Per an Instagram post shared last fall, Astoria legend holds that Xanadu stands at the former location of an ice cream shop and, more recently, the Voodoo Room. Former employees of the latter say they’ve seen a male figure dressed like the ice cream shop’s owner. 

Now it’s a popular haunt for residents and visitors to the bustling coastal town, who enjoy cocktails named after queer historical figures like Harvey Milk and Rock Hudson, as well as LeRoy Adolphson, a longtime resident who served as the grand marshal of the second Astoria Pride festival. Xanadu opened on March 9 next to the Columbian Theater on Marine Drive and takes its name from the cult-favorite 1980 roller-disco fantasy film starring Olivia Newton-John. 

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Pop culture and queer historical references are important to owner Scott Justus, who serves on the board of the Lower Columbia Q Center and as membership director of the Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce.

“[H]aving that conversation with younger people is important and fun. It’s a fun way to make [education] happen. We don’t make people feel bad for not knowing,” Justus says. “That’s how you learn. That’s why we’re asking for LGBTQ+ education in classes, because if no one teaches it, how would you know?”

Justus said that visitors have quickly warmed to Xanadu. It offers something for people settling into the coastal town, and for younger patrons who need a safe space to have fun and figure themselves out. 

Gay bars have served as crucial meeting spaces for decades. The reason most Pride celebrations take place in June, after all, is to honor the anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which were precipitated by the 1969 police raid of the Stonewall Inn in New York City. 

And while queer life has long been associated with large, urban centers, including Portland — where more than a dozen bars service the metro area’s LGBTQ+ community full-time, and at least twice as many bars give at least once a month to queer programs like drag shows and dance parties — LGBTQ+ nightlife, businesses and activism thrive  across Oregon, from the state capital to wilderness retreats. Oregon Business spoke to owners of queer bars — and other businesses — about how they thrive year-round, how they support their customers and communities, and how they’ve responded to a backlash that has their businesses and events in the crosshairs of a culture war. 

Trapdoor Bar and Grill opened in 2020 in the heart of Ashland, near Lithia Park. It’s situated at the site of the Vinyl Club, which hosted queer-focused events but also had a reputation for violence, including a 2018 incident where a bouncer inflicted serious injuries on a patron and ultimately cost the former venue its liquor license. The new space is an upscale cocktail bar; the new owners have continued to host queer-friendly events while working to make sure Trapdoor is a space where everyone feels welcome and safe.

“We wanted to eventually be a tradition where more or less everyone feels included or we are more of an all-inclusive location. We thought that it was extremely important to keep that Pride event going on because it was such a big part of the venue, and what Ashland is as a town,” says co-owner Ron Morairty. 

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Trapdoor hosts drag and burlesque shows as well as standup comedy and live music, with the goal of creating a space where members of the LGBTQ+ community and straight people can feel comfortable every night of the week. 

Morairty says he doesn’t have any direct connection to the LGBTQ+ community. But he views Ashland — where he has lived for most of the last 14 years, save a stint in the military — as a place uniquely positioned for the kind of inclusive environment he has been working to create.

“Ashland is kind of this weird bubble that isn’t like the rest of the towns around it and isn’t like the rest of Southern Oregon in general,” Morairty says. “It’s a big mixing pot of a bunch of different ways of thinking, cultures, mindsets and ways of life. In my opinion, that’s what we want in America: a giant melting pot of mixed ideas, action and thought that creates this wonderful location where everyone feels included, as if it’s a place that you’ve been before or wanted to be, and you couldn’t find it.”

He says Trapdoor’s staff are trained to lead with respect, and on how to assist if queer patrons feel uncomfortable or worse. “Thankfully, we’ve never had to use our [safety] procedures, and I hope that day never comes,” Morairty says. 

The safety of customers and staff isn’t a new issue for bars in general, nor for queer bars in particular. In the 1980s, groups of skinheads in Portland and elsewhere reportedly lurked outside gay bars, attacking patrons as they left. But in 2023, LGBTQ+ people — as well as events and businesses that affirm them — are at targets in an intensifying culture war. This year alone, the big-box retailer Target pulled some Pride Month merchandise in response to harassment of staff, and conservatives announced plans to boycott Budweiser after the company made a sponsored-content deal with a transgender influencer. And events like drag queen story hours — the first of which was organized in the Bay Area in 2015 as a way to include more queer parents — are increasingly the focus of protests and violent threats, as well as legislation to ban such events, or ban drag altogether. 

While more Oregon communities are holding Pride events and host queer spaces than ever before, the state is not immune to the rising backlash. As this issue went into production, for example, two people were arrested after a sidewalk fight broke out between two groups protesting Oregon City’s first-ever Pride festival.

