Seizing opportunity on MLK

Monday, January 24, 2005
ERIN HOOVER BARNETT
Dave Johnson checked the address in the for-sale ad again: 5630 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

He thought back 20 years to ride-alongs he did in that neighborhood with a Portland police officer friend: Speeding to calls about gunfire. The litter-strewn boulevard. Abandoned buildings.

But his software development, network engineering and e-commerce business, Netropole Inc., had outgrown its Southwest Portland offices. There weren't many affordable buildings for sale. So in 2003, Johnson and his wife crossed the river and drove north.

Johnson remembers his surprise. MLK now boasted a median strip with trees. The litter was gone. More buildings were occupied.

Johnson and Leslie Johnson, his wife and partner, paid $265,000 for the 4,000 square-foot former YWCA facility. The Portland Development Commission, the city's development arm, lured Netropole with two grants for renovation. Netropole spent $300,000 to create a windowed storefront and a modern interior.

"I had to go against the conventional wisdom I was hearing," Johnson says. "Where others saw a big nightmare, I saw an opportunity."

Last spring the 12-employee business opened. Netropole devises software solutions to better organize companies' work flow, provides help-desk support, and recruits and places software developers, writers and project managers with companies.

Now Netropole is expanding, stocking and selling bicycling apparel and accessories through its new Web site, Veloclothes.com. Johnson, an avid cyclist, Leslie Johnson and third partner, Randy Burns, hope to hire from the neighborhood, using a PDC incentive program for jobs paying at least twice minimum wage. The business took on a Portland Community College intern and hopes to have more.

Neighboring businesses and nonprofits are pleased.

"It's nice to see that our community is getting more developed. It's thriving," says Hiam Blumberg, owner of the European Institute of Cosmetology at MLK and Russell Street, who did a $1 million remodel on the old First National Bank Building and also opened last year.

Netropole is also helping the nearby Salvation Army center keep its Intel Computer Clubhouse for teens running, free of charge. Says clubhouse manager Sharetta Butcher, "It's been a real plus to have them in the community."

Erin Hoover Barnett: 503-294-5011; ehbarnett@news.oregonian.com