If you haven’t visited downtown Hillsboro in the past year or so, the downtown core may surprise you. Within a few blocks, you will find:
• A spiffy new family-oriented indoor/outdoor dining hall, sporting 29 local vendors, live music, and hundreds of weekend attendees opened over the summer on Southeast Baseline Street.
• A vibrant, resurgent Latino marketplace, brimming with shoppers and diners sampling crafts, food, clothing and more from five dozen local vendors, is hosting a vivid new mural, live music and other cultural events, including Diwali, Dia de los Muertos and anniversary celebrations in a single late October weekend, on Southwest Walnut Street.
• Main Street is brimming with new and legacy businesses, and for the first time in years — has no vacancies. A giant construction crane heralds the arrival of a towering new residential/retail development. And by night, audiences are drawn to shows at two theaters and a performing arts center.
All this Main Street economic and cultural activity contrasts sharply with the streetscape in January 2022, when smoke still lingered over the burned-out husk of Main Street’s Weil Arcade building. A four-alarm fire, later determined to be arson, had devastated the former department store turned complex of stores and offices.
The damage closed much of Main for weeks, further wounding a downtown economy still reeling from COVID shutdowns. Many storefronts remained vacant. Today, like the proverbial phoenix, downtown Hillsboro has literally risen from the ashes.
HERE IS OREGON: HereisOregon.com | Instagram | YouTube | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok
The art of revival
“How do you draw people to the downtown area?” asked Harrison Butler. “You gotta put on a show! Whether it’s on the street or in a theater, people want come to where things are happening.”
Butler should know. Not only is he co-executive director of Hillsboro Downtown Partnership, he also runs Main Street’s Hillsboro Artists Regional Theatre (HART). Arriving from Los Angeles last year around the same time as the equally energetic Nik Whitcomb, the new leader of the city’s other major theater, Bag&Baggage just down the street, Butler quickly found a bigger stage than HART. A nonprofit organization that brings together downtown’s diverse stakeholders, the Hillsboro Downtown Partnership promotes downtown via everything from beautifying the streetscape to attracting investors and merchants to sharing information and resources — to throwing parties. The partnership helps with events such as Friday Night Bites and Tuesday Night Marketplace in the summer and Halloween and Christmas celebrations that draw thousands of visitors.
“At these free performances to the community, I’m seeing full sidewalks, full of smiling people checking out new business and forming new connections with downtown,” Hillsboro Arts & Culture district manager Bridie Harrington said. “There’s a new generation of arts and business leaders coming together who see each other as allies in reviving downtown, and also longtime leaders who are energetic in welcoming this new perspective.”
[ 12 ways to explore downtown Hillsboro this fall and winter ]
In the immediate aftermath of the January 2022 fire, several musicians and other artists came together to stage a benefit for downtown, inspiring other Hillsboro businesses to follow suit. Arts and parties have continued to play key roles in the city’s plans for Main Street’s resurgence. Hillsboro’s 2009 downtown plan identified festivals as a crucial part of the city’s strategy to revitalize Main Street. A Cultural Arts District aimed to connect arts and economic and community development on Main Street and its adjacent avenues, as well as nearby Calle Diez (10th Avenue), and M&M Marketplace. Harrington points to a stipend program, added street lighting, city-commissioned murals and other measures for enhancing Main Street’s atmosphere. Various city agencies and their partners invested in Main Street arts institutions — and a panoply of parties.
This summer and fall, art brightened Main Street at the annual La Strada dei Pastelli chalk art festival, First Tuesday Art Walks and newly unveiled murals decorating the new Main Street Commons restaurant and brew pub complex, and M&M Marketplace. That Latino cultural hub, which houses 60 vendors, regularly hosts community events, including the annual summer El Sol Festival, with music and other arts programming.
The festivals punctuate regular concerts and plays at Whitcomb’s professional Bag&Baggage theater, Butler’s community HART, and the city-operated Glenn and Viola Walters Cultural Arts Center, which hosts weekly concerts as well as exhibits, classes, artisan pop up shops, and more.
Now almost a year into his role as artistic director, Whitcomb said he appreciates Hillsboro’s support for his company. The city provides Bag&Baggage an annual subsidy as an “anchor organization” for the Arts & Culture district and has supported efforts to provide free or reduced-price tickets to marginalized communities, he said. He’s also inviting other organizations to use The Vault for meetings, performances and other community gatherings.
“The relationship I have with this city is unlike any relationship ever experienced in my career,” said Whitcomb, who came from Omaha Performing Arts.”I can email city officials and get responses. I just had a meeting with the city manager last week. There’s a level of connection with these folks that’s unprecedented for me as an artist.”
The food factor
Along with festivals and performances, Main Street tempts visitors with a tasty array of new and older dining options. No single new venture better represents downtown’s revival than Hillsboro Downtown Station. Since opening in July in what was a fire-damaged 1940s Studebaker dealership, the food cart pod and spacious, covered indoor/outdoor dining venue has been receiving between 300 to 600 visitors daily, according to general manager Judith Shortt. A former Realtor and planning commissioner who’s also written her own cookbook, Shortt sought out 29 (and counting) food cart vendors representing diverse cuisines.
But “there’s more to it than the food,” explained Shortt, who regularly greets diners at the entrance. “This is the biggest open space in Hillsboro for casual hanging out with friends and family. People don’t have to buy food to be here. We had a vision of a place where you could come and hang out and bring work associates or grandma or your kids.”