Jason Wood is a voice coach in Florence, a town on Oregon’s Central Coast with a population of 9,475. He also performs in drag as Fanny Rugburn, regularly hosting all-ages events like storytime readings since 2017. 

Wood says neo-Nazis heckled and harassed his show at the Florence Golf Links on April 29, during his second campaign for Siuslaw County’s school board. 

“Many of the people who came to protest my show had out-of-state license plates on their cars,” Wood says. “I’m not naive enough to think there were zero community members involved, but many of them were not from our community, so it points to something being organized on a larger scale. I have way more support — and Fanny Rugburn has way more support — in the community than there are people speaking out against her.”

Wood says he told his fans online not to engage with the harassers in any way. Police kept the neo-Nazis and their counterprotesters separated, and the event ended with no physical violence. 

It was also a great show, Wood says; he describes that performance as Fanny Rugburn’s best production to date, entirely unrelated to his harassment, but that he still has mixed feelings about the day. 

“The fire is a lot hotter, and someone turned it up, and the fact that I [was] also running for school board probably also added to the heat, especially since the banner at the bottom of the hill said, ‘Keep pedophiles out of our schools,’” Wood says. 

“And let’s not [dance] around it: That is the worst thing you can say to someone. That’s the worst thing you can call someone. I’m not bothered personally, because I know I’m not a pedophile or a groomer, but it’s upsetting that people have the audacity to say that about someone they’ve had very little, if any, contact or experience with,” Wood says. 

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Wood is not alone. In October about 50 protesters — some of them armed — showed up to protest a Drag Queen Storytime event at Old Nick’s Pub in Eugene. They were outnumbered by counterprotesters, about 200 of whom showed up to circle the pub during the event, which took place early on a Sunday. 

Pub staff told Oregon Public Broadcasting that the pub has hosted drag story hours for years — with organizer Jammie Roberts saying they also help organize similar events in Southern Oregon — but such events have recently come under the scrutiny of far-right commentators and protesters, who accuse the performers and organizers of using the events to groom children. (The logic is, apparently, that all drag performance is inherently sexual, though that idea is difficult to square with an honest definition of drag.) 

Just a month after the Eugene event, a man who ran a neo-Nazi website shot and killed five people — and wounded 25 others — at the Colorado Springs’ Club Q before patrons stopped him. 

Colorado Springs has a population of half a million people, making it the second-most populous city in the state and comparable in size to Portland. But the city is probably better known as the site of Focus on the Family’s headquarters as well as the U.S. Air Force Academy, and some national media coverage of the Club Q shooting was couched in surprise that any queer spaces existed in Colorado Springs to begin with.

Entrepreneurs and organizers in smaller Oregon cities — including Eugene as well as Salem and Bend — have worked in recent years to carve out queer-friendly spaces, more often in the form of event nights than dedicated gay bars. 

Daniel Young is not the father of Bend’s queer nightlife, but he is D’Auntie Carol, host of drag bingos and brunches at Bend’s Campfire Hotel & Pool Club, which holds Bend’s Winter Pride celebrations — a snowy spin on the traditional summer event. He also hosts the pop-up party Hey Honey, which takes place at the queer-owned restaurant Spork.

Young moved to Bend in 2011 and wanted to bring with him a vision for queer nightlife that was beginning to blossom in Portland at that time, when producers were just starting to host queer parties — like Blow Pony, Gaycation and Booty — outside the safety net of gay bars. That not only brought newfound freedom for creatives to mold venues to their vision but also brought LGBTQ+ people together to socialize in new settings.

Young says people often tell him that he should open Bend’s first full-time gay bar, but Young counters that he will give all the advice he can to anyone else with the funds and resources to make it happen. Same goes for young queens who want to host their own drag brunch, bingo or pop-up party in the meantime. 

“There’s been a lot of ‘You should do this,’ and for me, it should be ‘You should do this,’” Young tells OB. “I’ll sit down to coffee and show you how I do things, and you can throw another drag brunch or do this sort of thing, and the more people that do it, the more visible we are as a community,” Young says.

Campfire is not a gay bar but does advertise itself as an explicitly queer-friendly space. So far, general manager Daniel Elder says, that seems to have been enough to deter homophobic and transphobic people from visiting. 

Salem’s sole gay bar, the Southside Speakeasy, is situated in a secluded corporate park south of the city’s municipal airport. That relative isolation has also kept patrons safe, says co-owner David Such. 

“We don’t really have problems with people because we’re in an area where you know you’re going to a gay bar if you’re going there,” Such says. “We’re not downtown, but we’re seeing people being more open in public and holding hands, and you never saw that 18 years ago.”

And like many gay bars, Southside Speakeasy gets its share of straight-identified patrons, all of whom seem to enjoy themselves. 

