Have craft breweries followed or led gentrification in Portland, Oregon? An investigation of retail and neighbourhood change

Abstract

This paper quantitatively measures the relationship between retail change and residential gentrification by examining the connection between gentrification and the opening of craft breweries in Portland, Oregon. Our findings indicate that: 1) craft breweries were slightly more likely to open in gentrified/gentrifying neighbourhoods than not and, 2) with the exception of the 1990s, breweries in gentrifying neighbourhoods most often opened followed the onset of neighbourhood upgrading. During the 1990s, we find that breweries were at the leading edge of gentrification, representing the type of economic and cultural changes in the commercial landscape that make a neighbourhood attractive to middle-class gentrifiers. Breweries opening during the 1980s, 2000s, and 2010–2015 periods were more likely to follow gentrification or to open in stable or upgrading neighbourhoods. Considering these results, we caution that while craft breweries may retain local industrial jobs and revitalize commercial districts, they may also solidify on-going patterns of gentrification.

Full text

Have craft breweries followed or led gentrification in Portland, Oregon? An investigation
of retail and neighbourhood change
Samuel Walker (corresponding author)
Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto
100 St. George Street, Room 5047
Toronto, ON M5S 3G3
Cell phone: 1.647.928.7017
samuel.walker@mail.utoronto.ca
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5466-2988
https://twitter.com/fizzyted
https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuelw/
Chloe Fox Miller
Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto
100 St. George Street, Room 5047
Toronto, ON M5S 3G3
Department phone: (416) 978-3375
chloe.fox@mail.utoronto.ca
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2409-5310

Abstract
This paper quantitatively measures the relationship between retail change and residential
gentrification by examining the connection between gentrification and the opening of craft
breweries in Portland, Oregon. Our findings indicate that: 1) craft breweries were slightly
more likely to open in gentrified/gentrifying neighborhoods than not and, 2) with the
exception of the 1990s, breweries in gentrifying neighborhoods most often opened
followed the onset of neighbourhood upgrading. During the 1990s, we find that breweries
were at the leading edge of gentrification, representing the type of economic and cultural
changes in the commercial landscape that make a neighbourhood attractive to middle-class
gentrifiers. Breweries opening during the 1980s, 2000s, and 2010-2015 periods were more
likely to follow gentrification or to open in stable or upgrading neighbourhoods.
Considering these results, we caution that while craft breweries may retain local industrial
jobs and revitalize commercial districts, they may also solidify on-going patterns of
gentrification.
Keywords
Craft brewing industry, gentrification, neighborhood change, Portland Oregon, urban retail

Introduction
To see how a small business can transform a neighborhood, just follow the barrels
(Arbel 2013).
Over the past few decades, the number of small-scale, independently owned breweries in
the United States has grown at an astonishing rate, from eight in 1980 to over 3,400 in 2014
(Watson and Gatza 2015). These ‘craft’ breweries have steadily gained market share over large-
scale brewing companies, such as Anheuser-Busch InBev, by opting for alternative production
systems that reject corporate ownership, favor small-batch production, and fuse traditional
brewing methods with creative experimentation (Brewers Association 2015).
1
These production
systems mean that craft beer is easily interpreted as a ‘pure’ and ‘authentic’ product, which can
be used by middle-class consumers as a means of performing class distinction through
consumption (see Bourdieu 1984; Mathews and Picton 2014; Zukin 2008). As a result, the rise of
craft brewing has potentially significant implications for urban economies. Craft breweries have
emerged in particular places, and have played a role in the production of new landscapes of
consumption (see Mathews and Picton 2014; Weiler 2000). The arrival of a craft brewery has
been touted as a sign of neighborhood change, and as a key catalyst of future commercial
gentrification (Arbel 2013; Mathews and Picton 2014; Weiler 2000).
To date, however, relatively little attention has been paid to the microgeographies of the
craft brewing industry, and, particularly, to the relationship between craft breweries and
neighborhood change (McLaughlin et al. 2014; for notable exceptions see Mathews and Picton
2014; Weiler 2000). In this article, we address this gap by exploring the connection between
gentrification and the rise of the craft brewing sector in Portland, Oregon. We consider whether
craft breweries have followed or led the gentrification process in that city. We selected Portland

