Steve & Natali Off The Air: Jordan Schnitzer | Art, Business & Giving Back

Jordan Schnitzer joins Steve Dunn & Natali Marmion Off The Air to discuss building one of the Northwest's most influential business empires, making art accessible through philanthropy, and the future of Portland. From entrepreneurship and leadership to community impact and personal stories, this candid conversation offers an inside look at the businessman, collector, and philanthropist behind the Schnitzer name.

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The ideas expressed in this program are those of the hosts and guests, not of the PNC Live Studio.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hi everybody, nice to see you again. Steve Dunn, Natalie Marmian. Another day, another great time spent with you. How are you? I'm really well. How are you? Fantastic. And we said this might be a good discussion.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Well, no, you said this might be a good discussion. I said, really? Do we have to share these things?

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Well, we'll see what these folks think. Okay. All right. So back in the day, I don't know how we got on this, but uh, whenever the parents would would leave the house, and I was asking you, what did you do? What kinds of things did you do? What kind of trouble did you get into?

SPEAKER_00 0:36

We got onto this topic because we were talking about what kind of trouble is your son about to get into. I'm kind of through the worst of it, right? My guy's both out of college now. Yeah. You're just I got a kid going into high school.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

And it makes me nervous. There's no question. Because I remember what I was like.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

That's the problem.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

And so we were talking about how much do you share with your kids about the trouble you got into? Or does that just encourage them to get into more trouble? Does that give them permission?

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Well, let's let's jump right to it. What did you do that got you into trouble?

SPEAKER_00 1:04

I listen, I was a good kid. I still am a good kid, 100%. I'm on time though. It's the only story I ever get to share. That doesn't surprise you. I know that. But I pulled the whole, and again, this was before we were being tracked, right? We grew up in the time, thank goodness before our parents came track of us.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Yeah, can you imagine we had so long back then?

SPEAKER_00 1:21

But I said I was staying at a friend's house. She said she was staying at my house, and of course we went to a great party at the beach instead. And I I was a good kid because I knew I couldn't get away with anything. And sure enough, I got busted. Dad came and got me and embarrassed the heck out of me. But it was a great lesson for me for when my own son got into a little bit of trouble. So I think that's that's what what did you do though?

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Do you still feel guilty about that? I still feel guilty. So it didn't surprise me. And I'm knowing you.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

I'm still bummed I got busted.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Well, I'll tell you this would be a quick story, I promise, because we have a tremendous guest with us today. This guy's done so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

I bet he got into a little bit of a big thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Oh, yeah, we'll ask him about that. He's done so much for this community that you got to stay tuned for this coming up shortly. But when I was in high school, my parents went away for the weekend. They said, do not, whatever you do, do not have a party at the house. Absolutely. Of course not. As soon as they drove out, I was on the phone calling everybody I knew. We had about 150 people come over to the house. There were i i I can't even tell you the stories that went on that that night. But I made sure I was up till like four in the morning, cleaned up the entire house because I knew Was the house too clean then?

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Is that what gave you away?

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Well, it could have been. But I remember my parents walk in this on Sunday afternoon. Dad walks right in with the luggage, walks right in through the door, mom comes in, she stops, kind of does one of these, looks around a little bit, and then continues on. Later on, she says to me, Did you have people over the house? I said, No, absolutely not. She looked at his mother and lied. So the next day I come home and she says, Uh, I'm gonna ask you this again. Did you have people over the house? I said, No, why? She says, Let me give you a little bit of advice, Steve. The next time you do throw a party at the house, make sure your friends don't sign the guest book. Sure enough, I open up the guest book and there's, hey Steve, best party ever. Sam, you know, it was like 12 people had signed the guest book.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Did she keep it? She has the guest book.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Oh, yeah. Everybody comes over to visit if she shows them the guest book that has all my friends.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Yeah, I think I'd want to do that. Listen, I'm leaving town, but if you have a party, have them sign the guests guest book. Did you know who's there? Do you think there was any doubt in your parents' mind that you would absolutely be hosting a party when they left?

