Medford Mayor Randy Sparacino wasn’t surprised by his city’s standout income growth.

According to data from the 2022 American Community Survey released in mid-September by the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income growth in the Medford metropolitan statistical area increased by 23% during the 2019-2022 cycle, compared to a statewide increase of just 5.7% during the same period.

Income growth in the area — which includes all of Jackson County — was the 37th fastest in the country, outpacing 91% of other U.S. metros. The growth pattern also extended to other Oregon cities, with Bend and Grants Pass also seeing gains.

Sparacino says Medford’s expanding leisure and hospitality sector, as well as an influx of in-migration among retirees and people fleeing more expensive metros, are partly behind the city’s strong income numbers.

“Pretty much all across the service industry, they’re raising their baseline to get people that come through the door and apply for jobs. Locally, we’ve seen a lot of significant expansion in the service industry with regard to additional hotels and restaurants, and they have almost all increased their baseline in annual wages,” Sparacino says. “Years of wildfire smoke are having an impact, but over the course of the last two years, the travel has actually gone up. We’re seeing a recovery in our tourism — a turnaround since the pandemic.”

During the inflationary cycle that began in 2019, leisure and hospitality, trade, transportation and utility workers have consistently received wage gains that have outpaced the declining dollar, with leisure and hospitality jobs seeing the largest gains. In the leisure and hospitality sector, worker compensation grew at an annual pace of 9.1%  between June 2021 and June 2022. Wages have gone up 6.5% in the sector, even after adjusting for inflation.

Medford Chamber of Commerce president Eli Matthews says the American Community Survey results are the fruit of years of work by the chamber and Travel Medford, the city’s tourism office, which have focused on creating tourism-related projects, including wine tours, children’s sports events and the state’s first-annual major-league cornhole tournament to the city since 2012.

He also mentioned Asante Health Systems, which he says attracts seniors and health care sector jobs to Medford.

“We’ve seen tremendous growth in the last 10 years in travel and tourism for Oregon. It’s over $15 billion industry, and it’s one of the driving factors down here,” says Matthews. “We’re projecting real good growth year-over-year. Through the pandemic, we were fortunate to get a lot of people who wanted an exodus from the larger cities. But the truth is travel, tourism has always been one of our driving successes here.”

Regional state economist Guy Tauer, who conducts workforce and economic research for Coos, Curry, Jackson and Josephine County for the Oregon Employment Department, tells Oregon Business that Medford’s eye-catching survey results may contain a lot of statistical noise.

“This survey is not similar to a Census where it’s counting everyone. When the sample sizes are larger, the margin of error is smaller,” says Tauer, who adds the Medford income will need to show continued growth and expansion for him to consider the upward growth a real trend. Purchasing power in Medford, for example, rose 6.7% according to the survey, but the results were not outside the survey’s margin of error. The survey also excluded proprietary income received by self-employed individuals and unincorporated business owners.

“I would say this is headed in the right direction, I just think you just have to read the survey with caution. If you’re trying to get to the bottom of ‘why did incomes go up?’ It’s hard to say,” says Tauer.

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Tauer says the Medford MSA’s growth numbers fell back to earth when adjusted for inflation, but still showed some statistically significant signs of growth during the 2019-2022 cycle. Average earnings in the Medford MSA increased 3.7% even after adjusting for inflation while inequality levels (calculated by the GINI coefficient) held steady, and remained lower than the national average. The amount of households with income between $100,000 and $149,999 also jumped from 14.9% to 18.4%, all statistically significant gains, according to Tauer.

In his article analyzing the survey data, Oregon state economist Josh Lehner pointed out that the positive income gains in southern Oregon have reversed a decade of decline. Over the last 10  years, regional growth in southern Oregon didn’t pick up until mid-to-late cycle, and the ground lost during the 2008 financial crisis housing that was not fully regained by the time the pandemic hit. Using a multi-year average, Lehner found “Medford’s relative income position compared to the statewide numbers hasn’t been this strong since the mid-2000s.”

With eight new hotels currently in development in the city and surrounding area, the Rogue X community center to host indoor sporting events slated to open this year, and steady population growth from people coming to the Medford MSA, Matthews says the city is well-positioned to continue its growth into the future.

“Compared to California, it’s far easier to have that quality of life, and your dollar will go a lot farther in southern Oregon. Our median home price right now is $401,000. In California, it’s literally triple that. There are over 220 days of sunshine, and you literally drive 20 minutes and you’re out enjoying all sorts of beautiful nature, rivers and lakes,” says Matthews, who adds that the chamber is still planning ways to grow. “The one thing we’re lacking here in Medford is a spot to hold larger, formal, conferences and meetings. So that’s one of our other goals that we’re going to achieve here shortly.”