as a case study given that much of the inner city has gentrified since the 1970s, while, over the
same period, the city has emerged as the poster child of the American craft brewing sector,
housing the most breweries of any city in the world and representing the largest market for craft
beer in the U.S. (Delmelle 2015; Goodling et al. 2015; Howsley 2003; Oregon Brewers Guild
2014).
2
Our study contributes to the broader literature on commercial gentrification by
quantifying the relationship between commercial and residential gentrification, by studying the
relationship between economic and cultural drivers of gentrification, and by considering the role
of industrial actors in gentrification processes. We find that most craft breweries in Portland are
in gentrifying or gentrified neighborhoods and that, except for the 1990s when craft breweries
tended to lead or locate concurrent to gentrification, most craft breweries have opened in a
neighborhood following the onset of gentrification. Considering these findings, we caution that
while craft breweries may retain local industrial jobs and revitalize commercial districts, they
may also solidify on-going patterns of gentrification.
Literature review
Neighborhood commercial change, craft breweries, and gentrification
Gentrification is an economic, social, cultural, political, and institutional phenomenon
involving the class upgrading of a neighborhood (Lees et al. 2008; Smith 1996). It involves not
only the remaking of the residential landscape, but also the transformation of neighborhood
commercial corridors into consumption landscapes geared towards the middle and upper classes
(Bridge and Dowling 2001; Smith 2002). Gentrified commercial landscapes are typically
characterized by a relative lack of chain stores and a preponderance of small independent
retailers (Bridge and Dowling 2001). As Ley (1996, p. 300) argues, “[j]ust as the selection of the
inner-city residence is a statement against the suburbs, so the mall, the epitome of suburban

retailing, is anathema to the new middle class in the inner city.” Gentrifiers fashion their
identities through consumption practices that favor the ‘authentic,’ ‘pure,’ ‘natural’ and ‘unique’;
they reject mass consumption and corporate ownership (Ley 1996; Zukin 2008). As such, new
neighborhood retail landscapes cater not only to material needs of gentrifiers but also to social
and cultural needs (Zukin et al. 2009). Together with the products sold, the hours kept, the
marketing and design of promotional material, the interior design and music choices of new
establishments, as well as their patronage, work to project an image of cool, cultural
consumption (Patch 2008).
The arrival of new commercial spaces helps gentrifiers stake claim to a changing
neighborhood. For gentrifiers, new commercial establishments offer spaces of conviviality and
community building. In the early stages of gentrification new merchants are likely to be
residential gentrifiers themselves, who are looking to establish a ‘hangout’ for themselves and
their friends (Lloyd 2006; Ocejo 2014; Zukin et al. 2009). Businesses catering to incoming
gentrifiers can, however, accelerate the displacement of lower-income residents. They typically
carry products at higher prices, and/or that do not meet the needs of existing residents. More
subtly, they contribute to displacement by defining who belongs in the neighborhood (Deener
2007; Lloyd 2006). As Zukin (2008, p. 735) notes, in addition to economic factors, like price,
“exclusion from urban space depends on cultural factors like aesthetics, comfort level, and the
tendency to use, and understand, consumption patterns as expressions of difference.” There is
often a racial as well as a socioeconomic element to the commercial gentrification process, with
the arrival of white-owned businesses catering to white, middle-class gentrifiers contributing to
exclusion of existing non-white residents (see Sullivan and Shaw 2011).

Commercial gentrification typically involves the decline of older, local retailers, who find
it increasingly difficult to maintain the customer base necessary to afford rising rents (Zukin et
al. 2009). While these merchants may initially see gentrification as an opportunity to improve
their sales, they often have trouble navigating the cultural divide between the gentrifying classes
and their historic clientele (Zukin 2008). As gentrification progresses, better-capitalized
businesses catering to wealthier cultural consumers replace not only older retailers but also
newer businesses geared towards initial waves of artists and middle-class professionals (Kern
2013; Lees 2003). Merchants are drawn to a area by cultural considerations, such as sense of
place, as well as by the economic opportunity of relatively inexpensive rents and a population
with higher disposable income (Crewe and Lowe 1995). For craft breweries, these considerations
are complicated by their need for appropriate industrial zoning, and by their space requirements,
which include large floor plates and high ceiling heights (Weiler 2000). As craft breweries face
high start-up costs due to the specialized equipment required for brewing, and often have limited
access to capital as small business owners, they may be particularly attracted to devalorized
industrial or commercial areas of a city. Yet, like other merchants, craft breweries may also act
as ‘place entrepreneurs’ by creating a look and feel for their business that both reflects and
reinforces the emerging image of an edgy neighborhood (Ocejo 2014, p. 124). Media and other
cultural intermediaries help convert the growing cultural capital of a neighborhood into
economic capital by drawing attention to its newfound consumption landscape (Ley 1996, 2003;
Lloyd 2006; Zukin 1982). This attention often generates interest by real estate developers and
corporate actors, who enlist the new image of an area as a way of opening it to investment
(Lloyd 2006). In the process, rents increase and many of the small-scale entrepreneurs
responsible for creating the new image of the area find they can no longer afford to stay there

