Ex-Adidas, Nike execs are helping build a new sustainable footwear hub in Oregon
A $125 million urban redevelopment project aims to turn the oldest neighborhood in Portland into a hub for sustainable footwear innovation. Read More
Former Nike Chief Sustainability Officer Noel Kinder and ex-Adidas President Eric Liedtke have joined the stewardship committee for a $125 million urban redevelopment project that aims to turn the oldest neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, into a hub for sustainable footwear design and manufacturing innovation.
The first phase of the renovation, which will cost $15 million, is slated for completion in late 2024. It will turn 110,000 square feet into a Footwear & Apparel Manufacturing Innovation (FAMI) hub where shoe and apparel companies can test new materials and production methods that reduce environmental impacts and emissions. Eventually, the Made in Old Town initiative will convert 323,000 square feet across nine run-down buildings in the city’s Chinatown. It will also include housing.
The redevelopment is being funded by public money from the state and city, along with commercial financing.
Hilos, a startup using 3D printing to reduce the number of parts needed and amount of glued used in shoe production, is an anchor tenant. Hilos CEO Elias Stahl is part of the three-person stewardship committee, along with Liedtke and Kinder, who joined in July. The initiative is funded by a perpetual purpose trust, like the one used by Patagonia to guide its philanthropy.
“It’s an incredible part of town, the architecture is really cool, it’s adjacent to downtown, but it’s always been challenging down there,” said Kinder, who grew up in the Portland area and spent more than two decades in sustainability and supply chain roles at Nike. “To use the industry that I spent so much time in as the catalyst for that transformation was really icing on the cake.”
A center of gravity for shoe and fashion companies
Hundreds of footwear and outdoor apparel companies have large presences in
“There are incredible decisions being made about what this city, all cities, will look like for the next century,” said Stahl.
COVID-19 demonstrated that “single-use downtowns don’t work,” said Stahl, referring to the city’s office vacancies, which skyrocketed during the pandemic. The nine buildings being revitalized by the initiative are being outfitted with prototyping and test equipment. They will be inhabited by biomechanics engineers, startups working on sustainable textiles and other companies focused on rewriting the rules of apparel production, he said.
By concentrating resources more intentionally in this geography, the industry can “ripple innovations along, forward and across a value chain,” said Jordan Taylor Sloan, project director for circular economy at consulting firm WSP, which is not involved in the project. Portland’s culture is thoughtful and progressive, prioritizing eco-informed design and stewardship of the natural world, Taylor Sloan said. “Innovative ideas can take hold here, grow, gain traction and then spread to other areas.”
An industry eager for new production approaches
China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam accounted for 75 percent of the world’s footwear production as of 2022. Production declined in 2023 by 1.5 billion pairs, to 22.4 billion — roughly the same number are dumped into landfills annually. Revenue from U.S. shoe manufacturing is relatively modest, projected at about $1.9 billion in 2024. New Balance is a notable exception among the big athletic shoe brands, making about 4 million pairs of sneakers annually in the U.S.
The Made in Old Town team has received an “outpouring of curiosity” from fashion brands exploring how to make their production methods more sustainable. “We are very focused on brands and suppliers that are invested in making an impact,” former Nike CSO Kinder said, while declining to share names of companies that might become involved.
The project will explore many possibilities — from material substitutions or the use of circular economy processes, such as engineering shoes so that they can be repaired or reused more readily. Sharing the costs and risks of testing those methods could be attractive to companies “hesitant” to compromise margins to better fund and prepare their supply chains for new product methods, including onshoring, said Taylor Sloan.
“Onshoring manufacturing innovations that prioritize circularity practices can potentially shift that dynamic, and companies should evaluate (a) setting an internal price on carbon and/or waste to help fund innovative projects and (b) exploring opportunities for co-location of symbiotic manufacturing and design operations,” she said.
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