Genesis Financial Solutions, a Beaverton-based financial services company which services credit cards and lending to consumers and suboptimal credit, announced this week that it has rebranded as Concora Credit. The rebrand features a new website, and comes after a year of forming business partnership with retailers looking to service lower-credit customers.

Jason Tinurelli, chief marketing officer at Concora Credit tells Oregon Business over email that the name Genesis Financial Solutions was not performing as well as desired. “As a company, we are 20 years old and have helped millions of people access credit, but our name and branding were not breaking through in the market. We took rebranding as an opportunity to stand out with our name, branding, and ‘Do More’ tag line,” says Tinurelli.

Genesis Financial Solutions was founded in 2001, and specializes in subprime consumer credit and student loans, and work with merchants, retailers, educational institutions and healthcare providers to offer credit to customers with FICO scores between 300 and 689 — scores considered subprime by most financial services providers.

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In March of this year, Genesis partnered with Michigan-based Gardner White to become the primary servicer of the furniture retailer’s secondary credit program, which offers revolving credit lines of up to $6,000 and deferred interest programs for customers with lower credit scores.

In May,  the company partnered with the Texas-based Upbound Group Inc, owners of lease-to-own furniture retailers Rent-A-Center and Acima, to issue its credit cards  to consumers. The Upbound Group reported $979.16 million in quarterly revenue in June, an 8.6% year-over-year decline.

In addition to the partnerships with Upbound and Rent-A-Center, Tinurelli says Concora Credit has two businesses it is looking to expand.

“The Mastercard programs are big and well-known, and we want to continue to expand those markets. On the Private Label Credit Card side, we want to continue growing with Upbound while adding other retailers and healthcare services where a second-look credit card program makes sense to help them do more business,” says Tinurelli.

The company’s credit cards will also be rebranded. According to the release, Concora’s headquarters will remain in Beaverton.

A previous version of this article said Concora Credit issued credit cards. The cards are issued by banks. Oregon Business regrets this error.

Oregon employers will on average, pay $0.90 per $100 of payroll for workers’ compensation costs in 2024, down from $0.93 in 2023, according to information released this week by the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services. That figure covers workers’ compensation claims costs, assessments, and insurer profit and expenses.

The pure premium rate – the base rate insurers use to determine how much employers must pay for medical costs and lost wages — will also drop by an average 6.7% in 2024, under a DCBS proposal. The decline in costs marks 11 years of average decreases in the pure premium rate, and means Oregon has the 10th-lowest premiums in the country, according to DCBS data.

The decrease in workers’ compensation rates follows a larger trend throughout the country. A 2015 review by Pro Publica found employers were paying the lowest rates for workers’ compensation insurance than at any time in the last 25 years, despite increasing costs of health care.

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A 2022 report by the National Academy of Social Insurance showed a 21% national decline in workers compensation claims between 2016 and 2020, with average cost for employers declining from $1.32 in 2016 to $1.04 in 2020. Oregon’s cost of insurance remained below the national average, dropping from $1.13 to $0.89 during the same period.

From 2016–2020, the total benefits paid to injured workers decreased in 40 states. The U.S. Department of Labor attributed the drop to COVID-19, as well as decades-long trends including changes to state workers’ compensation laws and policies across the county – including states like South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming which have made workers’ compensation optional for certain occupations.

In Oregon, workers’ compensation insurance is required for most businesses with employees, and applies even if employees are part-time. Oregon workers’ compensation ensures coverage of medical expenses for workplace injuries and occupational diseases and provides temporary disability benefits while workers are recovering, typically two-thirds of the worker’s average weekly wage.

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Workers in Oregon also have access to the Workers’ Benefit Fund assessment and return-to-work programs, which provide increased benefits over time for workers who are permanently and totally disabled, and gives benefits to families of workers who die from workplace injuries or diseases.

DCBS attributed Oregon’s continuing low cost of workers comp to employers to the success and stability of Oregon’s workers’ compensation system, and its programs to control costs, maintain benefits, monitor employers, resolve disputes, and improve workplace safety and health.

“Oregon OSHA also offers employers multiple free resources, including consultation services – no fault, no citations, no penalties – to help them with their on-the-job safety and health programs, including in the construction industry,” Mark Peterson, public information and communications director at DCBS told Oregon Business over email. “Oregon OSHA has been helping drive down incident rates for decades. This has not only helped keep workers safe, but has also contributed to decreases in workers’ compensation costs. From 1990 through 2021, for example, injury and illness rates dropped by more than 60 percent, and fatality rates fell by more than 50 percent.”

The decrease in the pure premium will be effective Jan. 1, 2024, but employers will see the changes when they renew their policies in 2024.