(Kern 2013; Lloyd 2006; Ocejo 2014; Zukin 1982). Over time, this commercial gentrification is
often solidified through mechanisms such as Business Improvement Districts and their attendant
changes to the physical, promotional, and surveillance infrastructure of the neighborhood (Ward
2007).
Gentrification in Portland
Table 1 below illustrates demographic changes that occurred in Portland between 1970
and 2010. Gentrification during this time period has been driven by shifts in the local economy
as well as planning policies designed to attract investment to the inner city (see Delmelle 2015;
Gibson and Abbott 2002). The Portland region experienced an economic boom following the
Second World War, focused on natural resource industries and shipbuilding. The region’s
population also grew and suburbanized during this period, leading to disinvestment in the inner
city (Goodling et al. 2015). Planning efforts in the 1970s sought to address this problem by
strengthening downtown as a retail centre through improved public transportation, streetscape
and public space improvements, and a mixed landscape of residential, office, and retail uses
(Gibson and Abbott 2002). Planners and public officials argued that a revitalized downtown
would not only benefit downtown retailers but would also make surrounding neighbourhoods
attractive to residential reinvestment, thereby encouraging processes of neighbourhood
upgrading (Abbott 2004). The establishment of a metropolitan urban growth boundary in 1979
further encouraged reinvestment in the inner city and has been particularly instrumental in
promoting residential densification (Gibson and Abbott 2002).
Table 1. Selected demographics, Portland, Oregon, 1970-2010.
Despite the steep decline of the region’s resource economy in the 1970s and 1980s,
Portland experienced consistent growth post-1970 due primarily to the success of the high

technology sector. The impressive growth of the sector, particularly during the 1990s, attracted
young ‘technopreneurs’ to inner city neighbourhoods such as the Pearl District, a derelict
industrial area at the northern edge of the CBD (Abbott 2011; Gibson and Abbott 2002). The
Pearl District had started to gentrify in the 1980s as downtown-focused planning efforts
encouraged developers to see opportunity in the district’s historic loft buildings. Developers
began buying and renting these buildings to artists, designers and architects, who used them for
galleries and studio space (Jones 1999). New tenants also included several craft breweries, such
as Bridgeport Brewing Company, still located in the Pearl. The breweries and galleries quickly
became an attraction for workers in the new software and multimedia firms clustered at the
northern edge of downtown. Their presence, as well as increased attention by tourists and the
media, helped change the image of the area from blighted to buzzing, and helped spur the
development of converted loft apartments and upscale condominiums (Gibson and Abbott 2002;
Jones 1999). As a result, by end of the 1990s, the Pearl District was widely regarded as
Portland’s most fashionable neighborhood (Jones 1999).
In Portland’s Northeast, the Boise/Eliot and Alberta neighbourhoods also gentrified
rapidly throughout the 1990s, greatly altering their socioeconomic and racial mix (see Sullivan
and Shaw 2011; Drew 2012). Historically housing a predominantly poor and African American
population, these neighbourhoods had suffered from decades of disinvestment and housing
discrimination, making them vulnerable to gentrification under conditions of economic growth in
the 1990s (Gibson 2007). Gentrification has brought more white and middle-class residents to
these neighbourhoods and to the Northeast more generally (Gibson 2007). Whereas many
Northeast neighborhoods had been majority African American in the 1980s, by 2000 there was
not a single neighborhood that retained an African American majority (Sullivan and Shaw 2011).

Gentrification has also brought significant changes to the neighborhood retail landscape in the
Northeast, with white-owned stores catering to a largely white, middle-class clientele replacing
longstanding, African American-owned businesses (Hosford 2009; Sullivan and Shaw 2011).
Gentrification moved progressively east during the 2000s, encompassing much of the
inner east side. Yet, while the inner east side has steadily become both whiter and more affluent
over the past few decades, neighborhoods in the outer east side, east of 82nd Avenue, have
become poorer and more diverse. As Goodling et al. (2015) argue, while Portland is widely
considered a bohemian, livable, dynamic city, this reputation does not apply evenly across the
city, and has been achieved at the expense of devaluation and disinvestment in outer east side
neighborhoods. However, in recent years, escalating home prices in the inner city combined with
planning efforts aimed at revitalization have begun to encourage gentrification in outer eastside
neighbourhoods of Lents, Cully, and Montavilla (Bates 2013).
Methods
To discover whether Portland’s craft brewing movement has followed or led
gentrification required quantifying gentrification and its timing, a methodological issue that has
been debated for decades (Hammel and Wyly 1996; Lees et al. 2008). In this section we discuss
our rationale for adopting the method used by Walks and Maaranen (2008) and describe how we
adapted their method to Portland, including a discussion of our data sources.
In Walks and Maaranen’s (2008) study of gentrification in Vancouver, Toronto, and
Montreal from 1961-2001, they used a combination of principal components analysis (PCA) and
historical income data to identify the decade of onset of gentrification by census tract. We
adapted this method, gathering census variables that have been identified as relevant measures of
gentrification in the literature at the tract level by decade (see Hammel and Wyly 1996;