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Natalie, I was you. Have you met you? I was the sweetest mild-mannered kid in another. I bet you were sweet. Hey, I want to bring in our guest now. This guy, everybody knows Jordan Schnitzer. This name for sure. Let's give a round of applause, Nat, for Jordan Schnitzer.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

Jordan, how are you? I'm great, thank you. And really excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Gosh, we thank you so much for coming in to talk to us. We are so anxious to talk to you, you, your family, the legacy, so much that you've done for our community and continue to do. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Let's talk about that first of all, because everybody, of course, remembers your parents. Arlene and Harold Schnitzer did so much for this community through the years. You can't walk through Portland without seeing the name somewhere. Uh and so you have followed that line uh of legacy in so many ways, and you're very, very charitable. We all know that. Tell me the biggest project you're involved in right now.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

You know, let me go back one second because Lincoln High School has this speaker series, and before the pandemic, they asked me to come talk. And the first question was, Well, what was it like growing up in this wealthy, politically influential family? I said, wait a second here. I remember in grade school, um, I mean, my mother would do the bills on Sunday night, and my father would be reading the paper, and she'd say, Hey, Harold, I need X amount of money, and he'd say, Hey, honey, I just don't have that much cash. And she'd say, I'll stretch out the bills. Those memories always stay there. So my parents, when I was younger in early grade school, they volunteered their time, uh, but they weren't in the position financially to do the wonderful things they were able to do later. So I guess for me, the answer about why I do what I do now is I had wonderful examples around me. I watched my parents, uh, aunts and uncles, but there were two other names that most people on this podcast won't remember, but John and Betty Gray, and he started uh Salishan Sun River, um, John's Landing, and very philanthropic, and also the Volums, and he started Tektronics, and uh I was younger but watched them, and uh I'll tell you a cute little story. Um, when I was a uh junior in high school at Catelyn Gable School, I'd always make friends with the staff. And I'd go in and see Mr. Bass. He was the controller. He had a little cramped office, and I go in and see him. Hi, Mr. Bass, how are you today? And I look down on a table and I see a check. This is 1968, a check for $50,000. Now, a charitable check, $50,000 today is a lot of money, let alone then. And it said from the John and Betty Gray Trust to Catelyn Gable. I said, What's that? He said, Well, it's really confidential, but uh John and Betty Gray write a check every year to cover the deficit of the school. That hit me really hard thinking, boy, I knew I'd wanted to go into business since I was in grade school. I thought you can be a business person, hopefully make some money and give back and make a difference. Now, Mrs. Knox, the high school principal, who called me the next day and said, You'd never go in that office again and race hell with Mr. Bass. So you did get into some trouble. But uh things like that all shape and form us uh with all of us around us when we're younger. So I guess um, you know, some people have said, Well, uh, are you competing with your parents? And I said, I've never thought about that. I think when you have um successful parents, a kid either can decide he wants to go into the movie star business like uh their parents, or go off and be an English teacher or whatever. I loved business, loved the arts, and uh and uh it was natural, and I always assumed because I had my parents as my parents that I would accomplish more, not to compete with them, because I had the benefit of their tutelage and growing up in the environment with them. And I've been honored to follow their lead many things, and also do a number of things that uh um speak to my heart.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

I want to talk about uh we we look at the city of Portland now, certainly has some issues. Nobody is gonna deny that. You've been heavily involved in the in the city for for so many years now, as as we mentioned, so were your parents. As you look out over the city of Portland and Multnomah County, what are some of the ills that you see that we need to jump on immediately that perhaps we haven't put enough attention into? Sure.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

