Transit Mall woes

The Tribune publishes an important article by Peter Korn today, on the financial impacts of construction of the new MAX lines on the transit mall, on businesses on 5th and 6th. It’s a long article, worth reading in its entirety. The core:

“The transit mall project already has changed downtown in ways expected and unexpected. Some businesses have lost customers, and others have gained. Bus routes have been altered. Even crime patterns have shifted to where the buses have shifted, from Fifth and Sixth to Third and Fourth avenues.”

You would pretty much expect a decrease in the patronage of a fine restaurant with this outside, wouldn’t you?

There’s an unfortunate quotation mid-article from Phil Kalberer, owner of the Kalberer Co. and chairman of the Portland Mall Citizens Advisory Committee. He allegedly said that “shop owners should keep in mind that business they lose hasn’t necessarily disappeared; it’s just moved.”

“I think a lot of it is displacement,” Kalberer said. “With the construction, people will go someplace else, down the corner or up Broadway or Third or Fourth. I’m sure it will be back at the end of the day.”

I imagine it’s not much consolation to a business that’s lost 60% of its trade, to know that others are doing better and/or that the business will come back in 18 months.

Apparently, some (sounds like limited) assistance is available to business owners. I wonder how the level of support compares with that to folks on the Interstate MAX line, who suffered through the same kinds of difficulties.

Y’know what’s really sad, though? A construction worker died a week ago, when heavy machinery fell into the trench he was working in. Oregon Live says “Jeffery Helgeson, 42, of Aloha, worked for the subcontractor Williams & Ryan and was relocating water lines to make way for MAX rails downtown when the accident happened.”

That puts other woes in perspective.