Heidkamp and Lucas 2006; Ley 1986; Meligrana and Skaburskis 2005; Wyly and Hammel
1998), including change in: median household income, percent workers in professional
occupations,
3
percent people twenty-five years old and above with at least a four-year college
degree, percent renter-occupied housing units, median monthly contract rent, median home
value, and percent non-white population. We entered these variables as decadal percent changes
into a PCA to capture the underlying components, with the aim of identifying components that
measure upgrading by decade. Tracts that score highly (>1) on a component are considered to
have upgraded in that decade, with tracts scoring high on multiple components being assigned to
the earliest decade.
Next, we created dichotomous variables measuring whether tracts’ median household
incomes were above or below the metropolitan area median for each decade. We used these
variables to determine which tracts began as post-war working class neighborhoods (below
average incomes and therefore ‘eligible’ for gentrification) or middle-class and elite
neighborhoods (above average and therefore ‘eligible’ for upgrading). We then created a
typology of neighborhoods based on these and other criteria following Walks and Maaranen
(2008, see Table 2 below). Following their method, we classify tracts as “upgrading” if they
already had above-average incomes in 1970 and continued processes of class upgrading, or as
“incompletely gentrified” if they displayed class upgrading, but did not have above-average
incomes in 2010. “Completely gentrified” tracts started with incomes below average in 1970,
displayed upgrading, and had above-average incomes by 2010.
Table 2. Gentrification and upgrading groups and their criteria.

This approach has several advantages over other possible methods: it focuses on
neighborhood-level change, it clearly distinguishes between upgrading and gentrification, it has a
temporal component, and it can be accomplished with readily available data.
4
Its only significant
limitation is that, unlike regression, it does not seek to estimate the relative or causal effect of
craft breweries on neighborhood change. Doing so would require historical variables measuring
the potential market for craft beer, labor markets, and competing and complimentary retail
markets that were not readily available to the researchers. Therefore, we opted for Walks and
Maaranen’s (2008) approach, which, while mostly descriptive, offers a useful analytic for our
research question.
We adapted this method to Portland by using data from the Brown University American
Communities Project’s Longitudinal Tract Change Database (US2010 Project 2014), which
harmonized census variables from the 1970-2000 decennial United States censuses to 2010 tract
boundaries (for details see Logan et al. 2014; Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences 2012). We
made several small changes to the method due to our study area being a single city in the United
States. We did not follow their measurement of social status (educational attainment and
profession), median income, and median rent as ratios of tract value divided by the metropolitan
average, as this step was originally taken to allow three different cities to be comparable. Instead,
we used simple percent change. Additionally, we defined the metropolitan area as the tri-county
region currently defining the Portland regional government: Clackamas, Multnomah, and
Washington Counties. We performed the PCA on the tri-county area (n = 355) instead of just the
central city (n = 143), as this increased our sample size and produced more easily interpretable
results, but our analysis of the results is restricted to the City of Portland as it has the most
significant presence of craft breweries. We also did not analyze tracts with population less than

