Eli’s Road to Here
Eli grew up in the small town of Brownsville, OR where he never quite fit in. He always had a fascination with cities and urban adventures, the idea of having access to so much diversity in culture - music, visual, food, communities, people. So, when he was 20, he dropped out of the U of O music program and moved to New Orleans.
There, he made a life as a street musician and band member, working odd jobs in small businesses around town and meeting as many creative people he could. He frequented the Pussycat Caverns in the Bywater neighborhood, a classic 90’s style vaudeville theatre and performance space and he was introduced to other unique collaborations using space in interesting ways.
His dream became to create an art and performance collective where people could live, create, and perform all in one place. He ended up leasing a building in the French Quarter, a 15,000 sq ft abandoned building and led a group of people in renovating and trying to turn it into an art collective before getting shut down by the city. He was just 22-years-old and didn’t know enough to pull off a project of that size, but it was his first major lesson in leasing and in the amount of work and knowledge that goes into following a dream and making something sustainable.
After his band broke up, he spent some time traveling the country and settling on both coasts for a while - in Hartford, CT and then in Seattle, WA. In all of these places, he was exposed to the extreme disparities between the wealthy and the impoverished, the labels put on certain neighborhoods because of who lived in them, the way cities tried to invisibilize populations, the way racism and segregation damaged communities. But he also saw how people thrived and made due with what they had: the small businesses and community centers, the restaurants and shops, their cultural centers, friendships, and camaraderie.
Ultimately, he ended up back in Portland. It was 1997. Portland was a different place then. His first job in Portland was as a bike messenger for Rose City Messenger Service. He’d always loved biking and the freedom it gave him, even as a boy. As a bike messenger, he loved the freedom of spending all day with nothing but his bike and a radio, hanging out in coffee shops and bookstores, feeling like a part of a tight-knit community, and exploring downtown in ways others couldn’t. He was sanctioned to go up into big office towers that had always seemed so off limits. He explored them, found balconies that were inaccessible to the public, chatted with building tenants and the folks who tended to the building.
This job deepened his love of the city, as he spent time learning about how the city works, the way it was planned, the way elements in the environment interacted with, shaped, and was shaped by the community. He learned the ins and outs of individual buildings and knew which elevators broke down more often, where the handy stairwells were if you needed to get somewhere fast, how office space was laid out, and where they hid the best bathrooms from the public.
When he delivered packages to architecture firms, he met architects who were eager to talk with him about his interests. They let him go into buildings under construction and showed him how they were built. He chatted up Al Solheim when he delivered drawings for him, He asked him for a glance at his building plans, and they struck up a conversation that extended into a friendly relationship, and every time Eli had to deliver something to him, he got to learn from him.
It was this way that he befriended the office manager for GBD Architects. Eli was in his third year of messengering and tiring of it, the weather, the poor pay, and the redundancy. His friend at GBD mentioned she was going back to school, and they needed a short-term person to fill in. They gave the position to Eli. He went from being a bike messenger to being an office manager at one of the most prestigious and active architecture firms in Portland at the time.
Watching and talking to architects at GBD, particularly Gordon Beard, he decided to go to planning school, thinking that was how you got to design the way a city worked. He enrolled in classes at PSU and finished his undergraduate degree in Community Development, but compared to what he experienced at GBD, the planning classes felt too hands-off for his interests. So, a couple quarters into his Masters of Urban Planning degree, he left the program for an internship at Beam Development.
Beam was the perfect experience coming out of college. Eli loved old buildings and was fascinated getting to see what it took to renovate them and create change in a neighborhood that hadn’t changed much in decades. Developer Brad Malsin was doing cutting edge work, pushing what you could do in an industrial zone. He basically created what we know as the Central Eastside today by getting the city to allow offices in the industrial buildings close in on the Eastside of the river.