Such says parents visit on weekends, taking a break during their kids’ basketball games at the neighboring court. A swingers club and a fetish group also started holding dinner parties at the bar after they met with less accepting spaces in town, Such adds.

 “They went to another bar and were asked to leave because people there didn’t agree with the choices they were making, even if they weren’t performing any of those choices in their space,” Such says. “There are people all over the board who come in, like straight people with gay best friends, or our parents and relatives, so people feel welcome and not uneasy being here.”

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Drag story events are relatively new, and the right-wing focus on them even newer. The recent backlash has prompted legislative attempts to ban drag performance altogether: Idaho legislators tried to ban drag performances in public facilities during this year’s session, but the bill failed to advance. Tennessee’s Legislature successfully passed a bill limiting drag performance to age-restricted venues, though at the beginning of June that bill was struck down by a federal judge who said it violates First Amendment protections. (Laws against masquerading, or costumed dress, were used to arrest queer-presenting and gender-nonconforming people for much of the 20th century, and such laws were often a pretense for bar raids like the one that sparked the Stonewall riots.) 

Even the conflation of queer identity with pedophilia, and rhetoric about indoctrination of children, have a familiar ring. In 1977 singer Anita Bryant argued that homosexuals should not be protected from discrimination because they used school teaching positions to “recruit” children into their lifestyle. And in 1992 Oregon voters narrowly defeated a ballot measure that would have amended the Oregon constitution to define “ homosexuality, pedophilia, sadism or masochism” as “abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse.” 

In those days, businesses that welcomed queer people were far more difficult to find, says Jill Nelson, treasurer of Oregon Pride in Business, an LGBTQ+ business alliance connecting queer business owners across industries in Oregon and Washington. 

“Thirty years ago, if you wanted to find people like us, your two choices were gay-
affirming churches and the bar. That was it,” Nelson tells OB.

Nelson remembers being an out lesbian in the 1990s, and she says the current backlash doesn’t scare her. She is confident that the LGBTQ+ community is better organized and equipped to fight together against the current backlash. She also thinks the business community is more committed to equality than people may realize. 

“I think that the business community is leading LGBTQ+ acceptance nationally and culturally. You can see that with Disney,” Nelson says, referring to an ongoing dispute between the Walt Disney Company and the state of Florida, which has culminated in legal action by the latter against Gov. Ron DeSantis. Disney’s suit says Florida’s government has retaliated politically after company officials publicly criticized Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act, colloquially known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. “Politically, we are divided as a country, but in the business world, we are not as divided.

“There are fiscal conservatives who run businesses who are definitely going to look for conservative financial strategies, and that’s going to be important to them. But they realize they have to create environments for their employees and the people they do business with to succeed, and they‘re becoming less biased in who they want to do good business with,” she adds.

Nelson acknowledges homophobic and transphobic discrimination against business owners still happens in the United States but believes it to be an overall rare occurrence in the Pacific Northwest, pointing to more than a decade of positive business interactions across three separate financial institutions her business has used. She believes that the work of LGBTQ+ activists and business owners, supported by the overall accepting spirit of the Pacific Northwest, will make legislation against the community difficult to implement. 

“I’ve seen the LGBTQ+ news that comes out of Florida, and I’ve seen 300-plus drag protesters in heels, and it makes me think ‘Yeah, they don’t know what’s coming at them if they keep this up,’” Nelson says. “I think we are better prepared to fight this bigotry and negativity as a community than ever before.And especially in this area, I don’t think we will see it rear its ugly head as much, and if we do, there will be pushback.”

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Wood says allies from urban cities can support rural LGBTQ+ communities by visiting, even if they don’t have boldly out and proud destinations like gays bars or coffee shops. He recommends Southern Oregon Pride and Yachats Pride. 

“It is difficult to get something like a Pride celebration going in a rural area, so even though it looks like it might not have a lot to it, it always does. There’s a lot of heart and thought that went into it,” Wood says. 

Justus says rural populations especially need people who are both trained for the jobs people like him hire to fill, but also people who can afford to live in the area without scraping by to make ends meet. Justus says Xanadu proudly pays employees more than minimum wage. He works with Clatsop County Community College’s Small Business Development Center to develop training opportunities for future employees, and to help other queer business owners in Astoria thrive. 

Even for his immersion in Astoria’s broader community, Justus can’t help but find comfort in seeing a rainbow flag at businesses like Xanadu. 

“It’s like when I moved to town and I asked where my people were. I mean, ‘Where are my gay people?’ Because they’re going to understand my life and experiences a lot differently than people from the straight community because of the issues that we deal with,’” Justus says. “It’s not that we don’t want to be part of that community, it’s that we want to be able to relate to someone on that level so we can go out and be ourselves in the broader community.”