250 in any census, as this is an artifact of the harmonization process that can bias results (n = 10
in the tri-county area and one in the city). Finally, we only used incomes in 1970 as our
gentrification eligibility criterion (see Table 2) instead of 1961 and 1971 as in Walks and
Maaranen (2008). We found that many of the tracts now part of the City of Portland did not exist
in the 1950 and 1960 censuses and that the number of above average income tracts in the city
was lowest in 1970. Therefore we chose that year as our starting point for gentrification
eligibility.
We acquired brewery location data by combining two datasets: the Brewers Association
‘Find a Brewery’ tool (https://www.brewersassociation.org/) and the American Breweriana
Association’s Breweries Database (http://www.americanbreweriana.org/). We created a list of
breweries located in the city of Portland from each database and removed duplicates. We then
geocoded the addresses using BatchGeo (http://www.batchgeo.com) and brought the results into
ArcGIS 10.0 for analysis (final n = 73).
These data directly measure the phenomenon we are interested in: businesses that brew
beer on-site and that meet the definition of a craft brewery (see note 1). Therefore, our sample
includes breweries of different scales (nano-, micro-, and regional breweries) and types
(brewpubs, breweries with tasting rooms, and a few breweries that are not open to the public). A
potential limitation of the data is that it might overestimate the success rate of breweries by
missing failed businesses. Overall, 49 breweries (67.1%) in our sample stayed open during the
study period, which is quite high given an estimated national success rate of 24% for
microbreweries 1980-2013 (Watson 2014). However, the historical research necessary to address
this limitation was deemed impractical. Additionally, it is possible that Portland breweries
simply have a higher success rate than average.

After running the PCA in SPSS 23.0, we used the components and income data to
classify tracts according to the criteria in Table 2. We then summarized the breweries by
neighborhood change group, using a spatial join in ArcGIS to determine if breweries opened in
tracts that had gentrified in a previous decade (following), began gentrifying in the current
decade (concurrent), or would gentrify in future decades (leading), or alternatively, that fell into
one of three upgrading groups or the stability group (no breweries were in the Multiple and
Persistent Decline group).
5
This method allows us to provide an answer to the question of
whether craft breweries followed or led gentrification in Portland.
Results
The growth and location of the craft beer industry
Craft breweries in Portland are located in a relatively tight cluster around the CBD and
spreading east of the river, with very few located east of 82nd Ave., an important symbolic barrier
between the city’s wealthier and whiter West side and its poorer and less white East side (see
Goodling et al. 2015, p. 505). There is a large cluster of breweries in the inner eastside in Central
Eastside, Buckman and Hosford-Abernathy, and smaller clusters in Boise/Eliot and downtown in
the Pearl, Nob Hill, and Old Town neighborhoods. Temporally, the earlier breweries opened in
the 1980s in the Pearl (Widmer Brothers in 1985 and Portland Brewing Company in 1986, both
of which have since moved, and Bridgeport in 1984, which is still located on NW Marshall St.)
and in Southwest Portland (McMenamins Hillsdale in 1985 and Fulton in 1988). These breweries
were at the forefront of a national trend in craft brewing, which began in earnest in the early
1980s and grew significantly throughout the 1990s (Hindy 2014). In Portland, this period of
growth saw breweries opening slightly further from the CBD in Northern and Southern Portland
and across the river to the east. This trend continued during the 2000s, when the industry

experienced relatively flat growth at the national scale (Brewers Association 2018). More
recently, as craft brewing has experienced a renewed period of growth, brewery openings have
concentrated in the southeast and northeast.
PCA results: timing of gentrification
We created an initial seven variable PCA (results available from authors upon request).
While this solution did have components that clearly loaded onto variables by decade, we
ultimately felt that restricting our definition of gentrification was more useful.
6
As Walks and
Maaranen (2008) found, including variables like changes in median rent and home value
introduced complicating temporal factors, as these aspects of gentrification often occur in later
stages. As the goal here is to identify the onset of gentrification, these variables were excluded.
7
Therefore, here we report the results of a PCA using four variables (parentheses indicate LTDB
variable name): change in median household income (hincXX), change in percent workers in
professional occupations (pprofXX), change in percent people twenty-five years old and above
with at least a four-year college degree (pcolXX), and change in percent renter-occupied housing
units (rentXX / huXX). Table 3 shows the components extracted from the four variable PCA.
Instead of using one of several stopping methods to determine the ideal number of components,
which would have suggested five based on scree plot interpretation, we solved for four
components. We feel this is justified because we sought to replicate the method used by Walks
and Maaranen (2008) and because we wanted components to capture variation by census decade.
As Table 3 shows, our four components capture 52.2% of variance, showing these to be slightly
higher than Walks and Maaranen’s (2008) solution in their study (42.2%).
Table 3. Total variance explained for four variable principal component analysis with four
components extracted.