July marked the sixth consecutive monthly drop in the state’s jobless rate, down from 3.5% in June and from a recent high of 4.8% in January.

Oregon added 6,800 seasonally adjusted, nonfarm payroll jobs in July after a gain of 5,700 jobs in June, per OED’s press release, which adds that July’s gain was nearly double the average increase of 3,700 jobs per month during the previous 12 months.

OED notes that nearly all of Oregon’s job growth in the past year has been in three industries — health care and social assistance, leisure and hospitality, and government — with each sector up about 10,000 jobs and expanding by 4% to 5%.

The sectors seeing the biggest jobs gains since June were health care and social assistance (which added 3,400 jobs), government (which added 1,600 jobs), professional and business services (which saw 1,000 more jobs), and construction (which added 900 jobs in July).

The health care and social assistance sector grew by 13,900 jobs between July 2022 and July 2023 — or 5.2%. While the industry is still slightly below its March 2020 peak employment level, it is still the fastest-growing sector of employment, with each subset of the industry rapidly adding jobs. Nursing and residential-care facilities have added 2,800 jobs in the past year; hospitals added 1,900 jobs; and ambulatory health care services added 2,400 jobs in the past month. The Employment Department notes that ambulatory health care services has reached a record-high number of jobs, with 98,300 people working in the sector as of July 2023.

The biggest month-over-month declines were in financial activities, which lost 600 jobs, and manufacturing, which lost 500. Transportation, warehousing and utilities as a sector lost 500; private educational services also saw a decline of 500 jobs in July. OED notes that manufacturing as a sector has contracted over the past year, though there are exceptions: Transportation equipment manufacturing has grown by 400 jobs in the past year, and nondurable goods manufacturing — which includes food and beverage manufacturing — has added 1,300 jobs over the past year, though it cut 200 jobs in July.

KeyBank’s Key4Women program, along with Microenterprise Services of Oregon and the Portland Thorns Football Club have announced a collaborative business pitch contest for women-owned businesses in Oregon and Southwest Washington.

The competition will feature opportunities for startups and existing businesses, with cash awards totaling $50,000. The winner will receive a grand prize of $20,000.

To be eligible for the pitch contest, businesses must be 51% woman-owned, controlled, operated, and managed. Contestants must also have headquarters in Multnomah, Clackamas, Washington, Columbia, Hood River, Yamhill, or Marion County, —or Clark County in Oregon or Cowlitz or Skamania County in Washington. Applicants can be entrepreneurs with an idea for a new business, or an existing business as long as annual sales are less than $3 million.

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Microenterprise services like MESO typically offer small-scale loans to businesses in the early stages of growth, combined with business advising to give the business the best chance to succeed. In addition to the competition, MESO advisors are also offering free application workshops on Tuesday and again on Aug. 2, and Aug. 5 to any qualifying business candidates.

Business mentoring through MESO will also be available to all applicants after the contest.

“We are delighted to join forces with Key4Women for this inspiring pitch contest. It serves as a platform to connect with an extensive network of women-owned businesses and enterprising individuals in Oregon and SW Washington,” Cobi Lewis, MESO CEO said in a press release . “Our mission extends beyond providing financial resources for the growth of the contest winner’s business; we are committed to offering comprehensive support as they navigate their journey forward. We firmly believe that when women-owned businesses thrive, they become catalysts for job creation and become integral players in fostering robust local economic growth.”

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“Women business owners and leaders positively impact our economy and communities in powerful ways every day,” Rachael Sampson, national director, Key4Women said in the press release. “Through this pitch contest we look forward to offering two critical supports women-owned businesses often struggle to find or ask for: mentorship and capital.”

Applications are available at https://www.mesopdx.org/key4women. They are due by 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time Aug. 31.

The host representatives will select 10 finalists on Sept. 18. Finalists will present a four-minute pitch and field questions for six-minutes to a panel of five judges at a live event on Nov. 16 at Providence Park in Portland. Winners will be announced the following day.

Criteria used to determine winners will include the quality of the presentation, clarity of business vision and mission, economic impact of the idea and the soundness of value proposition. Existing business applicants must pitch a new product or service that expands their current business.

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Data released by the Oregon Employment Department on Wednesday shows Oregon’s unemployment rate dropped for the fifth consecutive month in June, down to 3.5% from 3.7% in May.

The June rate was close to Oregon’s record-low 3.4% unemployment rate, recorded in November and December of 2019, and down 1.3% from 4.8% in January.

According to the OED press release, Oregon’s seasonally adjusted nonfarm payroll employment grew by 5,700 jobs, following a revised gain of 4,200 jobs in May. June’s job gain was the largest monthly increase since January, when the state added 9,600 jobs.

