Portland Theft -- Nike — Does Anyone Care? September 9, 2023

Locator: 45586China.

China: the feature article in the current issue of Barron's has to do with China.The thesis: China's growth era is over. Factors: nation's property rout, weak exports, and unfavorable demographics. Peter Zeihan discussed the third factor at length in his 2022 book,

• Peter Zeihan, The End Of The World Is Just The Beginning, published June 14, 2022

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Iconic Portland Store Announces Permanent Closure

Outside the "Northwest," this may not catch much attention but in Portland, this has to be a very, very big story. Nike and Portland are joined at the hips, as they say. See wiki.

And now Nike has announced it will permanently close its "factory store" in northeast Portland at 2650 NE Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard. Link here.

The store opened in 1984 and became a Portland institution, eventually outgrowing its original home and moving to its current location in 2000. But the outlet went on an indefinite hiatus last year following a prominent rise in shoplifting.

Nike quietly closed the store at some point in October, with no official statement other than a message on the company's website saying "Closed for the next 7 days." Seven days quickly turned into weeks and then months with little word from Nike, although there were indications that the company was working behind the scenes to try to get the doors back open.

A bit of history, back on Novembeer 15, 2022, when the store closed due to theft and safety issues.

Folks might remember, back in March, 2023, Walmart announced it would close all its stores in Portland, for the same reason.

In public discussions, both the city and Nike. said they were interested in working to keep the store open, but a close reading of the published remarks and reading "between the lines," it seemed clear that neither the city nor Nike had much interest in keeping the store open.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to come up with solutions that would have kept the store open. Apparently the community had no interest. Or  no rocket scientists.

My hunch: other big box stores in Portland and other cities across the US will watch closely.

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The Book Page

The Art Of Painting, Albert C. Barnes, c. 1925 -- 1965.
The Art Of Renoir, Albert C. Barnes and Violette de Mazia, c. 1935 -- 1959.

Notes.