May 23, 2003
Portland Business Alliance Releases Second Annual Survey of Downtown Businesses
In the Business section of today's Oregonian, there's a story on the release of a new survey by the Portland Business Alliance -- mere days after the city released it's own business satisfaction survey, which found (according to The Oregonian) "48 percent rating Portland as a good or very good place to do business."
Unfortunately, today's story does not appear to be online.
To make matters worse, the business development section of the PBA website only presents last year's survey. To make matters stranger, the telephone number on that page, the first time I called, only offered up an error message about being unable to complete the call.
A second try however was successful, and I'm told that the survey will be available online "any day."
So, typed in by hand, here's a bit of the Oregonian coverage:
Alliance lobbyist Greg Peden said Thursday that the survey was not meant to bolster the downtown business alliance's case that City Hall has been inattentive -- or in many cases harmful -- to business needs.
"Certainly our local economy is struggling," Peden said. "There are a variety of issues affecting that. ... We're not using this to put the pressure on anybody. I'm not passing judgment on who is to blame."
And then the article switches its attention to PBA-head Kim Kimbrough, who promptly launches into a critique on the city's business practices. I guess he and Peden aren't using the same pages of the PBA playbook.