services. If the keller is left behind, it will bring with it significant damage to downtown, the neighborhood, and the world famous keller fountain. We respectfully ask you to vote no on the resolution, but we have a few amendments. If you choose to move forward. If this is truly a two theater proposal, proceeding with planning should be for both projects, both for PSU and the keller. Create. A public oversight and advisory committee should be undertaken for both. The city must. Appropriate funding for both. Without a commitment to fund. None of this is a reality. Include a feasibility study of a temporary venue during the keller construction. Why you ask? Because it's the most cost effective solution for our issue. Lastly, when seeking funding for the PSU project, again include the keller. Now at this point is critical. Five years down the road, we believe and will forecast for you. There won't be the political will nor the financial wallet to also fund the keller's future. Right now, as it stands, that is exactly what this proposal allows to have happen. Years from now. The promise is being made. Today will be worth nothing without the actions by the city council and city government. Now, responsible investment starts by asking whether a project is necessary, affordable and supported by evidence on all three counts. This proposal falls short. Don't let the keller be left behind. Thank you.
128 Thank you very much. And you had some recommendations there for language changes. If that's something that you'd like us to consider, if you could either get it to our offices or make sure it's posted in the written testimony.
129 Details of the amendments will follow. Perfect.
130 Thank you, thank you.
131 Thank you.
132 Thank you both for being here with us today. Our second panel is I'm sorry.
133 To get.
134 Our second panel is PSU president cudd and PSU foundation president sarah schwartz. Thank you both. Go right ahead.
135 Good afternoon. And for the record, my name is ann cudd and I'm the president of Portland state university. And I'm thrilled to be here today. Long before I became the president of PSU, Portland was a place that I hoped that someday I could make my home. So when I was given the opportunity to lead this university, I considered myself very lucky indeed. One of the first ideas I encountered when I arrived was the possibility of creating a performing arts and culture center right on campus, with a broadway theater at its heart. And I remember thinking, this is what great cities and great universities do together in partnership. I've spent my career at urban universities across the country, and I've seen what can happen when institutions and civic leaders partner together on a bold vision. Those partnerships create opportunity. They create energy, and they really make cities thrive. This year, Portland state celebrates its 80th anniversary. Throughout our history, we've grown right alongside Portland, and we've always believed that our future is tied to the future of the city. Serving the city is in our dna, and that's how Portland state has approached this opportunity for three years. We've brought our time, our talent, our expertise, our partnerships and our resources to the table because we believe in what this this project can mean for Portland, for downtown, for students from district, all the districts across the city, for artists and art organizations, and for the future citizens who will live, learn, create and work. Here we are all in councilors. We are proud to be your partner and excited to engage this work with you as we help to write the next chapter for Portland and Portland state. So thank you. I'm going to now hand it over to sarah schwartz, who has led this project for PSU from the very beginning.
136 Thank you. Good afternoon. Councilors. Sarah schwartz, president of the PSU foundation, and I'm grateful to be here with you again today. As anne mentioned, three years ago, the city of Portland asked PSU to explore what a broadway capable theater at PSU might make possible in Portland. We accepted that invitation enthusiastically, and in fact, anna and I just compared notes and it was our first meeting on her first time on campus in that spring that we talked about this project, we enthusiastically wanted to be in on this for a few reasons. We believe that PSU was uniquely positioned to serve the city at this very moment. We own the largest developable parcel in downtown Portland. We bring the experience of delivering on major capital projects. We have academic programs that will activate and strengthen these facilities. We are fundraising experts, and we have a mission that is rooted in service to the city. So we proposed something bold an arts and culture hub with a broadway theater at its heart, surrounded by smaller venues, classrooms, collaborative spaces, a conference center, and a hotel intentionally designed to maximize benefits for downtown Portland. The cultural community and the university. We've continued to refine that proposal through hundreds of conversations with artists, arts organizations, business leaders, broadway representatives, community leaders, city staff, faculty and students and donors. And guess what? Over three years, we've learned a lot. Meanwhile, a significant coalition has been assembling behind this effort. Portland state has identified funding for the academic and community spaces. The university will own and operate. Colas development group has been selected to negotiate development of the hotel and conference center. Together, these pieces represent more than $250 million in commitments, financing and resources already connected to this project. So that brings us to today and the resolution that is before you. Importantly, this is not a resolution to approve financing for the city owned broadway theater. It is a resolution to authorize the next phase of work. It allows the city and PSU to get in the room together with a lot of sharpened pencils and probably a few erasers, and dig deeply into the financing strategy, answer outstanding questions, and build the information needed for future decisions. It also authorizes the city to begin an official planning process for the future of keller, something I know all of us are glad to see. This is a significant undertaking, and it's important to recognize that we are not starting from scratch. There have been three years of diligent work and investigation to stay on schedule for a 2030 opening of the broadway capable theater. We asked city council to consider committing to building the broadway capable theater at Portland state, putting a project agreement in place by December 1st of this year, and also by December 1st, making an initial city commitment to invest. Let's talk a minute about the initial city investment to commit or initial city commitment to invest. I want to be real about the numbers. Many big numbers are mentioned with all of these projects, but what I do want to say clearly is that the city and PSU will never need to solve for $1 billion in the near term, meaning by December 1st the ideal number for the city to identify towards this project is $44 million, which is about 10% of the broadway theater cost that was just identified in the city. Documents from the budget note that actually just came out in may. This initial investment or this initial commitment to invest, I should say, would support the efficient sequencing of the immediate pre-development and pre-construction work ahead. But perhaps more importantly, it would signal confidence to donors and other potential funding partners, unlocking private philanthropy and investment. And I just want to take a quick moment on this. We currently have three donors that very early on, stepped forward to make commitments totaling $12.6 million. These folks self-identified and were willing to jump in early because they believed in this bold vision. They believed it was a great opportunity for Portland, and because they also hoped that their commitment would show signs of confidence to the city and to the state, that there is a community of supporters willing to be partners in this project. Finally, an initial commitment to invest from the city will ensure access to the bond financing that has already been authorized by the state of Portland. The performing arts and culture center is a chance to create something Portland has never had before. A broadway capable theater at the heart of a larger cultural campus, and this vision supports downtown's recovery. While we build its future, the keller stays open until the new center opens. Broadway keeps coming to Portland. Audiences keep filling downtown restaurants and hotels, and the city avoids the disruption that would come from a years long closure. With no alternative broadway venue. We at PSU are all in on this project. As president, cudd said, we are committed, capable and solutions oriented partner. If the city council chooses to move forward, we stand ready to continue this work alongside you, turning a bold vision into a workable plan. Thank you for your consideration.
137 Thank you both for being here and for all of the information today. Thank you. Colleagues. Our third panel is representatives of the individuals who work in our venues. We have lori wimmer from the northwest Oregon labor council, randall friesen from the columbia pacific building trades, emily horton from local 28 and I believe rosetta vennochi from iac is with us online as well. Right ahead.