He learned about the development world, connected with more people, and got more of an understanding of how projects were financed, got insight into the relationship between the city and developers. In college, his goal had been for the city to work better by being more sustainable and inclusive. How do we travel through the city by car, bike, skate without fearing for our lives? How do we build buildings that are greener and oriented toward a sustainable future? How do buildings generate their own energy and how can the city help make that happen?
After his internship ended, he got an assistant designer position at Sakura, a small sustainable development company, a company doing interesting work in neighborhoods, Owned by a Japanese designer and Black developer from NE Portland, Sakura built residential and commercial buildings and condos that were designed to be both sustainable, affordable, and accessible. They built beautifully designed, Japanese-inspired homes in the core of the city with solar panels, natural lighting, and a connection between indoor and outdoor spaces. He got to learn about sustainable materials and building techniques and how to be as cost effective as possible. By the time he’d been there for a year, he was made development manager and got to oversee all the construction projects they were handling.
It felt like he found a job that he was born to do. Every day, he met with architects, general contractors, and subs to go over plans and figure out creative solutions to the many problems that arise in building projects. He got to learn how to manage due diligence on land deals, negotiate land purchases, and manage all of the leasing of the commercial spaces Sakura owned. He got to work with the commercial brokers they had hired for their properties. And he got more insight into the development world and how the city works.
Sakura started their most ambitious projects in 2007-2008. As a small company, they were excited to launch into more interesting projects that would have a bigger impact on Portland. Unfortunately, the recession hit, and the floor fell out from underneath their company. They scrambled to avoid taking major losses and tried to strategize how to take a bunch of small losses instead of the big ones. They spent a year trying to reinvent themselves as a renovation contractor, where Eli was the manager of the construction side. They limped along for another year, until, like many other small companies at the time, Sakura folded.
That’s when he met a commercial broker who convinced him to try commercial real estate, since he already had a lot of knowledge of the industry. Coming from the development world, being a commercial broker had never really occurred to him as an option. With his community development background, he had wanted to be in a position in which he felt he could make a direct impact on the community, and he felt his position at Sakura had offered him that. He loved showing up to work by bike in jeans and hoodie, donning a hard hat and being in the field getting dirty. He felt skeptical about joining the commercial real estate world, as it felt removed from direct impact.
But this was a hard time. His first daughter was just born, and he was also working on his own small development and renovation project, converting an old church into two apartments. Being out of work was not an option.
So, he went for it and jumped headfirst into a new career as a commercial broker. Getting in and doing the work, he realized he could play a big role in helping and empowering a critical community in the Portland landscape: the small business owners and the small to medium building owners who give small businesses a place to operate. The dynamic between business owners, building owners, and unique places that keep our friends and family employed, gives them spaces in which they can grow and thrive, and provides so much to our community and local economy.
He could bring all of his background to bear in service to small, local businesses; local building owners who have a stake in the community; and the small development companies that want to have a positive impact on the city.
Eli started at Windermere Community Commercial because the broker who recruited him was from there. As a small scale, commercially-oriented brokerage located in the Hollywood District, it was a good place to start. He had a team and a mentor to help him cut his teeth. When the team wanted to move to Premier Property Group, he went with them. After gaining more experience, Living Room Realty asked him to join their brokerage to start a commercial team. His sister, Amanda Haworth, is a broker there, and he thought it would be a fun opportunity.
A couple of years later, Holly Burton and Rachel Freed, the owners of Urban Nest asked him to join their brokerage as a managing principal broker to start the commercial side of their business. Together, they developed Workspace Commercial, a commercial division focusing on small business in a boutique residential agency. Urban Nest was a fun opportunity to build relationships, develop a brand, manage agents, and be a part of a community of talented brokers.
But now, with all this great experience and a broad community bolstering him, Eli felt it was time to branch off into his own adventure. Inspired by working with all amazing, brave, innovative local small businesses and building owners over the years, he wanted to join their ranks with being a small business owner himself, building his own family business with his wife.