Table 4 shows the rotated component matrix for the four variable PCA with Varimax
rotation with Kaiser Normalization. This solution very clearly identifies components that can be
interpreted as upgrading by decade: all variables loaded together by census except for change in
percent renters in component four (1980s upgrading).
Table 4. Rotated component matrix for four variable principal component analysis with varimax
rotation with Kaiser normalization. Loadings >|0.4| in bold.
Satisfied that our components identified upgrading by decade, we used SPSS syntax to
assign neighborhood change types to each tract. The results are displayed in Table 5, showing
that according to our typology, between 1970 and 2010 56 tracts (41.8%) began gentrifying, 24
(17.9%) upgraded already middle-class or elite neighborhoods, 49 (36.6%) were relatively stable
or had mixed trends, and 5 (3.7%) consistently downgraded.
Table 5. Summary of gentrification and upgrading groups, Portland, OR, 1970-2010 (valid n =
134 with 8 missing values).
Figure 1 shows the spatial patterning of gentrification and upgrading. Fourteen tracts
located near the CBD and along the Willamette River gentrified starting in the 1970s, with the
eastern section of Nob Hill, Irvington, Belmont/Hawthorne, and the Riverdale area around Lewis
and Clark College completing gentrification by 2010. Gentrification in the 1980s follows a
similar pattern, with the Northwest residential areas of Forest Park and Willamette Heights
completing gentrification by 2010. The significant gentrification of Northeast Portland during the
1990s is clearly visible on the map, although this gentrification was incomplete as of 2010. The
main cluster of gentrification during the 2000s is in Southeast Portland (Foster-Powell). This

area’s gentrification also remains incomplete except for the Woodstock neighborhood to the east
of Reed College.
Upgrading neighborhoods are found in two main locations: west of the river outside of
downtown (Kings Heights, Portland Heights, Hillsdale, and Burlingame) and in the historically
wealthy neighborhoods of Laurelhurst, Hollywood, and Grant and Rose City Parks east of
downtown. There are also small pockets along the Columbia River and Eastmoreland (south of
Reed College). Five tracts exhibited consistent downgrading from 1970 to 2010, scoring
negatively on all components. These areas are in Rockwood south of the Columbia and the far
eastern border of the city near Gresham. Only two tracts fell into the upgrading recapture and
potential future recapture groups, located near the Port of Portland and Parkrose, respectively.
Craft breweries follow gentrification
Overall, our results indicate that over half of Portland’s craft breweries were opened in
tracts that were gentrifying or gentrified, and that brewery openings have tended to follow
gentrification rather than lead it. Comparing brewery opening dates with the neighborhood
change group of the tract they fall within allows us to get a sense of the timing of brewery
openings in relation to gentrification. Figure 1 shows breweries classified by opening decade
overlaid with the neighborhood change groups. Here, we observe that, especially during the
1980s and 1990s, many breweries opened in gentrifying or already gentrified tracts.
Figure 1. The timing and patterning of gentrification and upgrading with overlay of craft
breweries by opening dates, Portland, OR, 1970-2015.
In Figure 2 we have compared the neighborhood change type to the brewery opening date
to determine if breweries opened in tracts that were already gentrified (following), currently

gentrifying (concurrent), would gentrify in the future (leading), upgraded, or did not gentrify. By
viewing this data by decade, we observe two important trends: one, that overall, breweries more
often opened in gentrified/gentrifying neighborhoods (53.4%) than not (9.6% upgrading and
37.0% non-gentrifying); two, that breweries in gentrifying neighborhoods most often followed
neighborhood upgrading (84.6%).
Figure 2. Number of brewery openings by neighborhood change group, Portland, OR, 1980-
2015.
The 1990s proved a notable exception to our finding that craft breweries follow
gentrification, with three breweries opening in concurrently gentrifying tracts and three leading
future gentrification. The U.S. craft brewing segment grew rapidly throughout the 1990s, with a
huge spike in brewery numbers in the latter half of the decade (Watson and Gatza 2015). The
1990s were also a decade of significant economic growth for Portland and many neighborhoods
experienced the onset of rapid gentrification. Significantly more craft breweries opened in
Portland during the 1990s than in the 1980s, which may have put pressure on the market for
appropriate commercial space for brewing, driving up rents and reducing the availability of space
in desirable neighborhoods. Most the craft breweries that led or opened concurrent to
gentrification in the 1990s opened in Portland’s Northeast, which was particularly subject to
soaring house prices and rapid commercial change during that decade (see Gibson 2007; Sullivan
and Shaw 2011). The neighborhoods they opened in were adjacent to tracts that had started
gentrifying in previous decades or that had experienced elite consolidation over our study period.
Thus, there is the possibility that craft brewers in the 1990s were looking to balance access to
their customer base with access to affordable commercial space. In this way, craft breweries may
be indicative of spillover gentrification in certain areas of Portland’s Northeast (e.g. Boise/Eliot,
Humboldt and the southwest portion of Cully).