138 Good afternoon, committee members, for your record. Lori wimmer, executive secretary treasurer of the northwest Oregon labor council. We're honored to be here today to speak in support of a path forward for the development of a large, broadway capable theater as a part of the Portland state university arts and culture complex, because we believe it will save, create and expand good union jobs in this city. It will boost wsu's enrollment. It will improve the city's arts inventory, and it will ultimately help revitalize our city. Your predecessors on the former commission originally had just one vision to address the inadequacies of the keller auditorium, which was to close for two or more years to expand and seismically improve it, thereby costing hundreds of jobs and walking away from millions in economic activity and potentially driving off broadway across America, its most lucrative tenant. We stepped forward then and asked that the commission consider a different path, one that could be staged over time, benefit the larger community, and save as many as 1000 jobs. That commission listened. Thank you, councilor Ryan, for your vote to look at these other options. Fast forward to this hearing today. You have before you the work product of two years of meetings, studies, fundraising, and planning for an approach that meets an array of needs. As you've heard, a significant sum of money has already been raised or pledged for the Portland state plan, which would be situated on the largest developable parcel in downtown, just two blocks from the keller. We believe that as Portland continues to build back from the challenges of the past six years, we must play to our strengths. The interinstitutional partnership envisioned by the pac plan plays uniquely to the Portland. We love. We're proud of our excellent arts facilities. Excuse me, our excellent arts faculty at PSU, some of whose students must rehearse in stairwells, and others who have led the university's choir to international fame for its excellence. Today, we're thrilled to say that not only would this path enable our isc members to maintain their employment by moving to the new, larger theater once completed, but that the keller two can still be renovated and offer smaller venue for smaller scale arts programing. Most especially, we'd like to point out that as PSU struggles to reverse its downward enrollment trends and its resulting financial crisis, we see the pac as part of a turnaround effort the university can employ, along with effective marketing of its excellent academic programs, to ensure that there never again in a position to lay off a shameful, huge hunk of their faculty. Psu and the building trades have entered into an agreement not even a week old, to deploy a project workforce development agreement for this project as well. And northwest Oregon labor council was proud to have served as a catalyst for this to occur. We thank president cudd for her willingness to sign on to a labor friendly approach to the development of the arts complex. We also anticipate ongoing work for various other trades once the project is up and running, including engineers, electricians, security and so on. Grateful to this committee for its often expressed union values as city leaders. Your support for this proposal is the best demonstration of those values we can imagine. We urge the committee to send this proposal to the full council with a due pass recommendation. Thank you. And now I'd like to hand it off to rosetta vinicius, who is on your computer screen.
139 Go right ahead, rosetta.
140 Good afternoon, chair pirtle-guiney and members of the committee. For the record, my name is rosetta vinicius, and I am the business representative for its local 28 on stage in Portland since 1895, before any of these venues were built. I represent entertainment industry workers not only at p5 but also at rcm, which is the moda and the vmc, as well as many other sites in southwest Washington and Oregon. Local 28 has enthusiastically endorsed the performing arts and culture center project, to be built on the new site at PSU. We believe this. This protects the long term financial security of the many workers who make broadway shows possible. The potential to transform and advance the entertainment industry workforce in Portland. We need broadway without closure. We need broadway to grow, and we need the continued support for local nonprofit community, as well as many of the small local companies here in Portland. I recognize the city has limited resources, and I really appreciate the careful consideration you give to how you allocate these resources. As someone who has worked in the entertainment industry for 43 years, including touring 36 years as an iatse member here in Portland and all of the current and previous city venues, I want to urge you to invest in our future by creating a true pipeline to a thriving arts and cultural workforce, which pays dividends and the economic impact we see for decades to come. Iatse represents workers across u.s. And canada. Canada, where I'm here today, we know what access to education does for our workforce. This is about building for the future. A broadway theater at the center can be built without the renovation constraints of a smaller site. It will include state of the art stage and technical capabilities, ample backstage working areas, and yes, an adequate amount of restrooms for workers. A lobby that would not just get by, but actually capable of serving the audience size with a fully capable venue. This would ensure shows that Oregonians want to see can come to Oregon. The large site at PSU means there's plenty of room to meet modern safety and operational standards, reducing compromises and would improve load and load out and run of show backstage conditions. There would literally be enough room to fit all of the pieces and larger shows, and we wouldn't have to take them back out on the street and store them in trucks. A staged process for reconstructing the keller after the center opens its doors, avoids a 3 to 5 year broadway disruption. The loss of 300 plus permanent jobs. The impacts of job loss often include a loss of change to health care, which then changes your current doctor that knows you and your family. It delays the ability for people to retire, people who are, within years of retirement, the loss of needed paid time off for mental health breaks, the loss of hours. We need to make our rent or mortgage payments, and it could also be more loss of housing. The list goes on. So now I'd like to turn it over to my colleague emily horton to discuss more of the specifics regarding why a prolonged closure would be devastating and have a devastating impact on entertainment industry workforce. Thank you.
141 Chair pirtle-guiney and members of the committee. My name is emily horton, and I am a wardrobe worker and a member of local 28. As someone who works in the kellar day in and day out, I am intimately aware of the fact that our skills are unique and live event specific. The livelihood of the hundreds of people who work in the creative arts supporting broadway and other shows are contingent upon the decision you make at this committee. I will not spend time discussing the fact that every city supported study has pointed towards advancing a broadway capable venue as part of the performing arts and culture center, but I will just leave you with this. My personal experience and that of my colleagues. I attended a university that has a curriculum where I worked side by side with industry professionals studying university level academics while building a professional resume. My work study job was for an award winning regional theater, allowing me to graduate with minimal debt and a fully developed professional resume that allowed me to transition into a full time career seamlessly. My peers and I love our jobs and have worked tirelessly for decades to excel and thrive at them. These are skills that are built over a lifetime, and there are no other jobs in Portland that require or hire workers. With our skills and the numbers that these performances do, our skills are unique, live, event specific and in demand. Nationwide. We have careers, health insurance, retirement with dignity, and safe, stable places to live because of these good union jobs. And we only have this because of the many different union employers we work for. No one venue or one employer provides us with full time work. It's only through the full ecosystem that we thrive as a community. Thank you for your time and consideration of this resolution.
142 All right. Good afternoon, chair pirtle-guiney and members of the committee. For the record, my name is randall friesen, executive director of the columbia pacific building and construction trades council. The columbia pacific building trades council proudly represents over 20,000 construction professionals and their families across 22 local unions in the Portland, metropolitan and southwest Washington region. We are here today to give public support to the proposed four acre development of the Portland state university's new performing arts venue and hotel development. We are happy to announce that late last week, PSU and the columbia pacific building trades council reached an agreement to ensure the PSU owned portions of this project will have excellent labor standards, ensuring our community will reach maximum return on their investment to this project. This project will create an estimated 2000 construction jobs and 400 permanent jobs, including operations and maintenance, that many of our affiliates also represent. It will also help achieve, excuse me, activate seven blocks of developable, developable proximate property with spillover investment potential of around $1 billion. Beyond the center construction, we have an opportunity to put Portland back on the map as a destination. And that starts with this project. The fact that we have a project workforce development agreement with PSU, which they proactively negotiated with our council, is indicative of a future focused, visionary commitment to collaboratively shaping the future of downtown Portland. This project is unlike any other the city has considered in recent years. It has the potential to drive foot traffic to downtown and put cranes in the air for decades to come, all while advancing a commitment to workforce development, business development, and labor engagement values. I know this committee shares at the council. We work with a lot of developers, but very few like PSU. Psu shares our commitment to working with high road contractors, advancing minority women, emerging veteran and small emerging businesses, and they care about the workers putting their sweat into the building. This campus of the future. In closing, when I think about our city's future, I imagine with a broadway capable venue situated as part of the performing arts and culture center on the PSU campus, I hope you will share this vision. By advancing this resolution together, we can do things for our city, our workers, and our collective future. Thank you all very much for your careful consideration.
143 Thank you all for being part of our conversation today. Colleagues, we are going to hear from a few of our fellow councilors now councilors, Clark council president Dunphy and councilor Kanal, I believe are here. And colleagues, councilor Council president Dunphy and council council vice president Clark sat on one of the work groups that was holding these conversations. So I think it is important for us to hear from them today. Councilors. Go right ahead.
