May 1, 2019 The Skanner Portland & Seattle Page 3
News
cont’d from pg 1
gan region. The potential
for significant wildfires
is above normal west
of the Cascade crest in
Washington and Oregon
through August, the re-
port said.
Some high-elevation
portions of the Great Ba-
sin and the central Rocky
Mountains could experi-
ence below-normal wild-
fire potential, the agency
said. It also said that be-
low average fire activ-
ity continued in April
across the nation, thanks
to moist conditions from
the winter.
“Precipitation received
was above average across
the northwestern quar-
ter of the nation and
across a majority of the
east,” the agency said.
While the wildfire sea-
son might be delayed in
higher, timbered eleva-
Couch Park to Open New Playground
Thanks to funding from the 2014 Parks Replacement Bond, Metro, Harper’s Playground, Metropolitan Learning Center’s Friends of
Couch Playground and private many donors, Couch Park has a new inclusive playground, plaza, and Portland Loo. From 1 to 3 p.m. May
4 the park will hold a ribbon-cutting and party to celebrate the newly competed playground at Couch Park, NW 20th Avenue and Hoyt
Street. There will be free cake, food and activities.
cont’d from pg 3
April 20, greenHAUS
gallery is scheduled to
open in May and Cason’s
Fine Meats will open at
the new location in June.
There will be a grand
opening for Alberta
Commons as a whole on
June 22.
Dayna and Cole Reed
co-own greenHAUS, a
gallery and gift shop
featuring vintage, cus-
tom and salvage art
and household items on
Northeast Killingsworth,
which opened in 2016
and is moving to the Al-
berta location in May.
“We’ll be ready for the
Fourth of July holidays,”
said Theotis Cason, the
owner of Cason’s Meats,
who started his career
as a butcher working for
Safeway and Fred Meyer
and eventually opened
his own store, operat-
ing at several locations
in North and Northeast
Cannabis
Portland over the years.
The new Cason’s lo-
cation will sell locally
raised beef and chicken,
raised without hormones
or antibiotics and will of-
fer services like catering.
His nephew, Barry, who
has worked with him for
six years, is learning the
trade, but is also a source
of ideas and advice about
doing business in 2019.
“We don’t need to go
backwards. We need to
go forward,” Cason said.
Jamaal Lane, who has
operated
Champions
Barbershop at MLK and
Failing for 10 years, and
still operates Champions
Barbering Institute on
Northeast Killingsworth.
The institute is staying
put, but the barbershop
is moving — increasing
the number of barbers,
adding a front desk and
updating its look to a
more “promenade-type
feel.” The new location
also includes services
like scalp treatments,
beard treatments and
mini-facials.
“I just had a vision of
longevity on MLK,” Lane
“
We don’t
need to
go back-
wards. We
need to go
forward
told The Skanner. “I want
to be celebrating 20 years
still right here.”
Business owners said
Prosper Portland ap-
proached them about the
possibility of relocating
to Alberta Commons,
which completed con-
struction in 2018.
In 2013 the city agen-
cy – then known as the
Portland Development
Commission – inked a
deal to sell the lot for far
less than market value
to open a grocery store.
A deal with the Califor-
nia-based grocery chain
Trader Joe’s fell through
after protests from the
Portland African Amer-
ican Leadership Forum.
Activists hoped afford-
able housing would be
built on the site; they also
released a list of demands
that included small busi-
ness assistance for mi-
nority-owned business-
es and job creation for
minorities. The city also
committed $20 million in
urban renewal funds for
urban housing in North
and Northeast Portland.
Ultimately, the city
made a deal to bring
Golden, Colo.-based Nat-
ural Grocers to the lot,
but hired a Black-owned
construction firm — Co-
las Construction — to
build it and said the new
development would offer
space to minority-owned
businesses.
Since discussion about
the fate of the lot began
in 2006, the population
surrounding the sur-
rounding neighborhood,
which was once majori-
ty-Black and was already
beginning to gentrify,
has become Whiter and
wealthier, and housing
prices have climbed
upward. Currently the
Albina neighborhood is
about 14 percent Black.
“For us, it’s not just
selling goods. We want
you to purchase hope,
because we are in a time
right now when a lot
of us as Americans are
feeling pretty hopeless.