It should be noted that 37% of breweries opened in tracts that were relatively stable
throughout the study period. However, observing the spatial patterns in Figure 1 indicates that
the majority of these breweries (22) opened in or near middle or high-income tracts east of the
river. Only one opened east of 82nd Avenue within the city limits. Additionally, eight of these
were directly on the border with a gentrified/gentrifying tract. The strict cut-offs used to create
the typology do lead to some loss of nuance here, but observing Figure 1 shows that the location
of these breweries still followed patterns of investment in the residential built environment.
A final observation from our results concerns the fate of craft breweries as the
gentrification process matures. While three out of the five breweries that opened in Portland in
the 1980s located in the Pearl District, today only one remains. Both Widmer Brothers and
Portland Brewing Company left the Pearl during the 1990s as gentrification accelerated. Since
that time, no new craft breweries have opened in the Pearl. Future research could investigate the
effects of continued gentrification on craft breweries by examining brewery closings and
relocations in relation to the timing of gentrification, as well as by supplementing quantitative
data with qualitative interviews with brewery owners, exploring their initial motivations for
locating in a particular neighborhood, their reasons for relocating or closing, and their
perceptions of neighborhood change.
Discussion and conclusion
Gentrification is commonly associated with the deindustrialization of the inner city. The
conversion of historic industrial buildings to high-end residential and commercial uses that Zukin
(1982) first noted in New York’s SoHo neighborhood is now a ubiquitous feature of urban
development in many cities. Encouraged by a suite of neoliberal policies, North American cities
have transformed from industrial powerhouses into centers of culture, spectacle and elite

consumption (Hannigan 1998; Zukin 1995). Our study of Portland’s craft brewing sector
complicates these assumptions by suggesting that certain industrial uses may not be anathema to
gentrification but, on the contrary, may be part of the upgrading process. The specific business
strategies of craft breweries, which meld production with consumption, retail with industrial and
the cultural with the economic, distinguish them from other industrial and retail uses. Craft
breweries cultivate an air of authenticity by making production visible to consumers by locating
pubs and tasting rooms alongside production facilities, by placing the machinery of brewing on
display behind glass walls, and by relying heavily on place-specific imagery in their marketing
and design (Flack 1997; Mathews and Picton 2014). By establishing a connection to the local
and the ‘authentic,’ craft breweries contribute to the emergence of place-specific economic
identities, which, as Molotch (1996, p. 230) argues, can generate a monopoly rent that adheres to
places and their associated images and brands. In this way, craft breweries help create the sort of
cultural capital that can attract economic investment, and that can spur further neighborhood
socioeconomic and demographic change.
Extending previous studies, which have implicated craft breweries as catalysts of
commercial and industrial revitalization (see Mathews and Picton 2014; Weiler 2000), our
findings indicate that the development of Portland’s craft brewing sector has gone hand in hand
with residential gentrification. Craft breweries began opening in the 1980s, just as the city began
to gentrify in earnest, and have tended to locate in gentrified or gentrifying census tracts. Our
study suggests that craft breweries have, for the most part, followed gentrification, opening in
neighborhoods after they have begun to gentrify.
Our findings have several implications for the literature on retail gentrification. They add
nuance to the idea of craft breweries being a pioneer industry in retail gentrification as

mentioned in the introduction. We found evidence that this was the case in early 1990s
gentrification, particularly in Northeast Portland, where cheap industrial space and artist
live/work space attracted breweries to neighborhoods in early stages of gentrification. However,
breweries opening in the 2000s and 2010-2015 periods were more likely to follow gentrification
or open in stable or upgrading tracts. This shift is relatively small, but reflects important changes
in how the craft brewing industry and Portland housing market have changed over time. Over
this period an increasing number of neighborhoods near the CBD gentrified and the craft
brewing industry moved from a bourgeoning industry to a significant cultural marker for the city.
Today it appears breweries play a role in solidifying on-going residential gentrification by
meeting the consumption preferences of new residents and providing cultural capital to
gentrifying neighbourhoods.
Finally, although approximately 40% of Portland census tracts were classified as
gentrified or gentrifying over the course of our study period, many had not completed the
gentrification process (i.e. reached or exceeded the metropolitan area median income) as of 2010.
This was particularly the case for tracts in the North, Northeast, and Southeast, which began
gentrifying in the 1990s and 2000s respectively. These neighborhoods continue to undergo
gentrification and attract new breweries. As the craft brewing market becomes saturated and
rents for commercial and industrial space increase, it remains a question whether these forms of
industrial / retail use will survive or will give way to more concentrated or luxury forms of
commercial development as upgrading continues. Early signs of these trends are visible in the
business decisions of craft breweries that choose to locate taprooms in inner city locations while
housing production in suburban locations, in acquisitions of Portland craft breweries by larger