You know, my father uh began buying properties outside of Portland when I was young, so I grew up with that, and I've sort of taken the company on steroids to far, far greater levels than he might have ever imagined. I wish I could have waved a wand. He's been gone 15 years, haven't come back, hopefully he'd be proud. But I have offices in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Las Vegas, San Diego, Tucson, Phoenix, some properties in Salt Lake, and soon now to be in Texas. 84% of our portfolio are warehouses, but they're warehouses with smaller size tenant spaces for local businesses. Whereas a lot of the bigger competitors, names you may not know, like Panatoni, Dermoty, Tramilcrow, Lincoln Properties, they want a million square foot building with Amazon lease, and I want 50 tenants that serve the community. Um, but it's been a fortunate asset class to be in, and my staff here's often better to be lucky than smart. But you also work hard to be lucky. And I guess I say that because whenever you're in business, uh you need a bit of humility. And uh the exciting thing about uh what you both did on the news for all those years, look how it's changed, look what you're doing now. You're only as good as your last podcast, right? Okay, you step up today. Am I gonna do a good job on this one and be proud of what I've done? Or oh boy, I should have not said it, whatever it is. That's what's exciting about getting up and making a difference. So, because of having real estate offices in all those markets, I'm a data fiend because what I get paid to do is understand the demographics, the job growth, wages, salaries, businesses, um, you know, the threats to those markets, what could go wrong with our properties. Uh so I'm pretty good at knowing an awful lot of stuff about those markets. It gives me a bit of a different perspective than many about the market here. Now, my grandfather came in 1905, the other one came in 1908, not as early as friends I have whose parents came in the 1800s, but you know, we're not that old a state. Um and uh again, the grandfather came from the Ukraine, eighth grade education, uh, apprenticed to an uncle in Odessa, got here a few years later with no money. I mean, so we're he grew up in a little hut with a dirt floor and an outhouse, poor as you can be. I say that because um I'm always proud of my immigrant uh ancestors and proud that we're so lucky to have gotten this country and look what we've done. Uh so much opportunity. Um so when I talk about this market, what I say is there's a glass half full and a glass half empty. Let's talk about that glass half full. For those of us who have grown up here, I remember you drive through Gresham on the way to Mount Hood, go skiing. You go to through Hillsborough on the way to the beach, you know, Beaverton. What was Beaverton? You just drive through it. Sherwood, Twalton, Hillsboro, nothing. Now, if you guys haven't been to some of those suburbs right now, they're incredible. They have downtowns, they have offices. What the tribe's doing now for Milwaukee, for Oregon City, rather, with the uh the paper mill there. Um we're developing in downtown Sherwood. They've been wonderful to work with. The economic development people, the mayor, the city council, Wilsonville, Beaverton, thank gosh for Pat Reese, that facility she funded there. These are wonderful suburbs. And while some may say the $571,000 medium home price in Oregon is a lot, I know that is for some people, it's nothing compared to $960,000 in Puget Sound and a million two in the Bay Area. LA is a whole different kind of market with 70 cities. So for a lot of younger families and individuals too, you can get a very reasonable house in in in in in uh Wilsonville and Sherwood and uh Bethany and so forth. The school districts are better than Monomah County. And of course, ultimately, people live here because of the outdoors and nature. Yeah, it rains a bit in the winter. We tend to get a bit grumpy. I'll come back to that in a second. But ultimately. What did he point to meet? But ultimately, as long as they don't move Mount Hood and move the ocean, which I think is probably a pretty good bet in our lifetime. Um, this will continue to be an attractive place for families to come. Sure. Okay, now Multima County, we have the highest taxes of anywhere in the country. New York, you have to make over $25 million to hit our tax rate here. Um the preschool tax, the TriMet tax, all these taxes, they may all have been well intended, but in the end, people vote with their feet. We've lost 2,000 families making $250,000 or more. Now many have moved without all the numbers to Clackamas and Washington County, like Oswego's on fire, Clark County, and some have just moved away. But those are the people that help start businesses, build businesses, contribute to the symphony, the opera, the ballet, the schools, everything, and so forth. Downtown Portland has 46 million feet of office space. This Building Pack Center sold for a fraction of its replacement cost. But we've not had one new tenant coming from the outside to downtown Portland in three years. Luckily, we've had some wonderful tenants in this building and others that have expanded, but not one new tenant. And why would a business want to move here and then pay the highest taxes with their dreams of building it up? We also have a death tax. Uh there's a statement that says, hey, it's okay to build a business here, but don't die here.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

