Over the last few years the New York Times has flattered the Rose City with gushing articles about our bikes and breweries, the Ace hotel and the restaurant scene, travel highlights, and Todd Haynes (and that’s just a sampling).
Now the Canadians are on to us. Or at least the Canadians at the Globe and Mail.
Portland: The Rebirth of Old Buildings
PORTLAND, ORE. — Why build a brand new hotel when you can recycle a turn-of-the century building into a new cutting-edge facility?
When Alex Calderwood and his partners saw the 1912-era Clyde Hotel in a slightly dodgy neighbourhood of Portland, they saw something they could work with.
PORTLAND, ORE. — The question puts Larry Bishop on the spot. The formerly homeless man looks relieved that it is being asked in a quiet place with no one besides a reporter to hear his answer.
Mr. Bishop, 59, leads guided tours of the shelters, social agencies, soup kitchens and other fixtures of this city’s Old Town-Chinatown district to emphasize the humanity of the homeless. “I want the façade dropped of, ‘They’re all drunks and alcoholics; they’re all criminals.’ They are not,’ ” he says.
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