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The sectors where job gains were the largest were in government, which added 2,400 jobs; a category called “other services,” which refers to fields like repair and maintenance , and which added 1,800 jobs; leisure and hospitality, which added 1,600 jobs; health care and social assistance, which added 1,100 jobs and professional and business services, which added 1,500 jobs.

Late last year, the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis released a quarterly economic forecast predicting a “mild recession” could hit in 2023 and take full effect by summer. By December, senior economist Josh Lehner was saying the odds of a recession had dropped significantly.

Now economists’ tune has changed: A recent economic analysis by Deloitte Insights reported that consistent strong national job numbers, combined with other indicators, meant there was “too much positive news” to indicate a recession is on the horizon.

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“Oregon’s economy and labor market continue to be strong,” Lehner tells Oregon Business over email, adding that the job growth tracks with state estimates.

“We have noticed in the withholding data that the slowdown earlier in 2023 started reversing, with growth picking back up in May and June. The latest employment report confirms what we have been seeing in the revenue data,” Lehner says. 

Not all sectors saw job growth. Wholesale trades, transportation, warehousing, and utilities and manufacturing each lost 1,000 or more jobs in June.

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The data show payroll employment grew 2.3% over the past year. Over-the-year job growth slowed to approximately 2% in the past five months, down from the 12-month growth rates that were above 3% during the post COVID-19 economic recovery period over the two years.

The national unemployment rate was 3.6% in June 2023, closely mirroring Oregon’s rate. The U.S. economy added 209,000 jobs in June. The low unemployment reflects a bullish overall economy – the S&P 500 entered a bull market in June, up 20% from its most recently-recorded low.

Other states, like Missouri, have already broken low unemployment records.

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Established in 2020, the Comcast RISE (Representation, Investment, Strength, and Empowerment) Initiative aims to support the growth of small businesses and entrepreneurs that are committed to uplifting their local communities. The program provides grants to businesses in five cities across the United States, Portland included.

In light of a recent study that showed that 50% of small business owners are working more hours now than they were a year ago, the grants this year will be particularly helpful for small businesses as they transition from pandemic recovery to expansion and growth.

Grant packages include business consultation services, educational resources, a $5,000 monetary grant, creative production, media placement schedule and a technology makeover. Requirements include being established for three years or more, having 100 or fewer full- or part-time employees, and being independently owned and operated.

“Grants like this are essential because small businesses are essential to our community. Small businesses inspire us, they help us to shop with intention and they share a lot of love,” says Sarah Shaoul, founder of Bricks Need Mortar. “By supporting small businesses who could use some extra support with these resources, they are helping the entire community flourish.”

“The RISE grant was extremely important for me and my business. It came right on the middle of pandemic in a time that I was fighting to keep my business open, and it brought me a huge encouragement and hope that everything would be ok. As small business owners we very often feel lonely and hopeless,” says Natasha Busse, owner of Dogville PDX. “The RISE grant gave me the help I needed in a very difficult time and the energy that I needed to keep going. I cannot compete with the big names; I am a small business, but I know I provide an exceptional service. Having the help of a big name like Comcast gave us the confidence we needed to keep going.”  

Applications are being accepted now through June 30. Grants will be announced in August 2023 and 100 small businesses will be awarded with them in September 2023.

“Being a women-owned and Asian-owned business post-Covid is extremely difficult,” explained Dr. Lani Doser, owner of SkinwiseRx. “Initiatives like the Comcast RISE grant allow business owners to get ahead, reach further and follow their dreams. I would encourage all Portland-area small businesses to apply.”  

Kimberly Branam is a third-generation Portlander — she grew up in Northeast Portland’s Irvington neighborhood, left for 10 years and has been back for 16 — but she leans against that curve, with grounded optimism about her hometown.

As the executive director of Prosper Portland, it’s part of Branam’s job to be optimistic. Prosper Portland, formerly the Portland Development Commission, is the city’s economic and urban development agency. With a “focus on building an equitable economy by carrying out a comprehensive range of economic development programs,” Prosper Portland’s success in large part depends on growth: Its stated priorities include growing family-wage jobs, creating vibrant neighborhoods and communities, and advancing opportunities for prosperity.

With growth comes growing pains. Portland has faced not only growing pains but devastating setbacks in recent years: a 30% increase in homelessness since 2019, record-breaking homicide rates and a massive increase in drug overdoses (a trend seen across Oregon, due to an increase in methamphetamine’s potency and also fentanyl usage).

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Branam sees these issues right outside of her office, located in Portland’s Old Town. The neighborhood is home to numerous agencies that serve people experiencing homelessness, addiction and mental health crises. Many of the people who rely on those resources live in tents on sidewalks and tucked into unused storefronts.