Don't die in Oregon, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

So in terms of Multmack County, um, it's a tough, tough situation. We have more office space than we need. Uh the pandemic, uh, lots of businesses changed their patterns, and most businesses want employees in the in the in the office. But here's my solution for that. I mentioned um, you know, uh the the rain in the winter. There are a number of people in the northwest from Chicago West that are snowbirds. Yeah. They may be younger families in their 40s that get a place in the Palm Springs area in Scottsdale or in Santa Barbara, La Jolla, wherever, Tucson, that maybe go for just vacations. Generally there are people that are semi-retired or retired. And um and they love it. They go down for a couple months. There's so many activities in those places, they're snowbirds. Now, Phoenix, um Phoenix uh had 112,000 people come last year. One of the strongest economies in the country. Texas, half the jobs in the country. Las Vegas, we've had an officer 33 years, booming. Amazing, okay. Yeah, Phoenix also had 35 days over 105, four months over a hundred. Even though we may bitch and complain about the rain, February, March, and April, okay. When was the last time you went outside when it's 114 degrees? Kids don't go out and play unless it's indoors. Okay, and yet it's growing like crazy. So my idea is this for Multnomah County in downtown, which is a positive thing. Look at how well the Pearl District has done with apartments and condos and shops and stores and some offices. There are a number of buildings downtown Portland that you just tear them down. They're just not worth the land value. Now, if we had the right kind of people, the city council and some right leadership issues, I'll come back to that. We'd say, let's create a new concept called summer birds. Let's go to Las Vegas and Phoenix and say, come on, get an apartment in downtown Portland, get a condo, come on up for two months in summer, walk to restaurants, activate the waterfront more, a finished poetry festival, whatever it takes every weekend. Because the same kind of people that are snowbirds are the same socioeconomic kind of profile people that are down there sweating in the in the in the heat. We live for our summers here. Uh-huh. So there's the positive view. This will happen. Now, if we had leadership that helped come up the strategic strategic plan, happen sooner.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

You know, it it's funny you mentioned those too. I was honest to goodness, driving in today down McAdam was thinking about the high tax rate. Although McCounty has. I don't know if you've driven down McAdam lately. Seriously, it's pothole after pothole after pothole. I mean, seriously, my car was doing this. And I'm thinking, we are paying so much taxes in this county, and this is what you get for that. And I think that's the big problem that people want. They want to see a benefit. If they're going to pay the highest taxes in the country, they want to see c something come from that. And I think that gives us such a terrible reputation nationally that that prevents people from coming here.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Absolutely, absolutely. And let's talk about what's happening here. Uh you know, uh, Governor Kotec, uh, to be frank with you, I hadn't never met her until she won because I supported another candidate, Betsy Johnson. And I tend to be uh fiscally conservative and socially tolerant. But I'm a Democrat, Republican, I'm I'm a centrist. And while I respect the opinions of the far right and far left, I basically sort of hate them, okay? I yearn for the days of the Mark Hatfields and the politicians we looked up to. Didn't mean I agreed with everything they said, but at least they came together, made their points, and realized they had to compromise and do what's best for the public, not for their party or for their re-election. I think we've lost our way and that's a whole nother topic. But I uh got to give the governor credit when she called together this prosperity council that she asked me to be on, and so forth. And we've had four or five meetings, uh, very strong opinions by people. And yesterday it came out that there were 30 unions that came out and said uh this prosperity council report's all wrong. They have to, it's focusing on the millionaires and the rich people, and they got to focus on uh the poor people and whatever. And I sat there breaking my heart for her because she's trying. Now there's some elements in this state that are just there. The fact is that the unions, um uh the SIE with 41,000 members, has more members than any business in the state. Intel has 20,000 members. So in this state, which basically without factually is really controlled by the unions at the state, the county, and the city. And whether that's good or bad, it depends upon how willing they are to work with business. And what I'm sad about is there's so much that is so wonderful about Portland, Mulnomah County, all the counties, Pendleton, Eugene, Klamath Falls, everywhere. I love this state. They're wonderful people. But we've lost our way and gotten two partisan just like nationally, where the business community hasn't done a good job working with the unions, and the unions haven't done a good job working with the the businesses, because ultimately, unless there are incentives for businesses to be here, they won't be here. And if you don't have businesses, you don't have jobs. Whether union jobs or non-union jobs, and you want any jobs. So here we already have before the Prosperity Council report is even released, it's being attacked by the unions. And let's also look at some figures here, and these can be fact-checked. We keep talking about the millionaires all the time and so forth. The millionaires they're paying a lot more taxes here than they would be someplace else, but it's a pretty small number of people. And they still have a roof over their head and food on their table. Oregon has, for people $100,000 or less the highest tax rates in the country. So the people making $40,050, $60,000, $80,000 are paying the highest effective tax rate of anywhere in the country. So when the unions or anyone is attacking the millionaires and the rich people, they're forgetting our tax structure here is non-competitive for businesses and is taxing the lower income and middle income people the highest of any place in the country. And then you wonder why we've sort of lost our our verve, our excitement about being here and why people aren't coming here like they did for a number of years.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Either the jobs are gone, like you say, or they just flat out move and live somewhere else to work remotely because it's less expensive. Very, very simple.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

