Powell’s and “Downtown”
“How will brick-and-mortar stores fare in a time of continued fear over a deadly, airborne plague? What happens to city life when sidewalks are strewn with the rain-soaked belongings of people who can no longer afford rent?”
“Among the people overseeing Powell’s, gnawing concerns about downtown coincide with an eagerness to seize an opportunity for reinvention.”
From my clipped article stash…
This piece (11/13/21 New York Times Business section) is about Powell’s. We all (probably) know Portland-based Powell’s and how it’s a mecca and how it’s been a book-lover’s beacon where, “In a world increasingly governed by algorithms, with tastes shaped by corporate forces wielding data, [it] beckons as a shrine to happenstance.” We all love that.
Portland has been in the news for the past handful of years — protests, homelessness, a culture that butts up very strongly against the culture in other parts of Oregon. This article isn’t what is now a stereotypical nod to “small business,” “being anti-Amazon,” “community,” etc. That’s an obvious take.
Instead, this article is using Powell’s as a way to explore what a healthy “downtown” might look like in a 2022-and-beyond world. Does it look the same as our 1995 Starbucks-era “coffeeshop-as-community” desires? Does a bricks-and-mortar store “work” the same way when center cities in a lot of places are starting to look and function differently due to the factors in the quote above…plus others that aren’t mentioned, such as people working from home? (Btw, I haven’t been to Portland in 5 years, so I am not necessarily opining about or picking on Portland here. I’m just sharing this article; the NYT uses Powell’s as an illustrative example a lot.)
Conjure your inner Jane Jacobs here: What might a “downtown” look like in 2022? (Small towns and suburbs can have “downtowns” too.) And humor me since this is mostly a books account: What role might a bookstore have in that? (And let’s look beyond the You’ve Got Mail tropes, pls!)
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