(Columbia Sportswear chief executive Tim Boyle, center, pictured on April 10, 2018 in Portland. Photo: Gordon R. Friedman/The Oregonian)

BY GORDON R. FRIEDMAN

Columbia Sportswear chief executive Tim Boyle plans to pay $1.5 million to jumpstart construction of a 100-bed homeless shelter and services center on city-owned land under and next to the Broadway Bridge, officials announced Tuesday.

The shelter, which project organizers are calling a “navigation center,” is intended to offer the homeless a place to sleep, eat, bathe and do laundry plus connections to health care and social services.

Boyle's gift will be paid as a donation to Oregon Harbor of Hope, a nonprofit run by real estate developers working to find solutions to Portland's intractable homelessness problem.

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(Melissa Lewis/The Oregonian)

“I care about Portland. I grew up here. Our business is here," Boyle said Tuesday during a press conference. "We’re trying to attract more employees to the city, to our place of business, and that's why I’ve decided it's important to invest in the project."

In a prepared statement given to The Oregonian/OregonLive on Monday, Boyle said the navigation center project will play an important role in helping homeless Oregonians "who need services and support and who deserve our compassion." He also said the plan is an example of how governments, businesspeople and nonprofits can work together on homelessness policy.

One of Oregon’s few billionaires, Boyle has been a vocal critic of the city’s approach to the homeless in downtown. He said in an op-ed published in The Oregonian last November that workers at Columbia-owned bootmaker Sorel had been intimidated by homeless people and bothered by detritus left on sidewalks by the homeless. Boyle threatened to relocate Sorel and voiced support for Mayor Ted Wheeler’s request to hire at least 80 more police officers to help regulate homeless people’s conduct and downtown crime.

Several major American cities, particularly San Francisco, operate homeless navigation centers. Former Portland Mayor Charlie Hales proposed building one in Portland in 2016, but the plan never became a reality. Josh Alpert, then Hales' chief of staff, said at the time that opening the shelter was "too expensive, too complicated, and in the end, not worth it for our purposes."

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(Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, pictured April 10, 2018 in Portland. Photo: Gordon R. Friedman/The Oregonian)

Wheeler, who took over after Hales, on Tuesday gave the city's blessing to the navigation center concept and public-private partnerships aimed at tackling homelessness.

“Homelessness is a humanitarian crisis unfolding on our streets, and demands a community-wide response,” Wheeler said in a statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive on Monday. “I want to send the message that if you have ideas, or resources or expertise – and you want to put them to work addressing homelessness – government can be an effective partner.”

During Tuesday's announcement, Wheeler said Portland needs "more shelter capacity" for the homeless, and said residents ought to be more willing to help the homeless in their neighborhoods. "We can’t only support shelter as long as it’s not in our own backyards. We can’t only support affordable housing as long as it's not in our backyard," Wheeler said.

The mayor continued: "We can all contribute and we should. We all need to step up because this is a community issue and requires community-based solutions."

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(Multnomah County Chairwoman Deborah Kafoury, pictured on April 10, 2018 in Portland. Photo: Gordon R. Friedman/The Oregonian)

Multnomah County Chairwoman Deborah Kafoury praised the partnership announced Tuesday, along with city and county efforts to help the homeless.

"We aren’t turning to pie-in-the-sky gimmicks," Kafoury said. "We’ve done things that we know work."

She said city and county agencies have done much to increase the number of homeless shelter beds and make it easier for people on the streets to get into shelters and more permanent housing.

Kafoury also took a shot at the Republican-led Congress and White House, saying current federal attitudes on housing and homelessness are more likely to "hurt our neighbors on the edge."

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(Developer Homer Williams, pictured at his hotel in the Pearl District on April 10, 2018. Photo: Gordon R. Friedman/The Oregonian)

The chairman of Oregon Harbor of Hope, developer Homer Williams, has championed a variety of non-traditional homelessness solutions. He'd previously pitched converting city-owned properties, including a golf course and warehouse, into affordable housing, and a $100 million one-stop homeless campus. But, like Hale's plan, none of the ideas have come to fruition. Last week he offered $7 million to buy the county-owned Wapato jail in a bid to turn it into a homeless shelter.