“It’s been important to us that we stay in Old Town,” says Branam. It’s heartbreaking to so frequently witness people in crisis on the streets, she says. She’s been a witness to Portland’s growing houselessness crisis since she was a child, and remembers asking her dad how they could allow this to happen — for people to not have a home. As an adult, she tries to be mindful of what people without homes are going through.

When Branam goes to work, her team is often talking about the role they can play in helping the people who are struggling the most.

“I think that looks like creating inclusive, vibrant neighborhoods that have homes and employment opportunities for everybody,” she says, before a long pause. “But yeah, it’s really, really heavy.”

As for the vacant storefronts, Branam says the pandemic hit downtown hard. But despite what some popular narratives may claim about businesses fleeing Portland and particularly downtown Portland, Branam says it was really a small number of larger tenants “who left largely during the pandemic with many of their workers moving to remote work.” 

Branam’s excited about a new generation of small businesses moving into Old Town. Similar to most cities across the country, Portland is being faced with the significant challenge of reimagining its downtown, with hybrid work having such an impact on occupancy rates and foot traffic. 

Prosper Portland is facing that challenge by dedicating significant resources to attracting and supporting businesses that recognize “the history, accessibility and unique identity” of Old Town. 

“We’re seeing an unprecedented level of collaboration right now across private, public and community leadership throughout the city, and it’s yielding positive results,” Branam says.

The importance of community has been a throughline in Branam’s career and is something she often brings up in speeches and interviews.

After graduating from Colby College in Maine, where she studied English and anthropology, Branam spent three years in Burkina Faso with the Peace Corps. In a small village without running water or electricity, Branam taught over 100 sixth-graders English and math (in French). Over the summers, she worked at a girls camp with the mission of encouraging young girls to attend high school. Burkina Faso is ranked as the 10th-least literate country in the world, but Branam says she witnessed incredible community cohesion and a strong culture of oral history. 

Working there, she says, shaped how she approaches economic development: “I learned that effective solutions are both identified and led by the people who are the intended beneficiaries.”

After her time in the Peace Corps, Branam attended Harvard Kennedy School, where she earned a master’s degree in public policy, with an international focus. She thought she would move to Washington, D.C., after graduating, maybe work in a policy think tank. But then she went home to Portland to attend a wedding,  and someone told her about an opportunity to work for then city commissioner Sam Adams. The opportunity to return to Portland — which she knew she wanted to do eventually — was enticing.

So Branam came home, where she got the job as Adams’ senior policy director, and then as his economic development director when he became mayor in 2009. In 2011 she was hired by the PDC as its deputy director and became executive director in 2016.

Branam felt good about sharpening her focus from international policy to economic development in the city she calls home.

“There can be an almost postcolonial, continued power dynamic, doing international development work as an American,” she says, “particularly as a white woman abroad.” But she feels she understands the nuances of what it means to be a Portlander and is “really delighted” to be working in her own backyard again.

For her first project as executive director, Branam worked with community partners to develop the agency’s neighborhood economic development strategy, to center racial equity and prevent displacement. This, she says, would empower people of color and those who have historically “not been at the table” to drive the economic development for their community. 

More recently, this community-led approach led to the implementation of the Cully Tax Increment Financing District. In the past, TIF districts have been used for ambitious projects like the Oregon Convention Center and Eastbank Esplanade. The Cully TIF is the first one Portland has implemented in over a decade. And, Branam says, it represents a new model in which local organizers came forward first to “pursue a community-centered tax increment finance district that has, at its heart, racial inclusion, racial equity and stabilization.” Branam says TIF is now being used as a tool to maintain the socioeconomic diversity that is so integral to a community like Cully. 

“We’re not just bringing people to the table,” she says. “We’re establishing the table together.” 

In 2015 the agency began a five-year strategic plan to rebrand and refocus. One result: In 2017, a year after Branam began working for the agency, the PDC changed its name to Prosper Portland. In a press release announcing the change, the agency said the new name “speaks to the agency’s focus on sharing the gains of economic growth equitably” and was part of a “shift toward more inclusive economic development.”

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To understand why the PDC would have sought to rebrand, it’s important to know a bit about the agency’s history. Shortly after it was created by a public vote in 1958, the PDC announced that “the men of Portland business and civic organizations will see their reward in the future elimination and prevention of blight and the promotion of industrial development,” according to a history of urban renewal published on Prosper’s own website. Its first urban renewal project focused on the South Auditorium neighborhood, a large section of downtown near what is now called Providence Park. More than 400 buildings — including hundreds of homes and businesses — were demolished in an effort to remake a diverse neighborhood mostly composed of Jewish and Italian immigrants and their families.