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Editor’s Note: The version of this story that ran in the July/August 2023 print edition of Oregon Business incorrectly identified the co-owner of Trapdoor Bar & Grill as Todd Morairty, not Ron Morairty. Oregon Business regrets the error.

The fund is new but led by a team well known in North and Northeast Portland: CEO Rukaiyah Adams was, until last summer, the investment chief at Meyer Memorial Trust and is the founding board member of the Albina Vision Trust, which also has a mission to restore the historic lower Albina neighborhood. The fund’s board members include Larry Miller, chair of Nike’s Michael Jordan brand; Ron Herndon, founder of the Portland chapter of the Black United Front, CEO of Albina Head Start and president of the National Head Start Association; and Tony Hopson, founder and CEO of Self Enhancement, Inc., a Northeast Portland nonprofit that supports at-risk youth.

Oregon Business spoke with Hopson about how the investment happened and what’s on the horizon for the 1803 Fund.

This interview has been edited for space and clarity.

What’s the backstory behind this investment?

I think it’s twofold. I think this is a combination of a 40-year career for me, a 40-plus-year career for Ronnie Herndon, and the work that we’ve done through our respective agencies during that time, and because of both of us being connected to Nike and being connected to Phil Knight — for much of that 40 years — through their support of our respective agencies. Phil and Penny personally provided support over the years. So you have many, many years of relationships that are growing and mutual respect — for what he was doing in the philanthropy world and what we were doing in terms of our services. That’s kind of part one.

Then you get to George Floyd, you get to Black Lives Matter. Nike — as well as many others — decides that they want to do something, to put resources back into the Black community. So with Nike’s $40 million [investment in 2020] and the Jordan brand’s $100 million [investment the same summer], Phil gave me a call to let me know that that was happening, because he felt like we should be involved with whatever was going to occur in Portland through those resources.

I mean, you know, $100 million over 10 years and $40 million over four years from Nike is a nice investment. But I just felt like something more substantial was going to be necessary for us to truly impact the African American community. So I asked him, would he and Penny consider something larger for the Black community of Portland? And he didn’t say no. He said, “Well, what would that look like?”

So when he said that to me, I contacted Ronnie Herndon and Rukaiyah Adams, who is actually an alumnus of SEI and Albina Head Start. We started the conversation of what that might look like so that we can take something back to the field for a larger gift. Long story short, [Phil] said yes. After over a two-and-a-half-year period of time going back and forth — and many, many, many conversations that included others like Larry Miller and Nike CEO John Donahoe and others — we were able to get to a point of him saying, yes, he wanted to make that kind of investment.

You mentioned that Nike and the Knights have both been really supportive of Northeast Portland in the past. Can you give some examples of that?

Well, I’m saying they’ve been supportive of us [SEI and Albina Head Start]. I don’t know what all he’s done in Northeast Portland. But Nike has supported SEI, the agency that I run. They were the first corporate sponsor back in 1981. They have provided tennis shoes, T-shirts, awards and cash donations to SEI every year from 1981 to the present. Then, as we as we were looking at expanding our services — I don’t even know when this was, maybe 2007 or 2008 or something along those lines — Phil did a $5 million gift to SEI, which also supported our only replication in Miami, the Overtown Youth Center, which, you know, an NBA Hall of Famer, Alonzo Mourning, actually hits up. So he made that gift at that point in time, but Nike has continued to provide ongoing resources throughout.

Can you tell me a little bit more about the 1803 Fund? This is brand-new, right?

It is an investment entity, such that we will be taking some of those real resources to do some investment and development, so the resources can actually come back to the fund. I mean, $400 million certainly is a large chunk of change. But, you know, you can make that go away pretty quick depending on how you use it. And we want this to be sustainable over a very long period of time. So therefore, [Adams] has some ideas with her financial and investing background as to how we might take some of those resources to invest in a way that resources would come back to the entity — as we continue to provide services in the education arena, the cultural arena and then the place arena.

Are there any specifics that you can share as far as conversations that you’ve had, or even just general areas where you’re looking to invest?

Well, the general areas are those three. With education, Ronnie and I, that’s our background. And we’re the reason why the resources were brought to bear, and the community feels belief and confidence in the work that we’ve been doing. The foundation of the educational services will come out of our two programs. But we’re smart enough to know that we can’t do this by ourselves, so there will definitely be conversations with other partners who are doing good work within the African American community of the Portland metropolitan area.

This isn’t the first time there’s been some money that’s been brought to the community, certainly, but we’ve never seen $400 million. But when you bring money, if you do it the same way that has been done in the past, then you can expect possibly the same result. We make a difference but we don’t make the difference — the outcomes don’t change much. So we’re going to take our time.