So I guess so. Kudos to the government for trying. Uh we haven't issued our report yet. Uh but I hope it is taken as a roadmap for at least some ideas that a number of capable people came up with as to how to make our state more competitive again to attract businesses here, because we need businesses here.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Which is the ultimate goal. We talk to so many people who we do love this community. We love this state, we love all of the Northwest. It's so beautiful. There's so much good, and yet there is so much red tape for people who do want to see it succeed again. I just think about even what you went through with the Wapato jail and everything to turn that into something good. Can you talk about that journey and be surprised at the pushback?

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Let's hold that. Let's take a quick break. Okay. Come back right after this. Take a one-minute break. We're back with George Schnitzer talking about Wapato and everything else. And hey, does he ever think about running for office? Uh, we'll ask him about that. We come back after this. Welcome back to our program. Appreciate you staying with us. George Schnitzer is with us. A terrific uh conversation today, Jordan. We went to break. Uh you know, we talk so much about leadership in this community and in the county and in the state. I'm sure you've been approached before by folks who say, you know, you've got some good ideas, you've got all the family ties. Have you thought about running for office?

SPEAKER_02 20:51

You know, I think uh uh we're all a product uh of of of our environment, and I hopefully have the analytical skills of my father. My mother, you know, she's quite a temper too, and I think I don't have the temperament. I think I'd sit there if I were mayor and everybody gets up for their three minutes, I'd sit there and say, I I can't take it anymore, whatever. So I I so admire people that run for office. I do wish, though, that we had um more people that had a broader range of experience uh uh at our city, county, state. Uh I asked my chief staff, Erica Hatfield, that's so smart, and I said she's in the studio today with this. I said uh because she was very involved politically, I said, report give me a report on all of our city, county, state, and uh elect officials and what their experience has been. And out of all those, probably hundred people, there were maybe five or six or seven that had businesses. And I don't mean to say that running a nonprofit isn't a business, but it's a bit different than a for-profit business and so forth. And I think if we go back when you guys were young pups reporting and so forth, and we looked at Tom Hartung and Wilhelm, a lot of business folks would take the time to be part of the state legislature. And um and if you look at the city council and so forth, um I think this ranked choice voting, uh I think most of us still can't understand how it works. And I think it certainly didn't, if the idea was creating a more egalitarian and more representative, I don't think that helped. I'm not sure anything that this city council and there are others that study more than me, I'm not sure they've accomplished much of anything. And otherwise our policies, I mean this this the tax structure on the preschool, they're saying with $750 million. They finally got like 4,000 students involved. Um the environmental is producing $200 million a year. Well, what they announced they're doing, they're spending $100 million putting street trees on the east side because the west side has more street trees than they have. Instead of saying, could we have a program to incentivize businesses to come downtown uh to create jobs? Then they announced $20 million to subsidize EV bikes to people, and yet we have nothing promoting business. Not strategically in terms of marking campaign, we want you here. Uh Oregon, if you go around the country right now, we have a very bad reputation, a bad rap. Does it scare you scary?

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Does that scare you, George? When you when you think about this community that you grew up in, and we've lived here for a long time too, and you think five years, ten years down the road, what are we gonna look like if this doesn't change? Is that worry you?