"This is a great day for Portland," Williams said Tuesday. He said businesses, nonprofits and wealthy locals must all "join this fight" against homelessness. "We have to embrace it and we have to participate in it," Williams said.

Don Mazziotti, a developer and Oregon Harbor of Hope board member, said Monday his group’s vision for a downtown navigation center is to help the homeless “find a way to recovery and productivity” and “show them where to go next.” Mazziotti formerly served as head of the Portland Development Commission, now known as Prosper Portland.

Mazziotti said notable Portland attorney Robert Stoll helped drum up political and business support for a navigation center, adding that Stoll pitched Boyle on the project. Stoll said last week that he has been building support for the project while also advising Wheeler and Multnomah County Chairwoman Deborah Kafoury on homelessness policy.

“The mayor and the county chair have asked me to be sort of an informal adviser to them on homeless issues and I’ve been trying to do that,” Stoll said, adding that Wheeler and Kafoury “wanted me to pull some of these groups together and see what we could do.”

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(Portland State University President Rahmat Shoureshi pictured on April 10, 2018 in Portland. Photo: Gordon R. Friedman | The Oregonian)

Williams said officials at Portland State University will "help us in many, many ways" with the navigation center concept, but it's not clear how.

Rahmat Shoureshi, the president of Portland State, said at Tuesday's press conference that many of his university's students struggle to make it by on a low income. He thanked Wheeler, Kafoury, Boyle and Williams for creating a "thoughtful and collaborative" partnership to build the navigation center.

"I'm confident that the effort announced today is going to make a huge difference," Shoureshi said.

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(Mock-up courtesy of Oregon Harbor of Hope)

Schematics of the Broadway Bridge shelter concept given to The Oregonian/OregonLive by Oregon Harbor of Hope shows its plans are to build a 9,000 square foot shelter building and 2,500 square foot service center on land owned by Portland’s economic development agency underneath the west end of the Broadway Bridge.

The site will be surrounded by an 8-foot chain-link fence wrapped in black vinyl and, inside that, two rows of 6-foot hedges, according to design plans dated April 4. Plans show the grounds will include a community garden, storage containers and nine parking spaces for staff.

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(A homeless community had considered moving to underneath the Lovejoy ramp, which connects to the Broadway Bridge. Photo: Benjamin Brink/The Oregonian)

Given its location, the new shelter would be about a block from Williams’ Residence Inn hotel, at Northwest 9th Avenue and Marshall Street. Years ago, Williams worked to stop a homeless community from setting up near the hotel.

In 2013, Commissioner Amanda Fritz suggested homeless community Right 2 Dream Too relocate to a city-owned parking lot underneath the Northwest Lovejoy Street ramp, which connects to the Broadway Bridge. The plan was quashed when Hales backed out, following Williams' objections. (Right 2 Dream Too has since moved to the east side, in a deal brokered by Wheeler.)

Asked Tuesday about his change of heart, Williams said he came to realize that "we’re all going to have to be involved" in addressing Portland's homelessness crisis. He said it is "only fitting" that a new type of shelter be built across the railroad tracks from his hotel.

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(Protesters pictured outside Columbia Sportswear's downtown Portland store in December 2017. Photo: Allan Brettman/The Oregonian)

Boyle's November op-ed prompted Wheeler to order police to enforce a broader no-sit policy, including around the Sorel offices. His writing also led to protests that closed Columbia's downtown flagship for a day. Following the protests, Boyle published a statement saying he had "offered to contribute personally" to homelessness initiatives in conversations with state and local officials. He noted his view that other businesses "should join this effort."

"I am glad to call business leaders personally to ask them to contribute," Boyle said in the December 2017 statement.

On Tuesday, Boyle said he's putting his money where his mouth is. “It’s my personal philosophy that if you say something, you better do something," he said.

Boyle also challenged businesses, nonprofits and other locals with deep pockets to join him in doing something about homelessness. “I’d like others in business to join me and help continue this effort,” he said.

Williams said that even with a new navigation center, Portland's homeless will still have unmet needs. Those who are able to step up to do something about it ought to, he said.

“We can’t have people pooping in bushes, drinking bad water, not able to get sleep," Williams said. "We’re a better country and city than that.”

-- Gordon R. Friedman

GFriedman@Oregonian.com

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