144 Thank you very much. Thank you, councilor. Thank you, chair pirtle-guiney, members of the city life committee. For the record, my name is Jamie Dunphy. I serve as the city council president and proudly represent district one. I've been a big supporter of the vision for the new broadway theater in collaboration with PSU. I've been anything but shy about my opinion about this, and my job today is to tell you why and what I think this moment is about. Like many of the core problems that this this city council faces, the city of Portland owns a deeply neglected and wildly outdated building that no longer meets the needs of our modern economy. And decades of city councilors have kicked the can down the road on doing something about it. There's no capital maintenance fund for the keller, nor any of the theaters that we own. The keller is 100 years old and will fall down if there's an earthquake. It doesn't meet ADA accessibility requirements. There aren't enough bathrooms. It has terrible acoustics. It is extremely low merchandise sales by national standards, not because there aren't theater nerds in Portland who are looking for a t shirt, but because the lobby layout is just bad. Unlike every nearly every major broadway theater in the country, the keller has no loading dock to load. In the phantom of the opera, parked trucks literally circle the block, and one by one pull up to this little hole on the side of the building, with half of their trucks sticking out into clay street. On the inside of the theater, they stack scenery three layers deep in the wings because the building footprint is too small for modern touring productions. Three years ago, when there was a first round of conversations about whether to renovate the keller in place or build a new theater at PSU. At that time, I was a board member of the local nonprofit music Portland, and with our friends at iac and the federation of musicians, afm local 99, we led a campaign to support the PSU project. Why? Because then, as now, the reality was that to. To renovate the keller in place meant that you would have to close it down for years. There is nowhere else in Portland that can accommodate a touring broadway theater, and if the keller closes without a replacement already in hand for over five years, there would be no broadway in Portland. There would be no work for our stagehands. And the funding of the keller generates, which supports the rest of p5 would disappear. And it's not just that we would lose those jobs. We would lose those actual human beings that do the work. They would move to cities like seattle, la or boise, where there's actual work happening. A generation of our workforce would leave the city, and the p5 would either close or move immediately to privatization. I think that's a bad, expensive and damaging outcome for the city. As has been said, the ex officio table, which vice president Clark and I both sat on, and the steering committee have both independently come to recommend to come have both independently come to recommending building a new broadway capable venue in Portland at PSU and developing the keller into a smaller venue. There's no scenario in which anybody supported mothballing the keller. Additionally, the theater arts program at PSU is growing and attracting high quality faculty and an increasing number of students right at the same time that other colleges in our area are reducing these kinds of services, it should not be the case that young artists in Portland have to leave the city they grew up in to have the opportunity to access professional facilities and practitioners. This project offers real opportunities for apprenticeship and workforce development initiatives and stage design and technology. A grounding for the development of competitive performing arts programs, and offers another step towards PSU turning into a regional powerhouse for arts education colleagues. The city has spent a decade trying to figure out what we should do with this theater. The basic realities of the situation have been clear for the whole time. Despite all the media and some naysayers, all professional analysis that the city has commissioned the recommendations before. You are what people in this city who actually touched these buildings with their hands every day have been saying was obvious. Years ago, after a decade of analysis and study groups, the city of Portland has yet to say exactly what it is they want to do. Pick your metaphor. Whether we're kicking the can down the road or trying to split the baby, the city needs a direction. This resolution gives us a direction. It does not commit us to a price. It says there is enough clear direction for you to actually develop a price. And I understand that there are some amendments being proposed, and I'm supportive of the changes that are. I think the language moves us towards clarity because we have to be have the courage to be clear and the intention to take care of our broken stuff. I urge you all please move this forward, make an affirmative decision, and stop tormenting the community by delaying definitive action. We need a decision. I urge you to vote yes on this resolution. Thank you.
145 Thanks. It's really a pleasure to be on this side of the dais. I'm Olivia Clark, I represent district four. I'm also the council vice president, and I did participate in the mayor's ex officio committee. And while I did not agree with my esteemed colleague here, there was not a consensus on the ex officio committee. There was a vote and it was a majority for the PSU proposal. So at that point, I recommended that we have some addendum to this. So I agree with my colleague that we need to bring this chapter to a close. It's been a long, long road and arduous process with lots of committees and lots of talking. But today this is really not an either or decision. From my perspective, we can be a partner with PSU. At the same time, we have to protect the city's interests and the keller. I know PSU needs an academic replacement facility, perhaps to the Smith, my own choir director says that who came out of PSU says they really need an 800 to 900 seat academic facility. And you have heard me repeatedly, colleagues say that we have a history of chasing shiny objects in the city and not caring for what we own our own assets. In fact, three auditors have made that criticism of us. However, I would echo some of the comments that have been made by the previous panels that we are not in a position to financially commit to psu's 3000 seat facility or to upgrade the keller. We do not have the resources for either of these, and I'm concerned about that. So I would like to offer a few potential amendments. I'm sorry I didn't file anything, but I think there's a copy of my amendments with each of you. I also did not have the opportunity to see what the halperin group has proposed as far as amendments, and I'm interested in those. But let me just walk through the changes that I would like to see you consider for the resolution resolution. Just briefly walk through these. Through those. I think that the goal of a 2030 opening date, I don't know if that refers to the academic facility or the larger facility, but I think it may not. It may be unrealistic. And I would urge you to consider removing that unless there is some consequence that I'm not familiar with. There's also no discussion of the operation and maintenance of the facility, along with all the other questions that we have about the city's obligations under the resolution. I'm clearly nervous about the predevelopment functions and what they mean for us. I think that the December 2026 deadline for a project commitment agreement is very ambitious. I I'm not going to recommend anything there, but I'm a little worried that I don't know if this language is necessary for PSU to access the bonds, in which case I appreciate that because I don't want them to lose that opportunity. But lastly, and I think more most importantly, and you've already heard this from other panels, we have to include the future of the keller auditorium in this effort. The keller is our city owned facility, its performance and ticket sales. You've already heard support the p5, and it has tremendous support from the people of Portland and across the region. And like the moda center, we own the keller. If we're going to launch a partnership with psu's conceptual vision. Is that for me? If we're going to actually launch a partnership with PSU and their conceptual vision, then we also must include support for the keller in tandem. Oh, it's for michelle. Okay. It's not for me. The keller is ours. It sits across, as you all know, from an amazing fountain. And it's in a wonderful neighborhood. Thousands of dollars have been already poured into the redesign and positive activation around the keller, including a design by michael curry, which is pretty amazing. So I'm obviously committed to the keller and its positive future. I support what you heard, lejeune thorson from the dna commented earlier regarding some of the improvements that we really should make to the keller now that are not nearly as expensive and they wouldn't interrupt programs, we should consider that. But our our council resolution really needs to reflect our commitment to what we own and what we need to improve. So thank you for allowing me to testify today.
146 Thank you.
147 Thank you, colleagues. And councilor Clark. I suspect we will not get through our discussion today. So if you do have something that you'd like to file, I know we have this in front of us, but so that members of the public can see it too. We should have time to do that before our next committee hearing.
148 Thank you. And I'm interested in any comments or feedback that you have on those proposals as well.
149 Thank you so much. And was councilor Kanal able to join us? I think he had another engagement that was running late, so if he is able to join, we will get him in to the mix later. But in the meantime, we are now going to move to public testimony, and I think we have just over an hour's worth of testimony from folks signed up. So we'll get through as much as we can and roll over the rest of our conversation to our next meeting. Diego, could you please call up the first five people signed up to testify?
150 Thank you. And just a few procedural notes for testimony for those signed up for verbal testimony, a reminder that each testifier will receive two minutes each. I will call up folks in groups of five. For those testifying in person, you will see a timer countdown displayed on the monitor in front of the testimony table. For those that are testifying virtually, the timer is displayed in zoom. When testifying, you will hear the timer chime twice. The first time is a warning when you have 30s left, then a second time when your time is up. And finally, before you begin your testimony, please state your name for the record. So our first group.