The indoor area, which seats more than 300 at long tables, also boasts giant screen TVs for game-watching, live music on Fridays, a beer/cider bar, cafe, and dessert shop.
Downtown celebrated a major development in August when Main Street Commons opened in the old US Bank Building, sporting new outposts for Portland-based vendors including Grand Central Bakery, Sizzle Pie, and a soon-to-open rooftop brewpub Backwoods Brewing Company— as well as murals and other artworks painted by Northwest artists. Those add to an already enticing range of culinary choices, from Mexican (Amelia’s and La Mixteca) to Top Burmese to sushi (Syun Izikaya) and more.
Next summer, another, smaller food cart pod is opening on Main Street, in a symbolically significant space, inside the former Weil Arcade building destroyed in the January 2022 fire.
Retail revival
Restaurants aren’t the only players in Main Street’s renaissance. Old-line businesses such as Gimre’s Shoes and Hillsboro Pharmacy now share the street with recent arrivals such as Urban Farm Store, Mamancy Tea shop, and just-opened Blue Ox Axe Throwing bar.
The city has helped in this area, too, said Mindy Huggins, who parlayed a successful food cart and national TV baking competition championship into remodeling three historic Main Street-adjacent houses into a wine bar, grocery market and pastry shop. Huggins said Hillsboro economic development project manager Karla Antonini and other city staffers provided crucial help with everything from permit compliance to grant assistance to connecting Huggins and other business owners to city resources. The city also offers downtown businesses help with storefront beautification and other renovations.
Not all Main Street businesses have had such happy experiences. Eric Milavetz and Shana Nelson signed the lease for Arcade 2084 just before COVID arrived in full force in the spring of 2020. Much more than a sanctuary for fans of vintage ‘80s-era pinball and video games, the arcade also serves pizza, specialty cocktails (including its own line of nitro root beer) and more.
“The early ‘80s had these ‘third places’ where people from across all social strata could come and play together,” Milavetz said. “This is my surreptitious way to get us to come and play together again. It’s my love letter to America.”
But the city-ordered pandemic shutdowns and then the street closure kept customers away for months — while bills piled up, Milavetz said. The city provided some grant funding, but that only amounted to about a third of their losses in rent alone, he said. They’re still waiting for promised COVID relief funding to arrive, and weren’t eligible for other funds because, having only briefly opened, they couldn’t prove any losses due to the shutdown. And even though Milavetz said the arcade now attracts a broad demographic (including many women) and a swelling customer base, most revenue goes directly to paying off high-interest personal credit card debt they incurred to keep it afloat for two years before the turnaround.
The owners bristle at the disparity they perceive between the substantial government aid flowing to new businesses like Main Street Commons instead of existing entrepreneurs like them. Nelson said that the city seems to prioritize funding crowd-drawing events, parades, and holiday festivals over homegrown, brick-and-mortar businesses like Arcade 2084. “We’re a true mom and pop operation,” she said. “We put everything we had into this place. If we go under, we’ve lost everything.”
Antonini, the city official, is sympathetic, but “we only had so much money to give out,” she said. “Some businesses closed. Even businesses we helped closed.”
M&M Marketplace was nearly one of them, said Jaime Miranda, who has owned the marketplace with his family for over 20 years. M&M’s 66 multicultural vendors sell clothing, shoes, jewelry, videos, music, household goods, auto services, and food. A hub for the city’s Latino community, the market also provides arts and culture programming, sports (including a futsal facility), access to community services, and more. Several of the businesses it’s incubated have gone on to open their own downtown locations.
The pandemic nearly sank the market, but Miranda said funds from government agencies and nonprofits helped keep it afloat. Now new businesses are filling some of the slots that had to close.
Attracting visitors to shop and dine is only one prong of the city’s strategy to boost Main Street businesses. It’s also bringing new residents to live (and spend) downtown. The four-story 4th Main Apartments benefited from public urban renewal funds, while the seven-story, 140-unit Merrill Gardens senior living community, opening next summer, was entirely private-sector financed, Antonini said. Both feature ground-floor retail businesses. Other multi-family housing has sprung up nearby and more is coming, Antonini said.
While Hillsboro has yet to commission a study to determine how much more economic activity downtown is generating from its comeback, Antonini said that as of the end of October, there are no commercial vacancies on Main Street.
Looking ahead
Main Street’s development promises to grow along with the city, now Oregon’s fifth largest. Antonini said Hillsboro is pursuing more mixed-use developments, a boutique hotel, and perhaps finally returning Main to a two-way street that prioritizes walkers’ safety instead of speeding through-traffic.
The city is negotiating with a developer over a proposed major housing/retail project on what’s now a vast parking lot a block away from Main Street, Antonini said. It might include dozens of apartments, a grocery store, public space and more.
“I’m optimistic,” Miranda said about Main Street’s future. “I feel like the health of downtown is improving. I see more investment, good food, more businesses, good activity going on at night.” He would like to see more efforts, such as guided walks and bike rides, to knit downtown closer to nearby neighborhoods, where many Latinos live.
The owner of Collective Market and Decadent Creations, Huggins believes downtown Hillsboro is “right on the cusp of being something special,” she said. “I’ve always wanted this neighborhood to be a destination. I’m loving all the new businesses coming in. So much is happening, and it’s all moving in the direction I’ve been wanting for this neighborhood for so long.”
— Brett Campbell, for The Oregonian/OregonLive