SPEAKER_02 23:22

Uh uh I think I just feel such deep anguish and sadness because every city has problems. But you bring together people uh of different perspectives. You know, the last time we really had a mayor that brought in uh lots of groups to work on problems was really Neil Goldschmidt. Vera Katz did a bit too. I had up the committees years ago to bring light rail here. And then another committee where it should go downtown. A third was whether it be underground. Are there any committees working on anything? So the governor's trying here, but uh um somehow I think the worst problem is we have well-intended people that are elected. They appear to all be basically honest, it's not like we're about corruption, but they also I think are a bit arrogant. They think they know they have all the answers. And what I've learned, if you learn anything in life, I've been working for 60 years, is it shows a sign of maturity to reach out to someone and say, gee, I'm looking at this issue, you've had more experience with it than I've had. Could you give me some advice, please? I mean, that's how you get things done.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Aaron Ross Powell But instead, don't you feel like there's pushback on the other side? Maybe they're tackling the low-hanging fruit, but anything that would help the business community, the homeless problem, the mental health problem. You've you've experienced that.

SPEAKER_02 24:34

You know, it's interesting with our uh um I saw seven, eight years ago, uh the county put a facility called Wapato, which was a low incarceration prison. Now no one wanted it in its neighborhood 25 years ago, so they went to the Port of Portland, got a conditional use waiver, meaning the Port of Portland's industrial park wasn't supposed to have a low incarceration prison, but they got approval. They built it, never had the funding to uh to operate it. And Lars Larson, the other folks would, you know, beat the county up all the time, how stupid and whatever. They put it for sale, I eventually bought it. I was tearing it down to build a warehouse, which is our principal business. And yet when I went out there, the nine concrete wings, the medical facilities, the exercise facilities, the restrooms, I thought, my gosh, we got people sleeping on the street, and yet here we got a facility with a little bit of tender loving care. I went to 18 nonprofits, couldn't get any of them. And I went to the county, and for whatever reason, the county chair there, didn't really know her. No, wanted anything to do with it. It's too far out, no internet, and not near the library. Well, eventually I found a guy on the Oregon coast that ran a wonderful uh entity called Helping Hands, and uh met him and I was gonna donate all of the stainless steel in the kitchen to their uh coastal uh uh homeless facilities, and I said, Can you use it? He said yes. Came up and uh so eventually put together a program. We've helped 3,500 people, 84% success rate. Remember, this isn't me. I'm I I'm I I get the dollar a year rent check.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

They actually haven't even paid that. But anyway, uh do any of those folks come to you, Jordan, who who were giving you so much pushback and say, We were wrong? Has anybody done that yet? Nope.

SPEAKER_02 26:16

But all these other citizens, especially people who love to have you go out there, have come back and said, Boy, it's fabulous. Why? What was wrong? Why did they fight it? I remember talking to uh a couple of the residents there, and they were so appreciative. I get these wonderful letters. Part of their program that's different is um so many of the other homeless programs have these educated people that have their you know undergraduate master's degree in gerontology, whereas all the people they employ out there have been on the street. It's quite different when someone says, Well, I can't do this, and someone says, Don't BS me. I was there for seven years, I was under those bridges, I had that heroin addict or cocaine wood, I can do it, you can too. It seems to work. And they are very data-driven, very proud of them. And um, and you know, it's $54 a day, it's the most uh cost effective. So we've gone to the county and the city to because we've had a hundred empty beds, and they've uh not agreed to refund those beds. I sit here thinking you're spending $500 million on homeless, there are people on the street, we have the check them out, audit them, bring people in.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

This this is where it doesn't the the logic is just out the window to me. Again, we talk about tax dollars, how wisely they're being spent or not. We have empty beds, we have a possible solution. Let's work together and figure out how do we resolve that.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

You never understand the pushback. Why why the pushback, Jordan? I mean, what what do you think is going through their mind at the time when they say, no, that we can't do that? Or it's is it just too much work for them?

