Opening a wet-weather gear store in Portland, Oregon, seemed like a no-brainer to Marcy Landolfo. But relentless crime rained on her dreams.
Landolfo, 51, launched Rains PDX in September 2019, partnering with the Danish outerwear retailer, in hopes of making a buck on Portland’s notoriously soggy climate. This month, after 15 burglaries, thefts and acts of vandalism in the span of 27 months, she shut down the store.
“Yeah, that was number 15,” Landolfo said of a Nov. 22 burglary in which she lost some $2,500 in high-end outerwear. “That was the final straw.”
Landolfo, a Portlander of 20 years, taped a letter to the storefront on Black Friday — announcing its closure due to “unrelenting” crime in the city, where burglaries, robberies, vehicle thefts and vandalism are surging as much as 31% through October compared to the same span last year, police data shows.
Landolfo closed Rains PDX in Portland after it was burgled for the 15th time on Nov. 22.
Some 49% of Portlanders polled in May said they felt unsafe walking alone at night in their own neighborhood, with fears of being assaulted or running into a drug user or someone living with a mental illness cited as top factors.
Portland’s police department is also still reeling from the 2020 anti-cop protests that rocked the city following George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis. The Portland City Council then voted to defund the agency’s budget by $15 million. Two years later, staffing shortages remain an issue — with 89 sworn officer vacancies as of Thursday, or 11% of the force’s current 793 sworn members.
Rains PDX after one of many thieves broke in to steal Landolfo’s goods.
Landolfo believes thieves targeted her store in order to resell her upscale clothing, such as $650 alpine nylon parkas, on the black market. courtesy of Marcy LandolfoRecent bail reform policies in Oregon, which allow suspects accused of many misdemeanors and some felonies to be released without bail, only compound the problem by putting repeat offenders back on the street, critics say.
Landolfo believes thieves targeted her store in order to resell the upscale goods, like $650 alpine nylon parkas, online or on the black market.
“They were taking very specific products, only the high-ticket items,” Landolfo told The Post. “The first couple break-ins over the pandemic, you know, it was just idiots and probably drug addicts trying to pry the door open, going after money.”
Later, the burglaries became more targeted, she said.
People were “just walking in and saying, ‘How much is that? How much are those?’” she said. “And every time after that, within 24 to 72 hours, we had a break-in.”
The first burglary at Rains happened in July 2020 — at the height of the Floyd protests that often turned violent. Criminals kept hitting the store over the next two years, including $6,000 smash-and-grab heists of puffer jackets, Landolfo said.
Since Landolfo closed her store, she is focusing on her other Portland shop, which she doesn’t want to name out of fear it will also be targeted by thieves.
Landolfo said no arrests had been made in the 15 incidents, 10 of which she reported to police.
“When you know the board-up guy and the Portland police officers that work after hours by their first names, it’s getting stupid,” she said.
Landolfo isn’t the only shop or business owner looking to cut their losses in Portland, which has already seen Margulis Jewelers close in March after 90 years downtown.
Jason Bolt, who runs Revant Optics in Portland’s Central Eastside Industrial District, testified at City Hall in November that his employees didn’t feel safe going into work. The exasperated owner threatened to “go somewhere else” if the current climate went unchanged, The Oregonian reported.
And Portland’s trendy ice cream maker Salt & Straw, which has 30 shops nationwide backed by celebrity investors like Dwayne Johnson, is also threatening to leave unless crime is dealt with outside its headquarters.
“Nobody knows how to deal with this,” said Landolfo of the crime that forced her to close her store. The mayor and the police “are still spinning trying to figure it out.”
“Seeing it get worse and worse, I don’t know what option I have,” Salt & Straw CEO and co-founder Kim Malek told KEZI. “I can’tstay there. I can’t do it.”
Portland’s Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler said economic prosperity and public safety remain his “top priorities” while leading the city.
“The mayor and his team regularly work with local businesses to find ways we can best support them as they navigate through the uncertain economy and rising crime,” Wheeler’s office said in a statement to The Post.
Trendy ice cream maker Salt & Straw is also threatening to leave town unless crime in the city is dealt with.
To help slash crime, Portland’s police department is seeking to hire 300 additional cops and public safety specialists in the next three years. The effort is “well underway” with more than 100 newly hired personnel, Wheeler’s office said.
But it’s too late for Rains PDX. Landolfo said she’ll now focus on a clothing store she opened 10 years ago in the city’s Hawthorne section, even though that shop was also burglarized, albeit just once in 2018.
Landolfo asked The Post not to name the store out of fear it could attract criminals or “put it on their radar.” She feels completely helpless as a small business owner and believes Wheeler and police have no real answers to reduce crime.
“Nobody knows how to deal with this,” she said. “I can’t really fault Wheeler, I can’t fault the police. Their heads are still spinning trying to figure it out.”