There’ll be a lot of folks that will want to know, “Well, how are you going to spend the money? Who are you going to work with?” We want to take our time to design an effort that is different, one that is collaborative, one that includes partnerships — but one that is put together in such a way that we can drill deeper into the root causes of what is occurring in our Black community. We want to be able to go deeper and wider and serve more individuals.

I think one of the reasons we’re so excited about this in Portland [is because] there’s only something like 66,000 or 67,000 African Americans in the Portland metro area. That’s a doable number to get your arms around and change the game for that population. Unlike going to Chicago or L.A. or New York, or many other big cities — the numbers are just staggering. But the numbers here are not. We already serve 16,000 African Americans through our program already, and Ronnie serves several thousand. So we feel like, with the right design of activities that go from early childhood to adults, we can put something together that, as I said, makes the difference — instead of just making a difference.

Is the focus going to be on North and Northeast Portland? With gentrification, the Black population of Portland is kind of all over the metro area. Are you interested in services in East Portland?

We have to be. We don’t know what the numbers are now. But there would be many data that would say that there are more African Americans who live in East Portland than live in Albina. I mean, the first project was being touted as, you know, rebuild Albina — and we’re OK with that as a start. Certainly, historically, that’s where the African Americans resided, and there are some things that need to happen there to rebuild. But certainly, if we’re talking about changing the game for African Americans, there’s no way you can just stay in the Albina area and reach the population we’re talking about — because there are such a large number of them who do not live in Albina and will never have the opportunity to come back. We hope that by rebuilding Albina, there will be some opportunities for many of them to come back, but certainly not all. So yes, these services will extend beyond Albina. It may start there, but it will certainly, over time, be very inclusive of the African Americans throughout the Portland metro area.

Is there anything else you want to add?

I’m saying this to every reporter I talk to, because I’m waiting for somebody to say no, that’s not true. I believe — we believe — that this is the largest private gift ever given to an African American community in the history of Black America, in the history of this nation. So there’s something to be said for those of us who have been working on this and put this together, and for Phil and Penny night to make the difference. This magnitude is really very historical in our nation. So I’m waiting for somebody to say “No, somebody in Chicago did XYZ.” No one has said that yet. So I’m going to keep saying that until somebody tells me there’s something different.

“I am what you call an economic development practitioner,” Randall, the seasoned and unapologetically confident director of the new Portland-based Black Business Association of Oregon, tells Oregon Business. “The only other Black business association that operates statewide — there’s only two — is in Rhode Island. And we’re the other.”

The BBAO was created in 2022 through a partnership between the National Association of Minority Contractors and the Portland Business Alliance as an outgrowth of the Portland Business Alliance’s Black Economic Prosperity initiative, which it launched in 2020 following the death of George Floyd. The PBA has been criticized by Portland’s Black community for its years of lackadaisical support of Black-owned businesses and was pushed by five Black PBA board members to make a visible commitment. 

So far the organization has raised $1.7 million through a combination of sources that include the PBA and Meyer Memorial Trust — as well as state and federal funds. 

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BBAO’s intentional focus on raising wealth within the Black community is a goal that Randall says he has strived for during his nearly 30 years of advocating for economic development, housing, tourism and other economic drivers. Following in his father’s footsteps, he received his bachelor’s degree in political science from Baltimore’s Morgan State University, a historically Black research college. Randall then returned to his familial roots in consolidated Macon-Bibb County, a red-clay hilly town of about 160,000 residents who live along the gentle and unspoiled currents of the 255-mile Ocmulgee River.

Randall was the only son of five children in a religious and politically active household within a segregated neighborhood of Black professionals. Randall’s father, attorney William C. “Billy” Randall, served in the Georgia House of Representatives and was the first Black politician from Bibb County at that influential level. For 24 years, he worked to modify state laws that were intended to uphold systemic racism, and he fought for changes in the judicial system that would lead to a fairer adjudication of Black people. Billy Randall was also appointed as Bibb County’s first Black civil-court judge and chief magistrate, a position he held for 20 years. 

Randall’s grandfather, William P. “Daddy Bill” Randall, was a civil-rights leader in Macon-Bibb County; the first Black person to serve on that county’s Board of Commissioners; and a longtime business owner who helped build military and public housing across the southeastern United States during World War II. He also owned a funeral home, a nursing home, a skating rink, a cable company and a hotel resort. And he was considered to be a close friend of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

In 1961 “Daddy Bill” Randall helped his then-17-year-old son Billy organize a 1961 Macon bus boycott, the first major resistance of segregation led by youth members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. A year later, the elder Randall led a group of four Macon ministers to protest segregated public buses, which ignited the Macon Bus Boycott in February 1962.