SPEAKER_02 27:38

Or would be the reason for that? Uh of a lot of our elected officials, as I said, that think they have the answers instead of going to best practices. And uh do you know something else? If you you should do a study on it that uh for instance, uh of the four or five hundred million dollars that we spend between all different sources on homeless issues, virtually all that money is distributed without any audits, any performance audits, benchmarks and whatever. Taxpayers should be up in arms. I mean, you want to remodel your kitchen, you get a bid, don't you? Right. I mean, uh we should have for people should put in their request for funds with the benchmarks of what they're supposed to achieve. Those should be audited by some independent team. If there are some issues, they have 90 days to correct those things. Make sure the taxpayer dollars that we're paying for are effectively spent. I'm not saying the programs are bad at all. I'm saying there should be a check and balance with with someone else's money. I'm very proud of uh Bibi Lakes and uh the Helping Hands organization uh does a heck of a job and hats off to them and uh uh Tim Boyle at Columbia Sports World were a block away and he's employed a lot of them uh on their fulfillment line. Uh last thing I would remember is so when I asked a couple of these members uh residents, I said, tell me, does it matter you're out here 15 minutes from downtown? They said, Of course not. And I said, Did you need to be near the library and internet we have and the bus service we have now, too? They said, I don't want to be downtown where there's alcohol in the streets and drugs on the streets.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

Um proud of that program. What's next for you? Because you obviously done a lot in this community through your 60 years of of working. And as you maybe lay in bed and you look up at the ceiling and say, Here's what I still want to do in my time here, what what runs through your your head?

SPEAKER_02 29:26

I think for any of us that look to have kids, uh, you know, your last breaths aren't about how many real estate projects or how many podcasts. And uh my kids, I'm very proud of them and uh full-time dad and love it. And uh and uh second, uh uh friends. Um having grown up here, I just had a birthday, had 25 of the guys that we're in kindergarten with on and whatever, and I'm blessed with deep, deep friendships. Um but um I think I'm actually glad I'm this way, although it makes it hard on me, is that I can't, I'm like a sponge for these social causes. I can't just turn it off and say, boy, business doing pretty well, art's doing well, philanthropy, kids, whatever. Uh I don't know, it's just not me. I have to work harder to say, take a breath, okay? You can't solve all the problems. And the reality is if we help one person at a time, that's doing something. So a couple things in this last year I'm really proud of uh is we uh I was asked to go on the board of the High Desert Museum outside of Bend, oh, 25, 30 years ago, and I went on a year later. And for any of you that haven't been there, it's an amazing world class possibility. So we started the last fall and had the event about two weeks ago of a Schnitzer Prize of the West. Because I sit here like all of us and look at the fire issues, the water rights battles, the tribal issues, the fishing, uh, the best ranching practices. Uh, and there seems to again be such partisan bickering about that. So we started this prize, it's $400,000 a year we're committing. Prize is $50,000. Got eleven amazing advisory people throughout the seven western states. We had 92 applications. They went through them all, whittled down to five. We had a winner and four runners up. And the event we had, I wish you were there, uh uh guy named Brad Perry, who's a tribal member from uh northern Utah, and uh what he's done is amazing in terms of water rights to get more fresh water to the Great Salt Lake and so forth. But reading through all these winners, I felt so honored to be in a position to help get some publicity to people working in the trenches without much recognition, uh, that's making a huge difference in all those topics. And I think this will be a long-term legacy. We'll ramp this up and also was inspiring uh uh the people with very different opinions, ranchers and government, whatever, all come together. Uh also we started at uh University of Oregon where I went to school, the Schnitzer School of Global Studies, and that's a long-term commitment. And there are 500 students in that to prepare those students for uh the global world we we live in. How do you keep all this stuff straight?

SPEAKER_01 31:57

Well, that's what I want to know. Lots of good people.

SPEAKER_02 32:00

The last one that's uh celebrating its 30th year this coming year is called Schnitzer Cares. My folks started this program back uh well 29, almost 30 years ago, and I took it over about 10 years ago. The idea is helping uh high school students learn about needs in their community and becoming grant makers. So when my father got a little my mother got a little uh tired, she asked me to take this over 10, 12 years ago. She died five years ago, and we now finished with uh 1,800 students in 66 programs at 46 high schools. So the idea is we ask them to pick a theme, which generally has been homeless youth. This year, remarkably, proud, was basically immigration issues, funding uh the public defender, other things and so forth. So they're responding to needs they're seeing right now, to classmates being taken out of school and families being broken up and so forth. So we ask them to raise fifteen hundred dollars. Why? First time they probably get together and actually raise money for roses on Valentine's Day, cooking, baking, whatever it is. That's good for them. And then we give them 15,000. So they gave away a million two of our money uh to 126 nonprofits. We have the Knicks Boxley School and the Confederated Tribe in Pendleton and Hermiston and and uh Pendleton, and then we have Astoria Warrington and Seaside, and then uh 41 schools in the metropolitan area, basically. And um I wish again all of you could have been there because uh we hear about all the bad kids, and these kids get up, and the young ladies are maybe wearing little mid-heels for the first time, and I'm Ellen Smith from Franklin, and our theme was immigration and whatever, and then here's Rob Jones, and he gets up and all, and they talk and talk about the the nonprofits, they learn about nonprofit jobs, and they have a big check and then a real check.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

