Prosper Portland

[upbeat music] Today on City Cast Portland, we're talking about City Hall squaring off against Amazon's drone delivery.

We're also breaking down recent updates on proposed local school closures, and looking into why Mayor Keith Wilson is putting our city's economic and urban development agency, Prosper Portland, in the hot seat.

I'm your host, Claudia Meza, and with me are Oregonian education reporter Julia Silverman, and Willamette Week City Hall reporter Sophie Peel.

Julia, Sophie, so good to have you both on.

So this has been a quickly developing story.

Um, I feel like you, you published one thing and then immediately you published another, [laughs] another story.

Uh, so what's going on at Prosper Portland?

Yeah, so, um, we had reported on Tuesday that within the past year, the executive director of Prosper Portland, Cornell Wesley, has signed three no-bid contracts with two of his college buddies, and all three of these are no-bid contracts, basically meaning that they did not go through a procurement process, so they were not competitive.

Tell me about...

It is a beautiful day, but, but what in the world is going on that it seems though almost every day I wake up to another story out of either Seattle or Portland or Eugene or the Tri-Cities or Spokane about some kind of ridiculous, gigantic waste of money, uh, that's being perpetrated on the taxpayers? In this case, it's Prosper Portland and the new executive director of the city's economic development agency because, you know, if, if you're down there, you, you hand out the good deals to your buddies, right?

Well, I can't speak for Seattle or Eugene, but I think part of the reason why you keep waking up to these stories in Portland is because Sophie Peel keeps breaking them.

Uh, and she is, in fact, the person who, uh, uncovered, uh, the, um, rather extraordinary amount of money that's been directed by the new executive director of Prosper Portland, Cornell Wesley, to two of his college friends, uh, from Morehouse College.

Um, so they've been friends for many years and, uh, immediately upon assuming office, he, uh... or being appointed to this office, he said, uh, that we needed to do a top to bottom look at, uh, at the loan guidelines and the legal risks in front of Prosper Portland, which actually, given Prosper's, uh, very poor track record recently on handing out loans, is a pretty good idea, right? So-

Oh, oh, I agree-

... as you'll recall, the-

Uh, the, the other big, the other big red flag that I see here is that the scope of work remains a secret from the public.

So we need to think about what would make Eugene a better thriving place and then make that a reality.

So is it going to be large-scale solar? Is it going to be energy-efficient, affordable housing? In Portland, the Portland Metro Chamber and Prosper Portland have partnered with local business communities to reduce commercial and industrial pollution.

We've seen... 70 million go to climate resilient schools and sidewalks to school programs.

So many great ideas.

His name is Cornell.

He is the executive director of Prosper Portland, the economic and urban development agency for the city of Portland, Oregon.

currently overseeing a $200 million annual budget and managing 11 urban renewal districts.

He took the helm of Prosper in August of 2025 at a very pivotal moment for the city.

That's right.

That's good.

So at Prosper Portland, you manage 11 herbal renewal districts.

Each one of them has different conditions, different communities, different needs.