Focus on Portland, Oregon.

• Author: Brelsford, Harry
• Position: Northwest Links

I want to share a Northwest secret with you: Portland, Ore., is a very livable city with low housing prices and high economic opportunities. While enjoying a spring Sunday brunch in the Nob Hill neighborhood of northwest Portland, I perused The Sunday Oregonian newspaper and was astonished by home prices in this and other Portland neighborhoods. Ample inventories of homes in the low $100,000 to $150,000 range were listed -- affordable values difficult to imagine in Seattle.

Visitor bureau pamphlets call the northwest Portland neighborhood a "magnetic mix of strolling, eating and shopping" in an urban village atmosphere bordered by unspoiled wilderness. The wilderness is found at the top of Nob Hill in Forest Park, with over 5,000 acres of wilderness and 70 miles of hiking trails -- the largest forested municipal park in the United States. This park is akin to Kincaid Park in Anchorage for its unspoiled serenity and workout potential.

Another Portland feature is its progressive light rail system. MAX light rail cars cruising slowly over city streets deliver travelers to work, home and events. The transit system includes a downtown transit mall that serves as a "hub" for virtually all bus routes.

Portland clearly favors foot travelers over automobiles. Easy to navigate for pedestrians, its bewildering maze of one-way streets is unforgiving to the novice Portland driver. One suggested activity: Walk to the Portland Saturday Market, an open-air market very similar to Seattle's Pike Place Market.

This city also holds wonderful economic opportunities for Northwest and Alaska business people. Eight Fortune 500 companies are based in Portland, including Nike. A host of high-tech firms, primarily hardware-related, have a large presence in the Portland area. Intel, manufacturer of the X86 microprocessor chip family used in personal computers, now has more employees in Portland than at its headquarters in Silicon Valley, Calif.

As for employment, First Interstate reports in a recent edition of Pacific Northwest Economic Indicators that Oregon employment grew a strong 2.4 percent in 1993. For free subscriptions to this publication, call (503) 340-8181. Similarly, unemployment was at 6.6 percent (November 1993), the lowest level since the end of 1991.

As far as infrastructure goes, Portland's industrial shipyards along its rivers hum with activity. Readers will recall that the Exxon Valdez was brought to Portland...