People of color in Port-
land are feeling isolated
and hopeless, and so we
look for the brilliance in
the other underdog,” said
Cole Reed.
Cole Reed is Black;
her wife, Dayna, is
White, and they have a
four-year-old son. They
moved to Portland from
Arizona in 2015 due to
Oregon’s more inclusive
adoption policies, and
in their new location,
they hope to make space
for community conver-
sations about race and
identity.
“We talk about race
every day. We live in a
city where it’s 75 percent
White people, 25 percent
‘other,’ and of that other,
it’s an extremely dimin-
ished amount of Black
people,” Cole Reed said.
“So we talk about the oth-
er, and we hope to have so
many conversations that
it’s no longer necessary
to talk about the others.”
cont’d from pg 1
testified that SB 582 would give Ore-
gon cannabis producers “a major head
start” to corner the national market
share, thereby turning the state’s over-
supply into an asset.
He warned, “If we’re unable to com-
pete even for a matter of six months, it
would permanently cripple our ability
to export one of our best cash crops in
Oregon. What we need to do is prepare
so that we are ready with the trucks in
a safe and organized manner to get our
products out of the state and capitalize
on it on day one of federal legalization.”
To that end, SB 582 would allow the
governor to work with leadership in
other recreational marijuana-allow-
ing states to hammer out the details of
export and sales. The bill is current-
ly worded to allow such agreements
to happen only in states that either
abut Oregon, or that can be reached
through ground travel that does not
pass through states where there is any
kind of prohibition against recreation-
al marijuana use. Currently, that would
include potential agreements in Wash-
ington, California, and Nevada.
An amended version of Senate Bill
582 passed out of the Senate Judiciary
Committee with a 5-2 vote after a work
session in late March.
“
Oregon has been an
exporter of canna-
bis for decades. We
know prohibition
doesn’t work
Advocates emphasized the economic
cost of having a surplus with nowhere
to send it.
“The result is thousands of companies
fighting to survive, putting thousands
more jobs and hundreds of millions of
dollars of local capital at eminent risk
of loss,” Casey Houlihan, executive di-
rector of the Oregon Retailers of Can-
nabis Association, told the Senate Judi-
ciary Committee in February.
He explained that Oregon’s
“perishable excess supply”
would find its way to other
states no matter what.
“That’s already happening,”
Houlihan said. “Oregon has
been an exporter of cannabis
for decades. We know prohi-
bition doesn’t work. We want
those sales to be legal and reg- The Oregon legislature is considering a bill that would allow
ulated and taxed. The solution the export of cannabis to other states in the event of federal
is fairly simple: We need to cre- legalization.
ate a structure for exporting
Christopher Dolinar, CEO of Pilot
that excess supply into other state and Farm in southern Oregon, said his com-
countries as soon as we possibly can.”
pany was one of the first 15 OLCC-li-
Travis MacKenzie, founding mem- censed farms, and that he has had to
bers of TJ’s Gardens, told the commit- cut nearly 80 percent of his staff since
tee that his company had reduced pay- opening.
roll by 50 percent in the past two years
“I got into [the industry] for the un-
due to the excess of cannabis products precedented competitive advantage
available in Oregon, and the subse- that Oregon has to play in the global
quent competitive pricing.
cannabis market compared to any-
“That’s a lot of dollars that are not in where else,” he said, adding, “We’re sit-
our local economy and a lot of employ- ting on this incredibly opportunity to
ees that are no longer in this industry take advantage of this market opening
when they want to be,” he said.
up. Let’s be first to market.”
COURTESY OF FLOSSIN MEDIA
Alberta
tions of the Northwest
because of a slower melt
of the snowpack, “an
exception to this could
be along the Canadian
border in Washington,
Idaho and western Mon-
tana,” the agency said.
That’s because those
areas have a below-av-
erage snowpack and are
suffering from moderate
drought.
“These areas can ex-
pect an average start to
the season with a poten-
tial for above normal ac-
tivity,” the agency said.
In the southwest, below
normal fire potential was
expected across north-
ern Arizona, northern
New Mexico and west
Texas in May and June,
the report said. Above
normal fire potential was
expected in southern Ar-
izona in those months.
PHOTO COURTESY OF PORTLAND PARKS & RECREATION
Wildfires