And uh very inspiring. That's one of my criticisms of TV news before you you mentioned that is that we don't show enough good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

Well, yeah, I remember I did those kids doing good things. Uh beyond your philanthropy and your business, though, I have to ask you about your art collection. And people, it's open to the public. People have access to see all of your collection.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

So growing up with my mother having the Fountain Gallery of Art, my first love is Art of the Northwest, and we have some of the best artists everywhere. And I say that everywhere I go. But I started buying a lot more art, a lot of prints uh from the late 80s on, and we now have uh thousands of pieces of art, and 17 people work full-time in this program. We've had 180 exhibitions solely from our collection at 130 museums around the country. And then we give outreach money to bring school kids in and uh seniors and high school kids or Native American kids or whatever group. Um so we it's many post-World World II American art. We buy a lot of art every year and uh uh very exciting to go to all these different communities. Uh in Portland we have a 56,000 warehouse and we have a 4,000 bit exhibitionary in front, 3033 Northwest Young. It's open three to five Tuesday through Saturday. We bring in about five to eight hundred kids a a month. And you know, uh art's been cut out in a lot of programs. Uh so uh I've felt that museums and folks like us need to bring the kids to the art. And the buses are 300 bucks, 400 bucks. I mean it's not we're able to afford that. And and it's wonderful. We have an educational program there, and uh art's pretty neat and that we change that art twice a year, and and I've got two tours tomorrow of uh some art groups. Uh but uh that's very exciting.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

Well, I sure enjoyed your your mother over the years. I sat with her a couple of times at a table at a diabetes function. Yes. And just a lovely, lovely woman. And the inspiration that that she had, and your father as well through the years, and now you're you're carrying that forward is terrific. Jordan, thanks for being with us today. Thank you. Thank you. We appreciate your time. You're always welcome back, let me tell you that.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

Yeah, you will definitely have more. You're always involved. And yeah, thank you for all you do.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

We have a a thing at the end here, Jordan, called the circular file. It's kind of the odd events that have happened around the country. So this is I learned I can read this off my phone now, Natalie. That's good. We don't have a piece of paper anymore. You can just do the technology. So this is an Idaho man who broke uh a Guinness world record for the longest duration of balancing a running chainsaw on his chin.

SPEAKER_00 36:09

That's a thing? Come on, I didn't. Did you try it after you read it?

SPEAKER_01 36:14

Is that a thing? Of course I did.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

Tell me you've never tried this. It's never crossed my mind.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

His name is David Rush, and he pulled this thing off. He said, some records are simple, some are hard, some are uh flat out terrifying. Balancing a running chainsaw on my chin squarely falls into the terrifying category. So he did this for four minutes, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 36:34

So if you want to do that, didn't lose any limbs, like it all ended fine. I thought you'd like that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

No, apparently not. Apparently he's just fine. He's able to talk about it. He has a Guinness World Record.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

You're gonna try and beat it, aren't you? Now I know what you're doing this afternoon.

SPEAKER_01 36:49

We should try and think of something we can do to get into that book.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

Not that. We'll think of something else, but not that.

SPEAKER_01 36:56

The longest podcast. Two days, just keep talking.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

Right, they'll bring it up. You're gonna stay with us, right? You're up for that too? Come on, we'll interfeat us. Thank you, Jordan. Jordan, great technique. Thanks, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

We'll be back again. We'll see you, folks.

SPEAKER_00 37:09

Have a great day.