In the 1960s, the PDC began to focus urban renewal efforts on Northeast Portland’s majority-Black Albina neighborhood — and in 1970 began working with Legacy Emanuel Hospital to expand the hospital’s footprint in the neighborhood. More than 200 households and 20 businesses were relocated in the effort. Then the anticipated federal funds for the effort dried up.

In December 2022, descendants of Black Portlanders who were displaced for that failed expansion announced they are suing Prosper — along with the city and Legacy Emanuel Health — for generational wealth lost when residents’ homes were demolished in service of a hospital expansion that never happened, in an area where property values have skyrocketed over the past two decades. (In February the defendants filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit; the plaintiffs filed a brief in opposition to that motion in April.) 

“While we cannot comment on the lawsuit,” says Branam, “Prosper Portland has certainly acknowledged and denounced the disproportionate impacts of the era when the federal government funded and local governments enabled the destruction of hundreds of communities across the country, including Central Albina, in the name of ‘urban renewal.’”

Branam says a rebrand can only be successful if it’s true. And she believes Prosper Portland is walking the talk.

“The change in name was the most visible aspect [of the rebrand],” says James Paulson, Workystems, Inc. board chair, who was involved in the hiring of Branam. “But she has changed the way economic development looks at community equity and how a city agency can pivot to address past challenges as it looks to the future.”

One example of Prosper’s efforts is the Portland Means Progress initiative, which connects companies to opportunities to hire underrepresented youth and also to pursue intentional purchasing from BIPOC-owned businesses. To date, Branam says that initiative has been responsible for $400 million in purchases from BIPOC-owned firms.

This spring Branam told Oregon Business that she and her team at Prosper were collecting feedback on the agency’s new economic development strategy, Advance Portland, which they were due to present to Portland City Council on April 26 — shortly after this issue went to press.

The plan, Branam says, is intended to address a key weakness in Portland’s accelerated development over the past 10 years: As a city that’s naturally attracted skilled labor, growth has occurred without proper consideration for “institutional infrastructure, business support, local talent development, cross-sector engagement and regionalism.”

This oversight has resulted in “particularly negative impacts on BIPOC communities and geographic areas of the city, including East Portland and the Central City,” according to the report. Advance Portland is strategically designed to address those negative impacts by aligning economic growth with equity and climate action.

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The collecting of feedback, Branam says, is where, as a leader, both her strength and weakness lies. She says she’s always been a deeply curious person — good at asking questions, listening and being open to a lot of different voices and opinions. But sometimes that desire to gather input from everyone — “to hear all the people,” as she puts it — can create a barrier to action. She’s had to work on recognizing when she’s listened enough and it’s time to make decisions.

“Kimberly brings to the table a great combination of leadership, policy smarts and a practical approach to a complex agency and a complex job,” says Tom Kelly, who was board chair of Prosper Portland when Branam started.

Branam says she’s thrilled to see people returning to citywide events like the Portland Winter Light Festival — a favorite of hers and her family’s — and she’s heartened by employment numbers. According to a Prosper Portland report titled “Portland’s Economic Recovery and Job Growth Must Prioritize BIPOC-Communities,” Portland has added 194,400 jobs since April of 2020. As of October 2022, that was 1.2% more jobs than February 2020, before 180,000 jobs were lost in the COVID crisis.

As Portland continues to recover from the widespread damage of the pandemic, Branam says she sees the city in a renaissance period, and that Prosper Portland is working to help “make true what we want to become.” She sees Portland at a critical moment: “We have to figure out what we’re good at,” she says.

As for what she personally hopes for for Portland: “I want to make sure it’s a great place not just for affluent, white-identifying children, but for Black and brown children and for those who are not socioeconomically advantaged.”

Are we there yet? “That’s an open question from my perspective.”

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Tory is a graphic designer and Jeff is an outdoor guide, and they were both able to continue making a living in Burns. Tory is also a visual artist who works in a variety of media; she’s painted murals in downtown Burns and also works in watercolor. But they struggled to find the space to work at home — and they wanted space to continue their creative endeavors. 

So they decided to rent some space. They found a retail space downtown — it had been vacant for years when they showed interest but previously housed a JC Penney and a flower show, Tory says — that they could use as office space but also as creative space. 

“We all just needed a place — a professional place to meet our clients that wasn’t at our home,” Tory says. “We wanted to stop running our businesses off our kitchen counters.”

In collaboration with the Corvallis-based Foundry Collective, they launched Spark Collaborative Studios. It’s a workspace for local artists. It’s a gallery and retail store. It’s also a community space. And it’s a small-business incubator for artists and craftspeople in the area.