151 Before you call up the first group, I apologize. I just saw councilor Green poke his head around the corner. I had thought he wasn't able to join us today, but councilor, if you're still here. Nope. I'm not seeing him. Come back. Okay, we'll figure that out. And let's go ahead and get our first panel of public testimony. Thank you.
152 Julie vigeland, kimiko matsuda, aj romero, jamal, lisa lipton b, masten.
153 And folks, when you come up to testify, go ahead. And whoever is sitting down and ready first is welcome to kick off the group.
154 Chair, pirtle-guiney and committee members. For the record, my name is julie vigeland. I'm a south waterfront resident and lifelong advocate, patron, volunteer and supporter of the arts and culture in Portland. I'm here today to thank you for your extraordinary work. The recommendations before you are the result of years of study, public engagement, and thoughtful deliberation. The public conversation has at times been passionate and challenging as conversations about the future of important cultural institutions often are. Through it all, I appreciate council's collective commitment to looking beyond individual interests and focusing on what will be best serving Portland for the generations to come. I have spent much of my life championing and supporting the arts, because I believe they are essential to the health of a city. They inspire us, challenge us, enrich our neighborhoods, strengthen our economy, and create the shared experiences that help communities thrive. That is why I am encouraged by such a clear recommendation to move forward with the performing arts and culture center at the. With the broadway theater at its heart, we have an opportunity to think more expansively about what arts and culture can mean for future generations at a place that welcomes new audiences, connects students and educators with performing arts, and strengthens artists and arts organizations across our region, and, importantly, inspires philanthropy. I know from personal experience that donors are drawn to bold visions, strong partnerships, and projects that can make a lasting difference in front of us. We have that truly unique opportunity that will bring people together to invest in portland's future. As someone who spent decades championing the arts, today, I find myself thinking less about my generation and what we enjoyed, and more about what we will leave behind at some point. Every generation becomes a steward rather than a beneficiary. My hope is that future portlanders will look back and say, we had the vision to invest not only in what Portland was, but in what it could become.
155 Thank you.
156 Oh, okay, I guess I'm next. Hello, councilors. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. My name is b masten. I am an out and proud trans woman. She her pronouns and proud member of unite here local eight. I'm also an employee of levy restaurants, and I work as a bartender at Portland. Five you can see many of my coworkers in red shirts behind me. I hope you can see them. We want to make sure that you all know that we are p5 workers, even though we're subcontractors. Many of us were here before. Our current employer will be here when they leave. If they leave. And, you know, we want to make sure that y'all remember us when you make these decisions, even though we're not directly employed by the city, there's been a lot of anxiety from folks that work at p5 about the future of the keller. And we're glad to hear that y'all are moving in a direction that does not involve a closure yet. You know, we're also have anxiety about the city considering the operating model for p5 venues and what that might mean for us. I've worked at p5 for 24 years and I've, you know, I feel like I've served half of Portland by now, and probably many of the people in this room. And, you know, we build relationships with our, our guests. I have regulars that I've been serving for ten years. Many of us have been there for longer than that. You know, there's very little turnover. It's a good job. It's a really good job. And, you know, I used to be on public assistance, but we have a good contract and we have health insurance. We're trying to get more people on it. But if we lose the keller, if we're closed, then no one's going to be able to get health insurance and our jobs will not be sustainable. And we're here today to ask for just a few things. We need to know that there is a plan that will prevent disruption of. Keller shows if a PSU venue is built, we need to know that our. We'll have our jobs. If PSU builds a hotel. We would like to have a fair process for those workers to join a union. We want union labor for construction and we need to know that we will keep our jobs and our union contract regardless of who is the operator. And thank you.
157 Thank you.
158 Good afternoon. My name is kimiko matsuda. I am an active supporter of the arts, a member of local 28 and the vice chair of Portland center stage. I'm here because I believe Portland has an important choice to make about the future we're building. When we consider projects like this, we shouldn't judge them solely by what Portland needs today. We should ask what we want Portland to represent 30 years from now. The cities that admire that we admire didn't become great. By only solving today's problems. They become great because previous generations invested in a future they might never see themselves. For too long, we've operated from a scarcity mindset, asking what we have to cut or what we should, what isn't working. But cities don't become great by managing decline. They become great because we invest in the things that inspire people to stay, inspire people to create, build and believe in a shared cultural future. This is why the cultural center matters. Portland state university isn't a for profit driven corporation. It's our urban public university with a mission that serves students and the city that makes PSU one of portland's most important civic partners. The cultural center at PSU is more than a campus project. It's an investment in portland's creative ecosystem, a place where students, working artists, entrepreneurs, community members can all collaborate. I often say that the ideas that start here in Portland have the power to change the world. People choose where they live, invest, build and base their futures on what makes them feel great. Great cities become destinations people choose. This project isn't just about today's Portland. It's an investment in Portland as a world class city. Thank you.
159 Good afternoon councilors. My name is lisa lipton. As an arts leader, entrepreneur, arts funding advocate and portlander, I urge the city life committee to support projects that strengthen our arts ecosystem, including Portland state university's proposed performing arts and culture center, while maintaining productive relationships with everyone in the community. As Portland looks toward the future, building community, revitalizing downtown and creating opportunities for arts and culture to thrive, we need spaces that actively invest in the people who make this city creative. The new center at PSU will train students while placing them directly within a working ecosystem of productions, performances, new work, and professional artists. Portland needs traditions, and it also needs a center of capable. A center capable of accommodating larger productions while remaining accessible to smaller theater and performance ensembles. With 250 to 500 seat attendance per production, PSU has recently made difficult decisions and significant cuts in pursuit of greater long term sustainability. The fact that the university continues to invest in the long term vision and design of this center, even while making challenging changes within its educational programs, speaks to the importance of this project and the future PSU believes it can build alongside portland's arts and culture community. I urge the city life committee to believe in that future as well, and to support new projects as it pertains to arts and culture. I believe we can do this, and I believe that we can do this and also invest in the future to arts and culture. Presentations are not one size fits all. There is room for all of us in the future. This is the message the community needs right now. Thank you.
160 Chair pirtle-guiney vice chair Zimmerman and members of the committee. For the record, my name is aj romero and I serve as the PSU graduate student trustee on the board of trustees. I'm here today in strong support of the resolution to advance a new broadway capable venue as a part of the proposed performing arts and culture center at Portland state university. In my role on the board, I represent the voice of students across all disciplines, backgrounds and areas of study. From a governance and student perspective, this project is a transformative generational opportunity for our entire university, community and region. This center will not just transform downtown, it will be a powerful engine for student recruitment and enrollment. Today's students are looking for vibrant, connected campuses with state of the art resources hosting a premiere broadway capable facility right on
161 Campus gives PSU a unique competitive edge, attracting top talent locally, nationally and internationally not only in the performing arts, but across business, technical and creative fields. Integrating a world class venue into our campus directly enhances the overall student experience and catalyzes downtown revitalization. It expands academic and workforce development opportunities across campus, creating high value internships, technical jobs, and venue and event management roles. Beyond those broader impacts, having a broadway capable venue on our campus provides access to training facilities and mentorship opportunities that our students would benefit from and might not have otherwise have access to. This especially matters as PSU is an access institution. Locating academic space next to professional theater space will give PSU performing arts students a direct view into potential careers following graduation. These facilities will also provide necessary upgrades that will impact students across all domains of study at Portland state. As someone who took language courses in my undergrad at Portland state, having practice rooms next to next to traditional classrooms made oftentimes for disruptive learning. The performing arts and culture center fixes that very problem, improves the student experience and improves graduation outcomes. I urge the city to support the new broadway capable venue at PSU as part of the performing arts and culture center. This commitment from the city will be a pivotal moment for our region, our community, our programs, and our students. Thank you for your time and for your leadership.
