Hear the screams? No more Eames (tickets)!

It used to be that you’d only find people using ticket scalpers to score Blazer seats when MJ and Scottie came to town. Now, you’re more likely to find Portlanders jonesing for Rummers and other modern home architectures to be cruising the black market for highly coveted tix to Portland’s only modern home tour this year.

I had intended to highlight the upcoming Street of Eames modern home tour (April 14), but clearly they needed very little promotion. The 2007 edition of the tour sold out in just 51 hours, which included the 250 additional tickets added for this year’s total. As of this morning, Craigslist included at least six pleas for tickets to the event.

Portland has a relatively small number of mid-century and contemporary modern homes but they have a rabid following. The nameplay on the annual “Street of Dreams” luxury home tour alludes to the influential modern design of Charles and Ray Eames. The Street of Eames tour started last year as a fundraiser for Chapman Elementary’s after-school education program for homeless and low-income students.

Brian Libby at portlandarchitecture.com did a nice write-up earlier this month about some of the homes on tour. Here’s the official Street of Eames site, where all you can do now is sign up to get advance notice about 2008’s tour.

Or, as my contact from the Tour said, “There’s always Craigslist.”

Technorati Tags: Eames, Portland, Oregon, modern, homes, architecture, tour

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2 comments February 20th, 2007

Portland improves job rankings

Normally, I wouldn’t jump up and down about being NUMBER 60!

But, according to Forbes.com, the Portland area is improving its national job ranking among the country’s top 100 major metro areas. Coming in at No. 83 last year, the Portland-metro area rates as the 60th-best this year. (By the way, Seattle ranked No. 34.)

As I answer questions about the state of the real estate market in Portland, I typically add some comments about the local job market. We’ve lagged behind the national averages for several years, but things have been improving slowly since the dot-com meltdown in 2000-2001. The Forbes article confirms some of the positive news we’ve been hearing.

Forbes annually ranks the top 100 metropolitan areas with five criteria: unemployment rate, job growth, income growth, median household income and cost of living.

Portland fared poorly in the unemployment index (88th), but ranked No. 27 nationwide in job growth.

The top three cities were Raleigh-Cary, N.C.; Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Jacksonville, Fla. The worst city was Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, Mich. Here’s the article and the tabular breakdown.

Technorati Tags: jobs, employment, real estate, growth, Forbes

Photo by BrianU. Used under Creative Commons license.

Add comment February 20th, 2007