There are more artists in Harney County than you might think. Burns has a population of just under 3,000, and the county as a whole had 7,495 residents at the time of the 2020 Census. It’s the seventh-least populous county in the state and the most sparsely populated, with a population density of .72 people per square mile; 75% of Harney County is federal land, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife-managed Malheur National Wildlife Refuge — the site of a 2016 takeover by far-right extremists, largely from outside the area — that attracted national media coverage. (While Harney County leans conservative — the county hasn’t carried a Democrat in a presidential election since 1964 — most residents didn’t join the occupation themselves.)

In the 1970s, Harney County was the wealthiest county in the state, as measured by per-capita income, but the county has suffered economically in subsequent decades, largely due to the closure of mills in the area. 

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By 2023 the median household income was $43,387, according to Census data presented in a 2023 report from the Biz Harney Opportunity Collaborative, an economic development organization formed under the umbrella of the High Desert Partnership. That’s a 10% increase from 2019, but the cost of living in the area has increased by 19% — and incomes in the area are about two-thirds the median household income for the state. Agriculture is still the backbone of the local economy, with 20% of the local economy being directly tied to farming or ranching, but like many parts of rural Oregon, that’s beginning to change. 

Tory Schmidt says she has seen analyses suggesting that as many as 50% of people in Harney County identify as artists or craftspeople, and derive at least some income from making art. Oregon Business wasn’t able to independently verify those numbers or locate the study she referenced. Most of the artists who belong to Spark, Tory says, have other jobs — they’re farmers or ranchers who make their own saddles and tack, or work in health care but crochet or paint when they find the time.

“We kind of have the full gamut,” Tory tells OB of the 35 or so artists who belong to Spark. “You know, we’ve got leather workers in our studio, we’ve got ceramicists, we have people who do sculpture.” 

About half of Spark’s 3,000-square-foot space is retail space for artists, who pay as little as $30 or as much as $110 in monthly rent. The wares on display include oil and acrylic paintings and printed photographs — but also a combination gun cabinet and coat rack Tory describes as “very Harney County,” and leather journals by a local artist named Doug Furr (yes, that’s his real name, the Schmidts assure me) who also does metal work.

Beyond a partial wall lies what the Schmidts refer to as a “room of requirement” — a space that can be and has been adapted to whatever needs arise. Some members of the collective have dedicated workspaces in the area, but it’s also a space used to store tools and supplies — “and of course, our Christmas decorations are still out,” Tory says, laughing, as she walks past a pile of tinsel and lights. 

The tools include Jeff’s industrial sewing machine: He makes outdoor gear as part of his guide business, Calamity Butte Guide Service, but also takes on other large-scale sewing projects, like covers for covered wagons — as well as woodworking projects like walking sticks and picture frames. 

Different people make art for different reasons. Some Spark members are full-time artists or artisans making a living or engaged in a lucrative side hustle; some do it for more therapeutic reasons (Spark partners with Symmetry Care, a local mental health organization, to offer art-therapy classes for people who use its services). 

In many cases, there’s a little bit of both in the mix. 

“This is my occupational therapy,” says Amy Roads, gesturing at a rack of jewelry she makes from vintage and locally sourced beads. Roads is retired but worked in retail and as a cake decorator. She’s also relatively new to the area, having moved here with her husband from Illinois three years ago. 

Roads used to play three instruments, but after having two strokes she lost the ability to read music, putting a damper on her creative expression. 

One day Roads’ husband brought home a box of items he bought at an auction. At the bottom of the box was a small collection of vintage necklaces. On a whim, Roads started taking them apart. 

“He challenged me to put it back together,” she says. Gradually, she started making new pieces. “It’s turned out to be really fun.”

She started seeking out beads — she’s really fond of turquoise, jasper and agate — and eventually selling her work. She’s been a member of Spark for two years, and when OB visited, Roads was getting ready to sell necklaces at the Harney County Migratory Bird Festival, an annual festival that takes place in mid-April, when a wide variety of birds stop at the refuge. 

Not all of Spark’s artists have registered as official businesses, Jeff says, but he and Tory encourage them all to do so — and to join the Harney County Chamber of Commerce. 

Tory says she also coaches artists to value their work properly. 

“Artists are notorious for undervaluing their work,” Tory says. Roads chimes in that when she first started selling her jewelry, she wanted to charge just $3 to $5 per necklace — an idea Tory quickly disabused her of.

“You have to at least cover your costs and your time,” Roads says.

The original vision for Spark was to form a maker space and coworking space, renting out “hot desks” to remote workers. But the organization has pivoted from that to being more of a retail space. Spark charges a 10% commission on art sales — at first they didn’t want to charge anything, Tory says, but they do have a small amount of overhead on top of rent, including credit card fees, plus things like bags and tissue paper, which the commission covers.

