Editorial Portraits for Portland Monthly Magazine.
SPRING ARTS
Can Portland Artists Survive the City’s New Gilded Age?
A property boom means mass evictions and escalating rents. What does that mean for our creative scene?
“They gave us 60 days’ eviction notice,” says Kailee McMurran, a graphic artist whose company Design by Goats, cofounded with partner Duke Stebbins, operated out of Towne Storage. “Before we found a new space,” she says, “we went to four or five different places, which were more expensive than our Towne studio and smaller. We were getting to the point of asking, ‘Should we stay in Portland? It’s not looking like this is going to be the greatest place to have a studio.’”
“It was a shock,” says David Abel, a writer who owns Passages Bookshop, which specializes in fine and rare books and early editions. Abel had just settled Passages on Towne Storage’s fifth floor less than a year before, sharing a space with Division Leap, another niche bookstore. The eviction notice plunged him back into the hunt for a home.
Text from Portland Monthly’s Editorial Article.