When Lance Randall was recruited to be the project manager for Macon’s economic development commission, he was proud to continue his family’s legacy of blazing new paths, becoming the first Black person to hold that particular seat of influence. Randall was credited with recruiting more than 30 businesses to relocate or expand their operations into Macon-Bibb County. He later was promoted into a vice president position in the Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce, where he worked with city and county department heads, the mayor, and the county chairperson to develop business-friendly policies and strategies that stimulated economic growth within commercial and industrial areas. 

“My job was to keep businesses in Bibb County, Georgia, from leaving, closing or what have you,” Randall says. “If they had issues, my job was to solve problems for them. It was different because most of the presidents and CEOs of these companies were white, in the deep South. It took a little bit of time for them to believe that I could actually help them with their businesses. So I had to prove myself.” 

In 2001, based on Randall’s multiple successes, the city’s business chamber received an award by the Georgia Economic Developers Association for outstanding service, but Randall also had his sights on politics. 

So in 2004, he ran — and lost — as the first Black and Democratic nominee for chair of the Bibb County Commission. A few years later, in 2006, Randall campaigned to become Macon’s second Black mayor, but came in third of seven candidates. After those election losses, Randall was recruited by the city of Seattle to be its business relations manager for the Office of Economic Development. 

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So in 2007, Randall drove from Georgia to the Pacific Northwest. In his new job, he led successful negotiations across multiple agencies that resulted in attracting the Seattle Rock ’n’ Roll marathon in 2009. The race, which directed up to 18,000 runners around various routes over the years, had a $22 million economic impact on the city. Randall also organized a coalition of 28 business associations and neighborhood chambers of commerce to focus on meeting the individualized needs of its business owners. He also recruited an international gaming school to the Seattle Center and was credited with talking a brand-identity manufacturer into staying in Seattle. 

Randall eventually joined a nonprofit called SouthEast Effective Development, which provides arts and culture programming, economic development, and low-income housing in the racially diverse Southeast Seattle area. Among other accomplishments, Randall was given credit for coordinating a renovation project that improved 18 businesses, storefronts owned by entrepreneurs of color; helping numerous business associations secure funding for neighborhood-based economic and business development activities; and recruiting eight new businesses, including the largest Planet Fitness franchise gym in the state of Washington.

Randall eventually became SEED’s interim executive director and assisted with the renovation of the Rainier Arts Center, a South Seattle venue for concerts, plays, music and dance performances, and arts and cultural events. The venue’s upgrades included a state-of-the-art sound system to prepare for a post-pandemic reopening. SEED’s current executive director, Michael Seiwerath, who overlapped Randall’s tenure by two months, also gives Randall credit for building 1,100 affordable apartments. 

“Lance was quite a leader, so he would also work cross-departmentally,” Seiwerath says. “Here I am, new on the job, and Lance is this huge ally for our work and knows everybody.”

After more than a dozen years in Seattle, Randall ran for mayor in 2021, championing for increased financial support for arts-based organizations and for minority-owned businesses. When he lost that race, Randall again started looking for another place to land, including considering moving back to Macon-Bibb County. 

‘The Invisible Knee’

In neighboring Portland, the PBA had begun working on a Black Economic Prosperity initiative to support and recruit Black-owned businesses and influence policies that would benefit Black-owned businesses around the state. 

“Our board and team committed to investing time, energy and support to add a private-sector complement to the social-justice movements that arose in the wake of the murder of George Floyd,” says Andrew Hoan, PBA’s president and CEO. “Economic empowerment for Black businesses will lead to a more resilient economy and equitable community.” 

In response to cultural and economic unrest, PBA invited others to the table for a conversation on how to better support Black economic development. One attendee, John Washington, a longtime community activist and the publisher and editor of Flossin Media, has been a consistent critic of the PBA for having no visible or consistent legacy of Black inclusion. Washington is also the executive director of one of the longest-running business districts in the city, the Soul District Business Association. SDBA was established in 1977 as an engine for economic, social and political progress. 

In late April 2022, after a national search, PBA announced that Randall was hired to run the newly created BBAO.

“What felt important to the folks on the selection panel,” notes Nate McCoy, executive director of the National Association of Minority Contractors-Oregon, “is one, Lance’s expertise, and two, also being able to work within the Black community here in Oregon. But to be quite honest, what got him the job even more than his expertise was that he is a very relational guy and a great communicator.”

Washington, though, says he felt slighted by PBA’s decision-
making process, as an outreach of PBA’s “The Invisible Knee” call to action for Black economic equity. 

“It felt unethical for us to sit in a room together and share these strategic agendas, and then, the next thing I know, I’m reading in the newspaper that the organization had been created and had hired Lance Randall. I think it was the way it was all done, it’s just one of those trust issues,” Washington tells OB. “On the other hand, any organization or person who could assist us in this longstanding struggle to advance Black enterprise in this state is a welcomed ally.”