“We want to encourage the artisan maker-creator world as much as possible in rural communities because it has the highest net economic impact in a community,” says Brad Attig, founder of Foundry Collective, a Corvallis-based nonprofit created specifically to foster economic development in rural parts of the state. Spark is one of Foundry’s partner organizations, of which there are several in other small Oregon towns, including Estacada and Coos Bay. That’s particularly true in cases where makers are selling objects made from local materials, with local labor — like a hat knitted from locally raised wool. (Jeff notes that most of Spark’s retail sales are from people passing through the area, particularly during warmer months.)

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But businesses like that are difficult to scale, he says. 

“By having locations like Spark Collaborative Studios, you create kind of on-ramps that are easier [to get started],” Attig says. “I can come in and I only need 50 square feet. But then I build my business: Now I’m 100 square feet. It was a hobby, but now it’s kind of a side gig.”

On the afternoon she spoke with OB, Biz Harney coordinator Andrea Letham had just finished teaching a Co.Starters boot camp — a 10-week training for budding entrepreneurs developed by a Chattanooga, Tenn.-based organization of the same name. Its graduates included three budding food-cart owners — one who plans to open a taco truck and two others focusing on vegan Israeli food and Korean fusion. 

“We’re a little low on restaurants right now. We’ve had two close within the last year,” Letham tells OB. “People retired and moved on.”

But while downtown Burns still has a number of vacant storefronts, there’s also a new crop of businesses opening — including others selling locally made arts and crafts, and also a brewery. And her most recent Co.Starters class included several artisans interested in turning their craft into a business — including a Spark member who is looking to scale up her business.

“I think the wonderful thing about Spark is people don’t always have the money to start,” Letham says. “They need an incubator, a place to start. That’s what Spark offers, and especially for artisans and makers. It’s a really good launching place for them.”

The Schmidts estimate they spent about $1,200 to rehabilitate the space, and Jeff says it’s been a “really expensive hobby” for the couple, rather than a profitable business. 

Attig says since COVID hit, his organization has leaned into working to create virtual hubs so that rural entrepreneurs can connect and discuss the resources that are available to them — and to build relationships, which can be as important as access to capital or space.

Spark hosts regular artists’ receptions and classes, and meetings for community groups, like the Wild Women of Harney County, to which Amy Roads belongs. (“We’re planning a community cleanup. That’s how wild we are,” Roads says.)

“If there’s a need we can fulfill, we try to make space for people,” Jeff says. 

Editor’s Note: The print version of this story, which appears in the May issue of Oregon Business, inaccurately described Harney County’s Co.Starters’ classes as being offered by Spark. This version has been updated to reflect that the classes are offered by the Biz Harney Opportunity Collaborative. Oregon Business regrets the error.

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But this time, the bill’s 40 sponsors — who include two members of Oregon’s Congressional delegation — are optimistic about the chances for the SAFE Banking Act of 2023.

“For the first time, we have a path for SAFE Banking to move through the U.S. Senate Banking Committee and get a vote on the floor of the Senate,” U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said in a statement. “Let’s make 2023 the year that we get this bill signed into law so we can ensure that all legal cannabis businesses have access to the financial services they need to help keep their employees, their businesses and their communities safe.”

The SAFE Banking Act of 2023 is scheduled for a hearing before the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Thursday morning. Sen. Merkley and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (OR-3) are among the bill’s chief sponsors, along with Sen. Steve Daines (R-Montana) and Rep. Dave Joyce (R-Ohio). They introduced the current iteration of the bill at the end of April.

Recreational marijuana is legal in 21 U.S. states, including Oregon. The drug is fully illegal in just three states, while others have decriminalized the drug in recent years or made it legal for medical use. But the push toward more liberal cannabis laws at the state level has created a multibillion-dollar industry.

However,  because the drug is still illegal federally, most cannabis businesses are cash only.

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In an era when retailers and restaurants are increasingly going cashless, that puts cannabis vendors in a vulnerable spot. In 2020 the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission recorded more than 100 robberies at cannabis businesses. 

The SAFE Banking Act would prohibit federal banking regulators from prohibiting, penalizing or discouraging a bank from providing financial services to legitimate state-sanctioned and regulated cannabis businesses; terminating or limiting a bank’s federal deposit insurance primarily because the bank is providing services to a legal cannabis business; recommending or incentivizing a bank to halt or downgrade providing banking services to such businesses; or taking any action on a loan to an owner or operator of a cannabis-related business.

The newest version of the bill also explicitly extends safe harbor to Community Development Financial Institutions and Minority Depository Institutions to ensure they can also serve cannabis businesses.

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