Via Epoch Times
Businesses are shifting operations from downtown Portland or scuttling plans to open stores because of rioting that’s kept going virtually every night since May 28.
Portions of the city are boarded up. Tens of millions of dollars of damage or lost business was caused by the unrest by early July. Rioters often gather around 9 p.m. and don’t disperse until early the next morning.
While many workers have been working from home since March because of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic, a segment continued to work from Standard Insurance’s downtown headquarters until recently, a spokesman told The Epoch Times.
“Many of those employees who had remained in our downtown offices have now been temporarily moved to our Hillsboro campus to ensure their welfare in light of continuing safety concerns and property damage downtown,” the spokesman said in an email. “Several employees and security contractors have been assaulted near our downtown offices in recent weeks and months, and that contributed to the decision.”
Other business owners planned to open stores in Portland despite the pandemic. The riots convinced them to put those plans on hold or terminate them.
“We were actually going to open two stores in Portland, and then all this happened,” Joe Raetzer, co-owner of Steepologie Teas, told The Epoch Times.
Asked whether “all this” meant the pandemic or the unrest, he added: “Just purely the unrest. The riots.”
Steepologie also shut down their downtown Seattle location because of rioting there. An employee was assaulted inside the store.
In an interview with The Epoch Times’s sister media NTD Television, Uncle Fabe’s owner Fabian Gordon said he knows business owners who have started to sleep at their stores.
“They’re talking about going up on the roofs of their buildings with guns. They’re terrified. People are setting fires. When’s it going to happen to them?” he said. “They’re heavily armed and they’re all very afraid.”
Gordon said city and state officials seem to be handling the situation by hamstringing the police and pointed to the new prosecutorial policy of presumptively dismissing charges including riot, disorderly conduct, and interfering with officers.
“The leadership are obviously cowards. There’s just no other way to put it,” he said, adding: “Who in their right minds would come to start a business in Portland, going forward? Who in their right mind? Why would you? Why would you visit?”
In a recent letter to Portland City Council members published by local media outlets, a major developer said the effects the riots are having on business is unprecedented.
This Has Been a truncated Summary Full Article @ Epoch Times
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