Another Black business-focused organization, the Black American Chamber of Commerce, which was formed just before the start of the COVID pandemic, is still in building mode. Led by Jesse Hyatt, a Portland-born entrepreneur, BACC offered COVID-related grants to Black businesses and passed out masks, gloves, hand sanitizer and other pandemic-related giveaways. Its seven-person staff is focusing on building a new website, events calendar and jobs board, and is expanding its 200-member roster of active participants.

The money that BBAO raised also helped it leapfrog over the potential impact of the two existing Black-business organizations. PBA agreed to invest $300,000 in financial support over three years, which was matched by Meyer Memorial Trust. And Multnomah County and Prosper Portland each donated $25,000. 

“Working with our partners at NAMC and convening public and philanthropic partners to match the private initiative was mission critical for the Alliance,” Hoan says. So when a financial request came through the Salem office of state Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-Clackamas), she was impressed with the $650,000 that had already been raised to support the BBAO. So she secured another $300,000 in state funding.

“Being able to bring them to the table with the ask, I think, was pretty powerful,” says Bynum, who owns four McDonald’s restaurants in the Portland area. “I’ve never had a direct ask from other Black business organizations.”

U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden also secured a total of $750,000 in federal funding for a collective investment of more than $1.7 million. Several other Portland-based, business-focused nonprofits also received $750,000 in federal money from Wyden and Merkley in 2022, including Washington’s Soul District Business Association.

“For far too long, Black-owned and operated businesses have faced barriers to an equitable economy,” Sen. Merkley says. “This work will be critical to helping build intergenerational wealth among Black Oregonians. When Black-owned or led businesses thrive, everyone thrives, and I cannot wait to see the incredible new opportunities and businesses that this funding will help create.”

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“This good news translates into good-paying jobs and significant investment in the community,” adds Sen. Wyden. “As chair of the Senate Finance Committee, I’ll keep battling for similar investments in Black-owned small businesses throughout Oregon.” 

New Territory

Randall says he is interested in working with any and all organizations and Black-owned businesses to make sure all boats rise using the best practices of economic development. Those include retention and expansion of existing business; development and support of new entrepreneurs; workforce development to increase the number of available jobs; and recruitment of existing Black-owned, out-of-state businesses. He says he is interested in personally visiting Black-owned businesses to find out what their needs are, provide support with capacity building, and build data-collection systems so they can better compete for government contracts and help influence policies that have negatively impacted Black businesses in the past. 

And in November of last year, the BBAO hired John Taponga and the ECONorthwest team to develop the Black Economic Prosperity Dashboard. That project, which will launch in May as part of BBAO’s website, uses data from the Bloomberg Philanthropies-funded Black Wealth Data Center to track Oregon’s Black population numbers, as well as Black educational achievement, Black health and Black-owned businesses. 

BBAO currently shares office space with NAMC-Oregon and is represented on its eight-member board by five PBA board members including BBAO’s board chair Alando Simpson, CEO of City of Roses Disposal & Recycling. McCoy serves on the boards of directors of both PBA and BBAO and acts as BBAO’s fiscal sponsor. And two Black women, Karis Stoudamire-Phillips, vice president of community initiatives for Moda Health, and Angela Nelson, vice president of equity, diversity, and inclusion for Travel Portland, also sit on the BBAO board.

“What I’m hopeful, of all things, is let’s see how things are different six months, a year from now, five years from now,” says serial entrepreneur and PitchBlack founder Stephen Green, who has been vocally critical of PBA’s lack of visible commitment to the Black community. “That’s what’s still being played out. I think it’s super-positive stuff, just different than other stuff that’s happening.”

And while Randall is most excited to talk about the future of the organization, he does share a list of what it has achieved since its inception in early 2022: The organization has purchased a statewide license for its customer relationship management system, allowing BBAO to catalog more than 600 Black-owned businesses across the state; it launched a website with news, events and a directory of Black businesses; and it has partnered with DoorDash to provide $400,000 in grant money for eight weeks of cohort training to 20 restaurants, 10 of which were Black-owned. The DoorDash partnership will continue with a Foodie Passport program that launches in May and will provide customers with rewards for visiting participating restaurants. In January of this year, the organization hosted 40 Black students from the University of Oregon at a Portland Trailblazers-L.A. Lakers game and a reception encouraging them to seek internships and employment in Oregon.

“We’re now setting up something that has never been done in Portland by having these systems in place,” McCoy notes. “Now, how are we partnering and working together, and actually putting the egos aside and communicating in a way that no one is being left behind?”

