Atlantica - 01.04.2006, Side 52

I’ve lost track of how many days in a row it’s
rained, but it’s over thirty and becoming biblical.
I’m protected by a warm fleece jacket, seeking
shelter from the soggy weather beneath an awning
outside Whole Foods, located on Couch Street in the
Pearl District, a Portland neighborhood where you
can feel urbane by spending nearly $4 on a peanut
butter and jelly sandwich. Tack on another $3.69 for
my strawberry-banana Odwalla juice.
Yeah, I’m a schmuck. But my PB&J is gourmet
and organic, I think. And buying overpriced items
makes me feel more sophisticated.
Welcome to the Pearl. Not long ago, a train serv-
ing the Blitz-Weinhard brewery inched down 12th
Avenue, past where I’m currently trying to keep dry.
Damp, red-brick smokestacks belched out the scent
of beer. Empty rail yards and under-utilized factories
were the norm. And I worked at the local Gold’s
Gym, now a 24-Hour Fitness, one of the first busi-
nesses to move into the former industrial district.
How the Pearl has changed. It’s now Portland’s
trendiest neighborhood, full of the funky loft apart-
ments you see in movies about writers living in
Manhattan. There are fashionable galleries, swanky
restaurants, urban chic clothing stores, antique
shops, designer condos, and the city’s hippest bars,
all wedged together in what seems like a small island
in the middle of Portland. A city within a city, the
Pearl feels like a mini-Manhattan. Okay, maybe a
mini-mini Manhattan.
“I do miss the smell of the breweries and the late
night beer train that would bump along in the mid-
dle of the night,” says Scott Wilson, a realtor who,
in the early days of the neighborhood’s rebirth, spent
many hours hanging around the Pearl’s gym.
“It was a relative ghost town at night. Now it is the
modern heart of the city with all of its high rise con-
dos and new restaurants and boutiques. The Pearl
makes you feel like you are in a city.”
THE PEARL’S TRANSFORMATION from indus-
trial nothingness into a vibrant neighborhood took
place during the 90s. It was both a planned gentrifi-
cation project as well as a spontaneous event pushed
along by the artists and bohemians who, taking
50 AT L A N T I CA
By Edward Weinman
The Jewel
Once an eyesore of industrial ware-
houses, the Pearl District in Portland,
Oregon has become a model of
American urban renewal.
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050-53PortlandAtl306.indd 50 23.4.2006 22:54:38