162 Thank you all for sharing your perspectives with us today.
163 Linda. Mckim. Bell. Carol morse. Josh hecht. Chuck dillard. Leroy. Bynum.
164 Welcome. Thank you all for coming. Go right ahead. Why don't we start at the end?
165 Good afternoon. My name is leroy bynum, and I am the dean of su's extraordinary college of the arts. I am beyond excited to speak to you about the performing arts and culture center, and most especially, the large performing hall, and how it most assuredly will elevate performance experiences in Portland for decades to come. As a performing artist and lifelong lover of the stage, for me, the process of developing this proposal has been all about serving and uplifting portland's entire performance ecosystem. At the same time, the arts educator and arts administrator in me are keenly aware of the transformative power of performance venues like the one being proposed to elevate the arts and the artists while also bringing cultural, economic and social vibrancy to the communities they serve. As part of su's amazing action team working on this project, I've had hundreds of animated conversations with a wide, wide variety of arts and culture organizations. It's been a tremendous learning experience, and as an artist myself, there are two certainties I've always known, both of which were affirmed in every conversation I've had. First, all artists need venues that allow them to look and sound their best. And second, all audience members need to see and hear clearly what is being presented on the stage. This requires the intentional creation of state of the art, tunable acoustics and complementary sightlines, achievable with certainty only when a performance hall is built from the ground up in adequate space. Psu excels in training amazing performing artists. Imagine the synergy generated from curated or chance interactions between PSU stars of tomorrow and the music and theater worlds stars of today. We are eager to help build the talent pipeline for backstage professionals Portland so desperately needs. Thank you for asking us to offer a proposal to build portland's broadway theater on campus.
166 Good afternoon. My name is doctor chuck dillard. I am the director of the school of music and theater at Portland state university. I strongly support advancing the performing arts and culture center, because I see every day how our current facilities limit our students and our ability to serve Portland. Our students study music and theater in a converted high school, not a purpose built arts facility. Our popular sonic arts and music production program cannot grow beyond its capacity, beyond the capacity of its limited, ill equipped spaces. Our three bands rehearse in a room with serious hearing safety concerns, and our award winning chamber choir that just returned from china rehearses in a lecture hall in cramer hall. Because lincoln hall has no suitable space. Sound bleed, elevator noise, streetcar rumblings and inadequate acoustics prevent professional quality rehearsals, performances and recordings. But these are not merely inconveniences. They restrict enrollment, weaken morale, and tell talented students that their education has not received the investment the same investment as other disciplines. The pac would change that, but its impact would extend far beyond PSU. Purpose built rehearsal rooms, recording facilities and performance spaces would help us prepare the next generation of portland's performers, educators, technicians and arts leaders. Sharing a home with professional and nonprofit arts organizations would create internships, workforce training, and daily interaction with working artists. Right now, I have one foot in optimism with the promise of what PSU could become and one foot bracing for a future with facilities that cannot accommodate the growth that we are expected to produce. A yes from this committee would give our students, faculty, arts partners and this community a reason to plan confidently for the future. Please advance pac and help us build a place worthy of portland's students and its extraordinary arts community.
167 Please go right ahead.
168 Hello, I am carol morse. I reside in district four, and I'm the retired president of the pge foundation. I've been an advocate and grant maker to the arts through a number of volunteer board roles as well the Oregon cultural trust rack and Portland opera. The resolution you are now considering reflects years of study and public engagement. I'm encouraged to see such a strong path forward emerging during my years at pge foundation at oct and at rack. I had the privilege of helping direct significant investments in arts and culture throughout our state. It taught me that transformative civic projects share one important characteristic they inspire people to invest. Just look at the success of the rothko pavilion at the Portland art museum. The strongest projects create a sense of shared ownership and shared possibility. That's what's compelling about the performing arts and culture center project at PSU. Even at this early stage, the project has attracted support from public entities, institutional partners, private developers and private philanthropy. As someone who's closely worked over decades with donors and corporate leaders, I can tell you that that matters profoundly. People invest when they see momentum, credible partnerships, and when they believe a project has the potential to make a lasting difference. The PSU project has that potential not only in a venue, but in artists, students, audiences, economic vitality, and the cultural life of our city. Portland has been given the chance to make a decision that will shape its cultural life for the next century. Such opportunities are rare. They deserve vision, partnership and leadership. I encourage the city life committee to continue moving this current proposal forward to the city council. Thank you.
169 Thank you. Go right ahead.
170 Good afternoon, council members. My name is josh hecht. I'm the artistic director of profile theater, which at 29 years old, is one of the longest running theaters in the state of Portland, in the state of Oregon and a pillar of portland's theater community. Three reasons why I am excited about wsu's performing arts and culture center. One embedding portland's broadway capable venue within portland's public university dramatically expands its civic and cultural impact, placing a major cultural asset at the heart of a university with as profoundly diverse a student body as PSU creates opportunities for students, artists, and indeed the city that is unique in the country. Two as a director and producer working across the country, I have seen firsthand how powerful the relationship between universities and major arts organizations can be, creating opportunities for collaboration, resource sharing, and education that neither can do alone. That's what I see in this proposal, which will elevate both PSU attracting students and faculty from across the country as well as portland's arts ecosystem. With a state of the art, multi stage, world class venue at profile, we regularly bring tony award, pulitzer prize, and obie winning playwrights to Portland to develop and premiere new work with local artists. A world class facility like this one would enhance our ability to attract world class artists, while creating more opportunities for Portland based performers, designers, technicians, and students. Third, and most importantly, I am especially encouraged by what this means for the next generation profile is partnering with PSU to develop a two year certificate program in theater design and production that will help train emerging technical talent right here in Portland. The center would create a direct connection between education and practice, strengthening the workforce that arts organizations in our region depend on. This project is about more than a theater. It's about what becomes possible when broadway, higher education and portland's arts community are all connected in one place, providing extraordinary opportunities for all. I'm convinced that a project of this scope will elevate portland's reputation as a major center for the arts in this country. Thank you.
171 For the record, my name is linda mckim bell, and I'm an alumna of PSU and a downtown dweller, inventor of the I love downtown buttons and founder of the goose hollow foothills league neighborhood association. I volunteer with the PSU senior adult learning center, and I'm here today in support of the resolution to advance a new broadway capable venue as part of the proposed performing arts and culture culture center at PSU. This project is so much more than a new auditorium. It provides ample. That provides ample spaces for traveling productions. The larger auditorium will be built on land owned by PSU and gifted to the city at a transportation hub that currently leads to nowhere beyond the auditorium. There's another prize. The complex will include a smaller auditorium for local arts events, office space for local arts organizations, classrooms that are tech equipped and versatile for music practice and small theater performance. There is potential for outdoor events. Plaza with advanced small businesses, cafes, restaurants and vending opportunities that will add foot traffic safety and places for community. This is what seniors in our community in the surrounding high rises need. The performing arts center has a potential as an economic engine to. To make Portland a win win in every way. The center will bring people from all walks of life to downtown, uplifting students and giving them a step into the workforce, giving our seniors downtown the opportunity for community, volunteering, belonging, even meeting, and more. There's a dearth of cafes and meeting places for in this area of downtown. And we need this. We need a safe downtown, and I urge the city to support the new broadway capable venue at PSU. This. This from the city will be a generational moment for our region and community, an opportunity we cannot afford to pass up.
