After Digital Trends moved out of the U.S. Bancorp Tower in Portland, Ore., the technology publisher didn’t hold back about why it left.

The property, once a premier address in the city, was afflicted with “vagrants sleeping in hallways of vacant office floors.” They were “starting fires in stairwells, smoking fentanyl and defecating in common areas,” according to papers the company filed in a lease-termination lawsuit.

Two years later, the city’s biggest office tower stands more than half empty. U.S. Bank, the largest tenant whose parent company’s name is on the building, pulled most of its employees out last year after more than a century in the city.

The 42-story tower was recently put up for sale. The building affectionately known as Big Pink because of its pink-hued Spanish granite and pink glazed glass has an asking price of about $70 million, according to brokers. That is more than 80% below what the owners paid for it a decade ago.

Even investors like Jordan Menashe who seek out distressed properties are steering clear of this one. He says any turnaround looks years away.

“I don’t see a way to get it into the green in the next five to seven years,” Menashe said.

Representatives for the building’s owner, a venture between Unico Properties of Seattle and a fund managed by UBS, declined to comment.

The troubles at Big Pink offer a potent symbol of what ails downtown Portland. They also serve as a warning for what can happen to once-bustling downtowns if they get caught in the doom loop of losing businesses.

Many cities across the U.S. are starting to recover from what has been one of the worst office downturns of the past 75 years. Businesses leased more office space during the first three months of 2025 than in any quarter since 2019. That turnaround stretches from New York to San Francisco, after companies summoned workers back to the office and their return boosted local businesses.

In Portland, new taxes to provide services like housing for the homeless also hit businesses.

But Portland’s commercial real-estate market shows few signs of recovering from the fallout of the pandemic, rise in homelessness and the state’s botched experiment with drug decriminalization. Unitus Community Credit Union and Wells Fargo are among the big companies that have left Portland or are downsizing their space in the city. Many are landing in the surrounding suburbs.

Portland’s first-quarter office vacancy rate at 35% was the highest among the 25 largest central business districts in the U.S., according to real-estate firm Colliers. The city budget is under pressure, in part because property-tax collections are hurt by the declining value of office buildings.

Some recent news has been more encouraging. Public safety has greatly improved of late and the number of violent crimes are down. Oregon’s legislature last year ended the state’s permissive drug laws. Apple no longer has metal shielding on its downtown store that had become a symbol of the city’s decay.

The new mayor, Keith Wilson, is considered pro-business, and a new county district attorney, Nathan Vasquez, is viewed as tougher on crime.

But for now, companies keep leaving. Adobe recently announced plans to close its Portland office, consolidating workers in San Jose, Calif., and Seattle. The company said the decision was based on a balancing of “business needs with the ways in which employees are using our spaces.”

Portland’s office turmoil is spilling over to the residential market. A $600 million development including condos, office space and a Ritz-Carlton hotel that opened in 2023 is struggling. A lender is trying to take title to the property, partly because condo sales have been weak.

Mayor Keith Wilson, who is considered pro-business, has gotten personally involved in Big Pink.

Portland looked much rosier before the pandemic. Technology companies were attracted to the area’s natural beauty and relatively low housing costs compared with Seattle and San Francisco.

Like other downtown office buildings, U.S. Bancorp Tower enjoyed growing rents and high occupancy levels. The value of the 42-year-old tower kept rising as a series of institutional owners purchased and sold the property leading up to the 2015 purchase by Unico and the UBS fund.

The landlords spent heavily to attract technology firms. Digital Trends signed a lease in 2013 and kept growing in the building, upgrading its space with a special kitchen, laundry room, bathroom and home theater for testing consumer products.

Jason Green, managing director of real-estate firm CBRE’s Portland office, recalled those better days. When large tech companies purchased Portland-based firms, the acquiring company would get deluged with requests from employees at the home office, asking to transfer to the new Portland office.

“That accelerated the number of tech companies saying, if our employees want to be there, maybe we should grow a secondary presence in Portland,” he said.

Social unrest intensified after the pandemic hit and George Floyd’s murder set off protests that continued into 2021 in Portland after subsiding in other cities. New taxes to provide services such as daycare-for-all and housing for the homeless also hit businesses.

Big Pink was particularly hard hit because of its proximity to the neighborhoods with a high concentration of homeless services. A public plaza next to the building became an epicenter of drug use and sales.

Digital Trends’ court papers said that Big Pink became a “cesspool of criminal activity and vandalism,” forcing it to vacate the property.

Portland’s first-quarter office vacancy rate was the highest among the 25 largest central business districts in the U.S.

Unico said in its court papers that it met all its lease obligations and accused Digital Trends of trying to “wiggle out” from its lease obligations by blaming the landlord “for the desperate state of downtown Portland.”

The two sides settled the case last year after a Multnomah County judge ruled that it could proceed to the deposition phase.

The new mayor has gotten personally involved in Big Pink. He expressed a willingness to provide city permits and other nonfinancial support for the construction of a bridge from the building to a parking garage across the street. This would enable office workers to get into the building without having to go out in the street.

But Portland has shifted its emphasis away from attracting new businesses.

“Right now we’re largely focused on retention,” said Raihana Ansary, deputy chief of staff to Mayor Wilson.