multinational brewing corporations, and in increasing competition as the national craft brewing
industry matures (Johnson-Greenough, 2018).
Overall, consistent with existing arguments that suggest that commercial upgrading often
closely follows residential gentrification (Lees et al. 2008), our study suggests that Portland craft
breweries led the gentrification process via changes in the commercial landscape in the 1990s,
but since then more often have followed residential gentrification. Future research could use
qualitative methods to examine craft brewing industry members, real estate developers, and
urban planners’ perceived relationship between breweries and residential gentrification, as well
as the relationship between gentrification as an urban policy strategy and craft breweries.
Quantitative research could also be conducted to further specify the link between craft brewery
openings and closings and gentrification by using more temporally fine-grained data on housing
price changes and an econometric or natural experiment approach.
Funding acknowledgement
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-
profit sectors.
Disclosure statement
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
Geolocation information
Portland, OR, United States of America
45.512794, -122.679565
Notes

1
. The Brewers Association defines a craft brewery as one that produces less than 6 million barrels of
beer annually, that has less than 25% of its ownership (or equivalent economic interest) in the hands of
an alcoholic beverage industry member that is not itself a craft brewer, and that has the majority of its
total beverage alcohol volume in beers whose flavor derives from traditional or innovative brewing
ingredients and their fermentation (see Brewers Association, 2015).
2
. We do not attempt to explain the success of the craft beer industry in Portland in this paper. Common
explanations in the literature include its historical strength in the brewing industry, the availability of
low-cost industrial space, proximity to natural resources, historically favourable taxation laws, and a
strong pub culture (Dunlop 2013; Cesafsky 2010). An anonymous review of the paper rightly
questioned why Portland has seen a rise in craft breweries with gentrification, while other
gentrified/gentrifying cities have not. This is an interesting question, but is outside the scope of the
paper. Future comparative research could examine differences in local economies to answer this
question.
3
. See Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences (2014, p. 24) for details on classification of professional
employees. Generally speaking, this category includes professional and management workers.
3. Other methods we considered included: 1) a spatial hedonic price model, which we deemed
inappropriate because of the prohibitively high costs of home sale transaction data in our study area
for a sufficient time period, because we are less interested in the amenity value of homes being located
near breweries and more in the role of breweries in driving or following neighborhood change, and
because this method is less capable of capturing change over time; 2) the cross-sectional field survey
method combined with census data used by Hammel and Wyly (1996), which was not selected
because the large scale of fieldwork was prohibitively expensive and because we are interested in the
historical relationship between gentrification and brewery presence; 3) longitudinal regression was
rejected because it was unclear how this method would help answer our research question. If we used

home values as the dependent variable, we would be building a hedonic price model that has the
problems discussed above. If we used a logistic model to predict brewery presence or a Poisson or
negative binomial model to predict the number of breweries per tract, we would run into problems due
to the overall low number of breweries in the sample, especially in earlier years.
5
. Note that the 2000s do not have a leading group and 2010-2015 does not have either a concurrent or
leading group because we did not include census data from after 2010 in our PCA. Therefore, it is also
possible that some of the non-gentrifying tracts in these two time periods may be classified as
gentrifying based on future census data.
6
. Additionally, the results of the seven variable PCA were similar to the four variable solution, with the
significant limitation that there were more missing values in the former results due to pairwise
exclusion.
7
. This motivation also led us to exclude race as a variable in our PCA. While gentrification in most US
cities has a race as well as class component, and this certainly holds true in Portland (Drew 2012;
Gibson 2007; Goodling et al. 2015; Sullivan and Shaw 2011), we found that the timing of changes in
the racial composition of neighborhoods justified excluding it from our four variable PCA. A key
factor here is the historical residential segregation patterns of Portland. While significant long-term
residential racial segregation is present, contemporary trends in the city see overall increases in the
percent non-white population. However, independent samples Mann-Whitney U tests (results available
from authors upon request) show that while tracts with breweries follow the city-wide trend of
increasing percentages of people of color and are not significantly different from the rest of the city in
any decade, they are increasing at a much lower rate (p < 0.01 in 2000s and 2000-2015). Indeed, the
breweries opening in 2010-2015 fell in the city’s minority of tracts that are becoming whiter. Future
research could build logistic regression models by decade or longitudinally using similar variables to
unpack the effect of race or qualitatively explore the relationship between craft brewing and race (see
also Bland 2013).

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