Oregon lawmakers approve $2 million for footwear, apparel hub in Portland’s Old Town

For decades, footwear and apparel has been designed in Oregon and made in Southeast Asia. A local group wants to relocate some of that manufacturing to one of Portland’s struggling neighborhoods.

Late last week, Oregon lawmakers set aside $2 million for the Made in Old Town development project. If approved by the governor, the money will go to the Old Town Community Association, part of a group that wants to bring manufacturing, housing, and office and retail space to the district on the northern edge of downtown.

The group envisions repurposing eight existing, and mostly vacant, Old Town Chinatown buildings and filling them with resources for the footwear and apparel industry, one of the cornerstones of Oregon’s economy thanks to the corporate homes of Nike, Columbia Sportswear, Adidas North America and many others.

The $2 million will go towards a 30,000-square-foot green manufacturing facility that would help entrepreneurs get new companies off the ground and existing companies develop new products and technologies. The facility, also known as the footwear and manufacturing innovation (FAMI) hub, would showcase technology that’s more environmentally friendly and less wasteful than traditional manufacturing techniques, such as water-free dyeing and on-demand 3D-printed manufacturing.

If all goes well, the overall project would grow to include 100,000 square feet of manufacturing space, 120,000 square feet of housing and 145,000 square feet of office and retail space.

The project would take “what is currently a neighborhood that is a net drain on civic resources and convert it into a value creator,” said Elias Stahl, CEO and cofounder of Hilos, an Old Town-based 3D-printed footwear company that’s been one of the effort’s driving forces and gotten the backing of former Nike heavyweights Eric Sprunk and Greg Bui.

Made in Old Town backers need to raise $5 million from the private sector to fund the green manufacturing facility, which they hope to open by this fall. Stahl said he’s “extremely confident” they can raise the money.

“Portland-metro is the hub of the footwear industry from an innovation, design, company and talent perspective,” Mitch Daugherty, cofounder and director of Built Oregon, which supports the state’s consumer products companies, said in an email. “The idea of investing in this critical industry from a manufacturing perspective is good to see and I’m looking forward to supporting the Hilos team in any way I can.”

In October, the University of Oregon announced the Singapore-based company NTX would open a sustainable textile facility in Portland. A location hasn’t been announced, but it could become part of the Made in Old Town project.

“NTX could serve as the anchor, working with the University of Oregon to build the NTX Bridges Innovation Center for materials and digital advanced R&D,” said Ellen Schmidt-Devlin, cofounder and executive director of the university’s Portland-based Sport Product Management, in an email.

Made in Old Town project backers think the project could attract as much as $125 million in foreign direct investment over seven years.

The Made in Old Town project adds to a list of ambitious Portland neighborhood revitalization efforts, including Albina, the Broadway Corridor, Lloyd Center and OMSI.

Like any commercial real estate project, it comes with no shortage of challenges. But Stahl said the group’s ability to move fast and repurpose existing buildings works in its favor.

“The partners that we’ve talked to have shown support not only for the project and the team we’ve brought around it, but the ability to move quickly, the ability to have existing structures converted into immediate and useful commercial enterprises, and the ability for Portland to be leading again,” he said.

There are around 800 athletic and outdoor companies in Oregon, according to Prosper Portland, the city’s economic development agency, but they’re spread out across the region, with Nike and Columbia based in Washington County and Adidas North America in North Portland’s Overlook neighborhood.

The Made in Old Town project wants to become a center of gravity for the industry, fittingly in a part of the city that was home to Nike’s first warehouse and since then has been home to everything from the sneaker-themed coffee shop Deadstock Coffee to the footwear design school Pensole and the University of Oregon’s Sports Product Management program.

“Everybody understood that this is something that Old Town needed, and Portland needed,” said Herbert Beauclere, cofounder of the annual Sneaker Week festival, which started in Old Town and has held numerous events there. “We’re trying to be that connective tissue.”

The Made in Old Town project could become a permanent home for Sneaker Week and The Materials Show, among other organizations that support the industry, which would mean permanent classroom and showroom space in a central location.

“I am happy to finally see this idea of bringing the state to advance clean manufacturing technology for footwear and apparel to Oregon is being realized,” said Hisham Muhareb, organizer of The Materials Show, which holds annual trade events in Portland and Boston, in an email.

Backers also see the project as a blueprint for urban renewal after the pandemic ripped through America’s downtowns and emptied office buildings.

“The biggest challenge we have in a lot of downtowns post-pandemic is figuring out new ways to use the built environment that we have,” said Jonathan Cohen, Old Town Community Association treasurer, who with his wife Jessie Burke owns and operates the Society Hotels in Portland and the Gorge.

The answer isn’t simply converting vacant office space into housing, said Cohen, who noted how complicated that can be.

Matthew Claudel, founder of the design and strategy firm Field States, and another backer of the Made in Old Town project, said downtowns can no longer be “single purpose.”

“That kind of urbanism isn’t fit to the kind of opportunities and the kinds of challenges that we see after the pandemic,” he said. “We believe in a more integrated kind of urban form, where you have different uses that are mixed into tight proximity, including retail and housing and manufacturing, which is now possible.”

– Matthew Kish covers business, including the sportswear and banking industries. Reach him at 503-221-4386, mkish@oregonian.com or @matthewkish.

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