Randall says his core mission is to have all boats rise on the waves of opportunities he plans to help create, in partnership with other business-related organizations that are run by or serve the Black community. He says his family taught him to humbly listen, lead and hold space for others; wear a suit and tie nearly every day; and use his resources and skills to help others. 

“I’m taking everything that I have learned to share with you all so you can be successful,” Randall says. “I am not going to leave you behind. It’s not my nature. I’m from the South. We don’t do that.”

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A Portland-based venture capital fund with a focus on accelerating Black-founded businesses has announced a significant, but unspecified, investment from the Oregon Community Foundation.

The Black Founders Matter Fund announced last week that it was due to receive an historic investment from OCF — one the fund’s press release describes the investment as the largest ever given to a Portland-based investment fund.

“The BFM Fund aligns so well with Oregon Community Foundation’s community-led approach,” said Lisa Mensah, President and CEO of Oregon Community Foundation. “Our investment in the BFM Fund brings diverse women to tables where decisions are being made and into leadership positions across Oregon to create transformative change that benefits us all.”

A spokesperson for OCF told Oregon Business the organization was unable to disclose the amount of money it has allocated to BFM, saying “We just don’t disclose amounts of this nature, generally.”

The announcement comes one month after Bank of America it would invest a “sizable portion” from its $1.25 billion commitment to advance racial equality and economic opportunity.

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Himalaya Rao-Potlapally, managing director of The BFM Fund, says OCF approached BFM because of the fund’s success in finding and developing brands from BIPOC entrepreneurs.

Current companies in the BFM Fund’s portfolio include footwear and apparel brand Saysh from track and field athlete Allyson Felix; Hued, a health care startup in founded in partnership with tennis star Serena Williams; and Glow Up Games, an all-women founded entertainment studio.

Rao-Potlapally says her organization has already laid out a pipeline of Black and brown founders across industries to OCF along 14 different industries within Oregon, with multiple founders across each vertical.

Even though she says the organization is already looking at founders to invest in, any founder from BIPOC community should feel free to reach out.

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“Even if we can’t invest, we have a network of other funders that we connect with,” Rao-Potlapally says.

According the press release accompanying the announcement, the funding is also expected to help BFM gain access to federal funding and contracts through Oregon’s Small Business Credit Initiative Program, worth $83.5 million.

The BFM Fund is currently led by a leadership team composed of women of color.

Last year, BFM underwent a rebranding following the ouster of founder Marceau Michel, who launched the Black Founders Matter brand in 2017, and the venture fund in 2019.

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Rao-Potlapally says that while the fund’s rebranding was recent, its mission and mode of operation remain the same.

“Our fund prioritizes Black and innovative businesses. This grant through OCF was to be able to focus specifically on Oregon-based entrepreneurs and focus on the Pacific Northwest, because in the Pacific Northwest, and particularly in Oregon, there’s like a huge underrepresentation of black and brown founders in the ecosystem and in the innovation space,” says Rao-Potlapally.

She adds that building the relationship between BFM and OCF has been the result of a three-year process of connecting, and seeing how the BFM fund could help achieve OCF’s goals of investing in more diverse business founders in Oregon.

“The OCF really wanted to help promote entrepreneurship across diverse founders, and they were looking for a vehicle to be able to do that. They realized ‘Hey, we don’t necessarily have to reinvent the wheel. There’s an organization here that’s been on the ground doing this work and building up their careers and building up the firm, and demonstrated a track record of investing,” says Rao-Potlapally.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated from an earlier version.

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Venture capital dollars saw a significant pullback in the Portland metro area last year, according quarterly data from the research firm PitchBook. The amount of money invested in the fourth quarter of 2022 was just $67.5 million, compared to $385.4 million invested during the same time in 2021, and down 42% year-over-year.

Rao-Potlapally says founders from underrepresented backgrounds are frequently misperceived as being risky investment bets, and that when venture capital dollars drag, it’s usually founders of color who bear the most brunt. She says her own history navigating the Oregon venture capital system has given her plenty of insight on how to make the space more equitable for founders of color.  

“There’s not as much money in Oregon as there is in other states for seed and pre-seed level funding for sure, and there’s still an issue around access, because you still have to know someone with wealth and privilege to be able to get a warm intro to get connected to then be able to pitch. Historically, Oregon hasn’t had the most diversity, so we’re still pretty new at this,” says Rao-Potlapally.

“Largely, venture capital is very much an apprenticeship model,” she adds. “If no one looks at you and sees a younger version of themselves, it becomes difficult for you to rise up. I’m lucky in that a lot of people who run venture capital in Oregon took me under their wing and I was able to work across many of the funds in Oregon. I feel grateful for that, but it shouldn’t end with me.”

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