FADEOUT:  A once-beautiful American city goes into a deep decline.  I'm afraid we're seeing this repeated in leftist-run cities throughout the country.  From Daily Mail:

Walmart has announced it is permanently closing all of its locations in Portland months after its CEO warned of a historic rise in theft at its stores.

The locations, located at the Delta Park and Eastport Plaza shopping centers in North and Southeast Portland, will shutter Friday, March 24, the retail colossus revealed in a statement this week. 

Walmart says they are closing the stores - which serve as a haven for low-income shoppers across the city - because they were not meeting financial expectations.

That said, the closures serve as the latest instance of businesses relocating or closing shop altogether amid a pronounced rise in crime and homelessness.

The mass exodus has been carried out by owners fed-up with the Portland's sad state, and officials' subsequent failure to quell both crises.

Once hailed as the 'crown jewel of the West' for its trendy art and food scenes, the city has already seen a Portland Nike store shut down last year due to mass shoplifting, as well as a popular retail store in the city's downtown that was broken into 15 times over the course of just two months.   

Portland's current predicament has persisted since the pandemic, and will now deprive residents of two of the last remaining convenient and cost-effective outlets at a time of surging food costs and economic uncertainty.

In a statement to local outlet KPTV, brass for the big box store cited such uncertainty for the reasoning behind closing down the two last remaining Portland Walmarts. 

'The decision to close these stores was made after a careful review of their overall performance,' a rep told the station this week.  

'We consider many factors,' the spokesperson would then add, pointing to 'current and projected financial performance, location, population, customer needs, and the proximity of other nearby stores' when making the 'difficult' decision.

COMMENT:  We await comment from the socialist masters of Portland, and the state of Oregon.  No doubt they will blame Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Fox News for their plight.  I don't think we should send them any foreign aid money.

March 6, 2023