172 Yeah. Thank you all very much for being a part of the conversation today.
173 Daniel. Daniel pollack-pelzner rada. Barragan. Cruz, greta liu, diana stewart, andy siegrist.
174 Thank you all. While others come up, why don't you go ahead and get started right there on the end.
175 Thank you councilors. My name is daniel pollack-pelzner. I teach theater at Portland state university. I write about performing arts across the nation for the new york times and the new yorker, and I'm proud to be here in support of this resolution. I'm born and raised in Portland. My wife and I moved back here after graduate school to raise our kids in Portland. I remember my parents taking me and my sister to see peter pan at the civic auditorium when I was a kid, and now they take their grandkids to see touring broadway shows, something we love about Portland. But what we love is not a specific building. What we love is the community, and what we love is the entire ecology of the arts in this city that allows our region to blossom through the performing arts. And what I found when I've researched and written about centers across the country, whether it's in manhattan or austin or tempe, is that the performing arts centers that can really transform a city are never standalone structures. They're never just a single city block. They're always partnerships, and they're always collaborations between nonprofit arts organizations, commercial theater, universities, private philanthropy, and government bodies. And that's why I'm here in support of the Portland arts and culture center. I am so moved to look around this room and see my students and my colleagues and our colleagues in the performing arts and private donors and our university leaders, all of whom are saying, we're not a billionaire coming to shake you down. We're not in the band-aid business. We are bringing our resources and our time and our expertise because we want to partner with you to change the city. This is what could galvanize the city, and this is what could change portland's story. And I think we all know Portland needs a different story. When I get national editors asking me to write a story about the arts in Portland, to be honest, in the last five years, they're always asking the question, what went wrong? And we now have an opportunity, maybe a once in a generation opportunity, to flip that question around. If we can pursue the option that lifts up potential for students, that lifts up arts education, that lifts up the nonprofit organizations in our community, and that partners those with the thrill of broadway, then we not only galvanize the city, we get to tell the story, and our grandkids will be able to look back and tell this story of where we went. Right. Thanks for supporting.
176 Thank you. Go right ahead.
177 Buenas tardes. Good afternoon, chair pirtle-guiney vice chair Zimmerman and members of the committee. My name is barragan cruz, and I am a PSU student and singer here in support of the proposed performing arts and culture center at PSU. I am entering my third year at PSU studying music education with an emphasis in voice, and I perform as a mariachi singer across Oregon. Music isn't just my major, but it is my life's work. Singing mariachi allows me to keep our cultural traditions alive and share my heart directly with our community. While my studies at PSU are preparing me to guide our next future generations, and I would like to sing a little something by josé lopez alavés.
178 O tierra del sol. Suspiro por verse. Eoq. O vivo sin luz, cinnamon, alvar me tan so la cual es el viento quisiera llorar quisiera morir de san miguel.
179 As a music student at PSU, I see firsthand how desperately our performing arts program need modern, functional space. Right now, students are constantly competing for limited, outdated practice space. As a member of the chamber choir, we practice in a classroom in the same building as the geology and history departments. The jazz choir practices in a stairwell in lincoln hall. Our students deserve better. This project promises a direct bridge to the professional world, training alongside touring productions and industry professionals. Give student artists, technicians and musicians invaluable real world experience, mentorship and networking opportunities. Right side, right outside our classrooms. I urge the city to support the new broadway capable venue at PSU. This commitment from the city will be a generational moment for our region, community programs and our students. Mil. Gracias. Thank you so much.
180 Thank you so very much.
181 Thank you, chair pirtle-guiney and members of the committee on city life. My name is greta lao, and I'm testing testifying in support of the resolution to advance a new broadway capable venue as part of the proposed performing arts and culture center at Portland state university. I'm a resident of district four and have been living and working in downtown Portland for the past four years. Just two months ago, I graduated from Portland state university with a degree in theater arts. I am invested in this project not only for the betterment of the city, but for theater artists and university students alike. Now more than ever, the college of the arts at PSU is experiencing a renaissance. New faculty courses and a growing student body means that the next generation of world class artists and technicians is growing right here in our city, having a space that is made by us, for us, is a crucial next step toward solidifying Portland as a vibrant and creative city worthy of recognition. During my time at PSU, I was taught the ins and outs of what it is like to work in professional arts venues. I understand what it takes to produce a show from load in to load out. I have both sat in the audience and seen the inner workings backstage of nearly every major theater in Portland. I can tell you confidently that the keller, as it is, is holding us back as the only option for many large scale touring shows. The space pales in comparison to modern industry standards. With so little room to grow in a single city block, the time is now to invest in portland's thriving performing arts industry. If I were to speak only for myself, this project would give me so much hope for the future of performing arts in Portland. Knowing that the city has invested in the future of artists like myself would only reaffirm my love of Portland and my desire to stay and work right here in downtown. But I know that beyond me, future generations of PSU students deserve a space built with them in mind and with plenty of room to grow. Thank you for your service to our city, and I urge you to support this resolution.
182 Good afternoon. My name is diana stewart. For over four years, I've immersed myself in the city's debate about what to do with our performing arts center issue. As a resident of the core downtown, I believe that ultimately, the keller renovation is a stunning, visionary catalyst needed to protect struggling businesses around the keller and to keep my neighbors who are considering leaving the downtown and leaving the Portland area due to tax burdens here in Portland. However, having sat through many of your budget meetings, neither project should now capture my tax dollars, which rather should go to the urgent needs of the city that we all love and meet the needs that each of you have advocated for. Keeping Portland safe. Addressing the crises on our streets, preserving essential livability services. I've been perplexed by what appears to be the city bureau's thumb on the scale performing the PSU concept. The only answer I can come up with is what I've been told by various city council members that the PSU pr department is a tsunami of information influencing and attempting to influence each one of you. Instead, polling shows that citizens agree that with the mayor when he says Portland doesn't build massively expensive new. When we can preserve and renovate what we own. I have forwarded several charts to each of you, referencing what I consider to be misinformation that has been coming out to council. Number one shows that PSU recently admitted they have no idea how much the resolution that you may be passing will commit you to. Second, the renovation can address all of president dunphy's concerns that he articulated today. And third, the period of time is not 3 to 5 years. It's significantly shorter. Passing this resolution will be a massive political, cultural economic mistake. Please ensure that the resolution gives you an off ramp. If you decide after the additional study that's being requested, that the project is untenable. Thank you very much.
183 Thank you all so much for being here today.
184 Once more for andy siegrist. Okay. Next, paul mannheimer. Duke. Castle. Javier. Stickler.
185 Bob.
186 Nadeau. Jane. Taylor.
187 Go right ahead and begin.
188 Good afternoon. Councilors. My name is paul mannheimer. In 2016, I was honored to be named oregon's high school social studies teacher of the year. Since becoming a portlander in 1974, I have attended hundreds of performances at theater venues across the city. As a middle school teacher, I helped lay the groundwork for future arts patrons by arranging matinee field trips to downtown Portland theater performances. I know you are giving weight to tangible arguments as you consider the decision in front of you. Art performances aren't always tangible plays, ballets, tedx events, and musicals tug at our feelings. In that spirit, and because kim stafford was one of my mentors and remains a hero, I offer a poem. If pioneer courthouse square is portland's living room. Keller auditorium is portland's family room. Family rooms hold memories. Memories span generations. As five year olds. Grandma takes us to the nutcracker dressed in our finery. We marvel at the fountain for the first time before sinking into our adult sized seats. We clap when the lens, skipping up the aisle to wave goodbye to the sugar plum fairy and the fountain. As 12 year olds granddad takes us to the lion king dressed in our finery. We jump the terraces in the fountain before oohing over the view from our balcony seats. We sing circle of life on our way home. We remember the cool acoustics. Our memories hang on the walls of the keller. We don't need a new house or even an addition. We carefully remove our memories to paint the walls. Patch up the dry rot, sand the floors. And then we can hang our memories in keller auditorium again and take our grandchildren to the nutcracker and the lion king, adding new memories to the walls in portland's family room. Thank you for your time and good luck with your decision.
