Posted on 11/29/2006 6:23:50 PM PST by crazyhorse691
Schumacher Furs & Outerwear, after 111 years of business and one solid year of fervent animal-rights protests, is hanging it up in Portland.
Owner Gregg Schumacher, who depicts the city's core as dangerous and not conducive to retailers, said Tuesday that he's moving his shop to the suburbs, though he wouldn't say where.
"We're leaving downtown Portland because we feel that it's losing its appeal for people to shop in" said Schumacher, 51, rattling off a list of what he called his customers' complaints. "The panhandling, the musicians on the street, the urination in the parking garages. Yes, the protests. But the whole place is not conducive to running a retail operation."
Officials from City Hall to the Portland Business Alliance, while making it clear they're sad to see downtown lose any merchant, particularly such a longtime institution, called Schumacher's claims, in effect, bunk.
They pointed to recent commitments by Macy's and Nordstrom to revitalize their downtown stores. More broadly, Schumacher's comments stand in stark contrast to what many view as a thriving downtown, from the recent maturing of the Pearl District to the start of a projected $2 billion South Waterfront district.
City Commissioner Randy Leonard, who said he'd offered to help Schumacher and his wife, Linda, after the protests started last November, recalled how quickly he came to regret the move.
"I honestly had never been involved in anything in which I felt like the folks I was trying to help did not want to be helped," Leonard said.
"The Schumachers carry at minimum -- at minimum -- equal responsibility for what happened outside their store," Leonard said. "I think the case could be made they did what they could to fan the flames at every opportunity."
As vice president of downtown services for the business alliance, Mike Kuykendall has been intimately involved in working with the Schumachers in the past year. But he balked at Gregg Schumacher's description of downtown.
"It's unfortunate Mr. Schumacher has been the target of this group, and it's a shame that it happened," he said. He cited a poll last year in which 94 percent of members of the downtown business improvement district called the area safe or very safe.
In some ways, what's played out the past year at Southwest Ninth Avenue and Morrison Street has been a faceoff of sorts of Portland's past and present. On one side there are the high-end shoppers who frequent a boutique where most items range from $900 to $7,000, and a sable coat can set you back $150,000. On the other are the activists who take up causes large and small to, in their minds, make the world a better place.
Portland police said the protests, which have resulted in 13 arrests since last December, usually involved eight to 12 people on Saturday afternoons. Last Friday, however, about 200 activists with a parade permit started at the storefront, worked their way up Morrison, back down Yamhill and then back in front of the store. After disbanding, some stuck around to protest for hours. Police reported no incidents from the march.
Mike Reese, commander of Central Precinct, said the demonstrations have strained police resources. "We're always on minimum staffing, so I'm almost always hiring them on overtime," he said, offering a calculation that would put total police cost around $25,000.
As Northwest outreach coordinator for In Defense of Animals, Matt Rossell became the public face of the weekly protests in many ways.
He said some activists might view Schumacher's decision to leave the city limits by spring as a victory. His group, however, isn't satisfied.
"The message that has been delivered over the past year has been hugely successful . . .," Rossell said. "Possibly downtown Portland isn't a place for such an unfriendly-to-animal business to exist."
"I'm sure he'll try to present himself as a victim, as he always does," Rossell said of Schumacher. "The reality, though, is the animals are the victims, not Gregg Schumacher."
Spencer Heinz: 503-221-8072; spencerheinz@news.oregonian.com Seth Prince: 503-221-8172; sethprince@news.oregonian.com
When a downtown needs to be "revitalized" it is a cesspool.
One of my wife's sisters likes to wear fur. She loves to put down people who cast asparagus on her wardrobe. She loves to say "Excuse me, are those leather shoes you're wearing?"
Another thing she's fond of saying is "I didn't claw my way to the top of the food chain just be a vegetarian."
Time to move to Chicago. The number of furs over Thanksgiving weekend was astounding. And it didn't get below mid-40's.
Sounds like Berkeley.
If it's anything like it was the last time I was there. It's a cornocopia of freaks, druggies, and commies. A true cross section of the filth that happens to share the same genetics as human beings.
A true cross section of the filth that happens to share the same genetics as human beings.
Ping
She told me her husband runs a business storing the fur coats for the Elite in San Francisco.
It was indeed a different "kind of secret". Not even her sisters, brothers, or parents knew. I have not revealed her name, and I take her secret with me to the grave.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Ping
For me right here in the red clay South, it's a little closer to home; the druggies, freaks, aging hippies blighting the dowbtown.
Welcome to Asheville, North Carolina
Good for your s-i-l!
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
aging hippies
Berkeley, nah - I'd go for San Francisco. It's Union Square to a "T".
Sounds like he's the winner and Portland is the loser. He'll continue to sell fur, and all the tax revenues will go somewhere else besides Portland, which will be left with let another empty storefront for the "enlightened" to defecate in.
I vote for Beaverton to be tongue-in-cheeck, but it's probably more realistic to say Tigard or Lake Oswego.
The pony tail types will all soon be dead of old age.
They will have not reproduced themselves due to abortion.
Things will revert to the age before socialism.
Nature does does have a balance.
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