189 My name is duke castle. I'm here to recommend that you do not approve the mayor's resolution. If there's any bias in this discussion, it should be in enhancing and retaining the keller. The keller is easily accessible from I-5. Has parking for over 2000 vehicles, three hotels with hundreds of rooms, numerous restaurants within walking distance. The seismic issues and other concerns about the keller are not under dispute. However, if they could be successfully dealt with, why would we abandon the keller? Such a plan to successfully resolve those issues was submitted to the city in 2023. It showed that the keller could be upgraded to meet current seismic code, and in a statement by tim eddy of henneberry eddy architects and I quote, the study has concluded that it is feasible to upgrade the keller auditorium to the standards of a state of the art 21st century performance venue, and to resolve all of the facility's current physical and operational challenges. I've seen nothing to invalidate that statement. Why, then, would we set aside a plan that has the potential to resolve all of our concerns about the keller? The only other reason that is cited is concern about the disruption to the community while the keller is renovated. That's a very legitimate issue. But to solve it with the significant expense of building a whole new permanent facility and all of the needed supporting infrastructure is an excessive answer to a temporary problem. Other cities faced with this problem have developed or created temporary venues at a fraction of the cost of building a new venue. We should do the same. I would strongly suggest that we revisit and further redefine the keller feasibility study, and invest money in exploring and developing a temporary venue to bridge the time the keller is being renovated. Thank you.
190 Councilors. My name is bob naito. I'm the chair of the halpern landscape conservancy. This proposal to build a replacement for the keller auditorium at PSU and then renovate and downsize the keller to 1200 to 1800 seats is flawed. The city has offered no funding plan, no studies that prove the need for a smaller keller, and has no guarantees that the keller would eventually be renovated. The combined capital cost of the full PSU complex, plus a renovated keller is approaching $1 billion, and I brought a chart. Since that number doesn't show up anywhere in the resolution, and I'll leave copies with the clerk. This is all happening in a city that remains deeply divided over how we pay for another city owned asset. The moda center. And in a city where Portland. Five centers for the performing arts buildings need about $336 million in deferred capital maintenance. And that's a study recently published by metro. The city's marketing consultants found insufficient market demand for two large broadway theaters in Portland. Why were they not tasked with studying the very proposal? This administration is bringing forward no plans or cost estimate for a downsized keller exist, and no analysis exists of whether a 12 to 1800 seat keller would generate sufficient operating revenue to cover its own costs, let alone contribute to the p5 system it currently subsidizes. Don't kick the keller down the road yet again. Have the courage to demand answers to the fundamental questions before committing the city to $1 billion boondoggle.
191 Thank you.
192 Good afternoon councilors. My name is xavier de stickler and I am a student at PSU. We've heard a lot today about vision. Don't get me wrong, vision is good. As an aspiring urban planner, I am all about vision. But I'm here to bring you all back down to reality a little bit. Put simply, we don't have the money for this, you guys. While it's easy to say we'll investigate funding mechanisms later on, let's be clear the city's budget deficit is structural. The tough choices with the budget you all have faced in the last two years are going to persist for the foreseeable future. It pains me to say this, but we do not have the dollars even to complete the renovation of the keller well, maintaining it at a 3000 seat capacity estimated at a cost of 236 million. That's the cheapest option here. That means we certainly don't have the money for a new venue at PSU, which is almost double that cost to the city, let alone the pursuit of both theaters, which is nearly a $1 billion commitment. Unfortunately, this resolution is a whole lot of dollars and not very much sense. While it's true we will eventually need a 21st century keller, no one's disputing that. At a time when transit is being slashed, essentially, employee employees are being let go from both the city and PSU, and our public infrastructure maintenance backlog is ballooning. It makes no sense to prioritize this project in the context of so many more critical life saving needs. It makes no sense to be adding a new a whole new theater to the city's portfolio, especially while at the same time renovating what is currently a profit generating venue into one which will need deep public subsidies, will be a smaller size, and the reconstruction of which will cost very nearly what it would take to maintain it at 3000 seats. It makes no sense for PSU, an institution laying off my instructors with declining enrollment and where 1 in 5 students are housing or housing insecure or homeless to be prioritizing getting into the entertainment business. The only responsible choice here is for council to find the 10 to $15 million needed to keep the keller in a good state of repair for the next ten years. Broadway has already renewed their contract with keller until 2033. Give the economy a chance to recover for PSU to stabilize, for the bond market, to improve, for the city to actually study the feasibility of a temporary venue. It has been done, then will be the right time to pursue this vision. And so I urge you to make the very difficult choice to vote no on this resolution. Thank you.
193 Hello, my name is jane taylor. I'm an actor, singer, director and a resident of downtown Portland. I am going to ask you not to consider this proposal and not to approve this proposal, because for specifically financial reasons, I love all of the passion that's been shown for improving the arts community here in Portland. However, it's clear that the costs 290 000 to build to renovate the keller versus 447,000 to build a new 3000 seat auditorium at Portland state is and doesn't make sense to me. There are costs that aren't in the proposal with regards to utilities, traffic and the infrastructure that the city would be required to adjust in order to accommodate this. And in addition, there are costs for the hotel that's being proposed in addition to the auditorium. I don't think we have all of the facts yet. Portland state is an incredibly viable part of the downtown ecosystem, and it's one that I've enjoyed as I've taken classes there. However, they've recently announced a $35 million budget deficit. They've taken away two complete academic programs and let go of a number of instructors. To me, investing in this economically doesn't make sense for them because it jeopardizes their positive impact on the community, spending millions and millions of dollars in things that don't make sense to the community, or for academics. Spending more money to get less value would be a sad act for a university who would fail their students and their community. And a mayor of city council that would be viewed as being out of step of the economic needs of this community. Thank you.
194 Thank you so much for being here and being part of the conversation today.
195 Next is ian walton. Claire blaylock, linda moss, jordan del valle, taiwan taoyuan, and joel thorson.
196 Go right ahead on the end there while we wait for others to make their way up. Please go right ahead.
197 Good afternoon. My name is ian walton. I have been a Portland resident for 25 years. Prior to retiring, I was a consulting partner with pricewaterhousecoopers, and I have experience in reviewing high value capital projects. With the world's renewed interest in ancient greece. You'll forgive me if I describe this as a financial trojan horse. My wife and I have volunteered at Portland fire for many years, and I support public involvement in the arts scene. However, in the current climate, such projects must be at the lowest cost and the lowest project risks. The PSU proposal is neither the collab project, with or without a temporary location meets this requirement. The cost will be well earned. Both will escalate, but the differential between the two is quite clear and will remain that way. What I will concentrate on is project risks. The keller project has a single stakeholder, clear objectives and a well understood site. The PSU project has multiple stakeholders, including Oregon state and whoever runs the parking structure and the hotel. It has multiple complex objectives, one of which appears to be transition to transition. A challenged academic institution into the vaudeville and hotel business. The consultant's argument, which rules out the temporary option on page 27, is almost laughably flawed on its face. I am familiar with some of the temporary sites in london, and I think I should say they are great fun. If you are thinking folding chairs in tents, then think again. I would urge you to reject this proposal and initiate a sensible reconsideration of the temporary facility as part of a plan to refurbish the keller. You will then be in a position to put a price on the retention of the broadway shows during the keller's. During the keller's closure and its real impacts on the situation. Thank you.
198 Thank you. Go right ahead.
199 Good evening councilors. My name is jordan del valle. I use he him pronouns. I'm a south downtown resident and I hold a bachelor's in community development from Portland state university. I have a background in technical theater and have won awards for stage management, and I urge you to vote no on this resolution because it represents the wrong priorities for a public university. A university's primary mission should be to educate. It exists to teach students, support faculty, and serve the public. Yet, while PSU is laying off faculty and eliminating academic programs, most recently 36 faculty members and programs like conflict, conflict resolution, and diversity studies, the school's general education pathway is pursuing a massive new capital project that does not address the urgent needs of its students. The city should not reward this behavior. Students are struggling with the basic conditions necessary to succeed. I personally knew students who had struggled with housing insecurity while trying to complete their education, living in their cars, working multiple jobs just to make ends meet. The university has a tremendous opportunity to use its land in this transit rich, amenity filled part of the city to address those challenges. Student housing, affordable housing, workforce housing, market rate, housing even would directly support the university community and surrounding city. Despite her testimony today about the vision for PSU upon her hiring, president cudd has already identified these priorities in her report from the governor's participation in the governor's Portland city central city task force focused on addressing future economic growth and immediate challenges facing the central city in 2023, she wrote, highlighting things that the university could do to help downtown, rethinking educational spaces to make them more connected to the community, expanding childcare access, supporting affordable housing for students in the downtown core. And the outcomes also explicitly reference improving and renovating existing buildings, including seismic retrofits. These are concrete actions that would directly serve the students in Portland residents. Yet instead of advancing those priorities, PSU is moving forward with a major new performing arts facility. A public university should not expand its footprint while shrinking its classrooms. It should not have spent money lobbying for a new prestige project. While students struggle to afford housing and faculty positions are being eliminated. Portland deserves a thriving arts community, but it also deserves a public university focused first on teaching, learning and serving its community. Thank you.
200 Go right ahead. Please go ahead. Yes.
201 Good afternoon, council members. My name is linda moss. I live in district four here in Portland. Four years in Portland, 20 years with grandchildren here and spending a lot of time here. I'm here before you. I was one of the 12 members on the steering committee. My background. I am a chair emeritus of the northwest area foundation, a large foundation that funds in Oregon as well as eight other states. I am a former state senator and majority whip in montana, so I have some policy work as well. And also I've worked in local government as an executive director of a large regional history museum. So with those different perspectives, I came to the steering committee with open eyes. And I we read multiple reports. You've seen them. And I just want to encourage you to really look at the report that came from this 12 member steering committee. It was a unanimous decision to support our recommendation to move forward with this project. And we had multiple discussions. And I want to say to all of the people that have testified, especially the people who have concerns, we had those same concerns. We asked questions. And I have to say, the arts and cultural committee staff members were excellent in answering our question, providing additional information that may not even be in the reports that are on the website. So it's a thorough examination of this, of this issue, and I really encourage you to support the resolution. It's a once in a lifetime, in a once in a lifetime opportunity for the city of Portland.
202 Thank you. Go right ahead.
203 Joel thorson, it's it's my community, the residents slash taxpayers and voters of Portland that I'm advocating for and nobody else. I approached this as both a former journalist and a veteran of 34 years developing software, a career that I could not have undertaken or found satisfaction in with very culminating careers. Career assignments at amazon and bonneville power toward the end, in which I was involved in critical software systems development, using tools, intellectual and skills, tools and skills that I gained from Portland state's system science program. I'm very grateful to the education that I got there. It set me on my path. I'm a very devoted PSU supporter. However, I'm puzzled by the change in the voice that I hear, and I'm wondering who or what is the real PSU? The voice. Its public voice today doesn't seem to match the PSU that I knew. I've concluded there are two, not one organizations the university I love, and the relentless pr and fundraising juggernaut that is in the process of dictating portland's future. Anything less with a project that rivals portland's biennial budget in size, the money to be laid on the backs of Portland taxpayers. Their presumed number two is. They presume to answer the. The question, what becomes of the keller. Think about it. Have you ever heard of a. A renovation project, public or private, to make a facility less capable of performing the same function that it was, has been serving up to now? That's that's doomed to be tantamount to replacing a cash cow with one more drain on the city's finances. It's financially laughable. It's empire building, and it's not worthy of the slogan let knowledge serve the city. It's in fact, a blatant attempt to fund a financially preposterous, engineering visionary adventure at the public's expense. Thank you.
204 Thank you all so much for being here and sharing your perspectives.
205 Ramin farahmand per. Kate. Meera.
206 Welcome.
207 Chairman.
208 Chairman, members of the committee. My name is ramin amanpour. I'm a tenured professor and former faculty senator at Portland state university, where I've taught for 23 years. I'm also under an active layoff. Notice I speak today only for myself. I'm not here to oppose the strong future for performing arts, nor to defend a building with serious seismic flaws. I'm here because this institution is speaking to two different rooms at the same time. In this room. Portland state is the lead developer of a project estimated at more than 600 million. In another room, the same institution has declared a fiscal emergency. Its enrollment has fallen 23% since 2019, and it is retrenching faculty and staff and cutting academic programs. I understand capital bonds cannot pay salaries. This is not the point. You are being asked to tie this city's arts future to an institution that is shrinking and cutting its core, even as it takes on a project of this size. Consider the city's own position. It already owns three downtown performing arts halls that need as much as 336 million in deferred maintenance. Today, it is asked to commit to a new city owned theater, estimated at more than $350 million, with no funding source named, and the cost deferred to December. The impact statement lists it as, quote unquote, to be determined. Psu's share is secured. The city's is not. Before you affirm this commitment, demand the numbers first. Thank you.
209 Thank you very much. Go right ahead.
210 Hi, my name is kate miura. I aashiqui pronouns and I'm a constituent in 97215. I am testifying with my 20 year experience in its local 28 and and is an extant founding member of fuze theater ensemble. I speak for neither organization and only for myself. Two years ago, I submitted an Oregon arts watch opinion piece on remembering the stagehands when contemplating the fate of the keller auditorium. What I wrote then remains true now. Broadway and Portland must always have a good, appropriate home. Just ask a stagehand. I agree with the feasibility study focusing on maximizing broadway content and minimizing and maintaining theater style commercial content, while also being an accessible home to resident companies and nonprofits and students. It's important the PSU construction and renovation plan provides this, including a full performing arts campus support amenities available and achievable at PSU. No downtime in hosting large scale shows which support other venues and many people's livelihoods, plus opportunities for audience and subscription growth. I do want to highlight a gap in the study, which primarily focused on audiences and existing rentals, while ignoring another revenue driver. A second broadway capacity house would be a prime location for upcoming broadway tours to rehearse and prepare, and for existing tours to update and repair their equipment. As Portland and the stagehands of local 28 did for lion king, numerous tours have wished that they could prep their aye, Morillo shows in Portland. Due to our highly skilled stagehands and lack of sales tax, they can save money and time working here while investing in our local economy. It's unfortunate that formal research here seems not to have happened via contacting tours or speaking with local stagehands. Still, please support and accept the recommendations to advance a new broadway capable theater at PSU. Thank you.
211 Thank you both very much.
212 I'm sorry. That concludes testimony.
213 Okay. Thank you so much to everybody who joined us today and was able to share your perspectives. I know there is a fair amount of written testimony posted online also, which we'll make sure to take a look at at this point. We are a few minutes after 5:00, so we won't have time to deliberate today, colleagues, but we will hold this over to our next committee meeting, which will be on. What is that, August 11th, is that right? I'm looking to christopher to confirm that date. Okay. On August 11th we will bring this back to have council deliberation. It sounds like we may have an amendment coming from councilor Clark, similar to what she went over today, but possibly incorporating a few other items as well. We are also going to learn about some upcoming legislation on August. On August 11th, we will also learn about some upcoming legislation looking at worker representation in stores in our community. And we will hear a pfas ordinance, as well as our normal public input period.
214 We also. Have the pricing.
215 Do we have pricing as.
216 Well that day?
217 Okay. Sounds good. I will check our agenda, but I think you're probably right there. I want to give a thanks to our professional staff who were willing to wait an extra few minutes so we could get those last two panels in and make sure to hear from everybody today, and also to the two panels, three panels that we started with to provide some additional feedback on the presentations from our city staff. Thank you all. And with that, we will close today's hearing.