Portland’s next creative hot spot? An abandoned DMV in a mostly empty mall

Working from home got you down? Eager to hang with some likeminded creative souls? Just curious what the hell is going on inside the mostly empty Portland, Oregon, shopping mall where Tonya Harding once learned to skate? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you should look into Jason Kreher’s new member-based creative work studio, opening soon in an abandoned DMV in the Lloyd Center Mall. It’s called, aptly enough, “DMV,” and it promises to be an exciting new meeting and working spot for Portlanders feeling isolated in our strange hybrid/WFH/post-Covid world. “The pandemic fucked my world up in many ways, some good and some bad,” Kreher, a longtime creative, told Ad Age. “That experience made me re-evaluate how I get to good work, how I want to spend my time, and what I need to feel creatively inspired. A thriving creative community is my answer to all three of those. Thus, the DMV was born.” Ad Age Creativity Bookmark our section covering the best in brand creativity every day Read more here Kreher joined Accenture Song as North American chief creative officer a year ago, after a wonderfully weird career at Wieden+Kennedy. But this isn’t an Accenture project—it’s Kreher's personal experiment to revive a sense of community among Portland creatives. “So many people don’t want to return to the office, but do miss a sense of creative connection,” he said. “Beyond simply a work space, the DMV is meant to encourage connections among members of Portland’s creative community. This is primarily a meeting space. Secondarily, a community. And third, a thought experiment disguised as a membership club hidden within an abandoned government office in a nearly empty shopping mall.” ‘Kind of a shithole’ The irony here is fun: the attempt to turn a DMV—notoriously the most boring place on earth, synonymous with alienation and stasis—into a place of connection and creation. Be aware, though, that the old DMV DNA remains. Indeed, the space is exactly as it was left in 2012, minus some chairs that were ripped out. “This is not a WeWork or a SoHo House. It’s kind of a shithole, to be honest,” Kreher said. “But there is something freeing in seeing this space as a kind of blank canvas. The office is littered with stacks of old files, fully functioning Dell computers running Windows XP, and all of the weirdness you’d expect from a bureaucracy that suddenly closed its doors more than a decade ago. The hope is that many of these things will feel like an open prompt to create within the space.” The facility does have high-speed WiFi, workstations, some couches and a private bathroom, Kreher said. And he does plan some renovations. “I have a year lease, and the goal is to utterly transform the interior by the time the experiment has run its course,” he said. His working tagline for the place is, “DMV. Buckle the fuck up!” Below are some posters that will hang in the space. (And yes, Tonya Harding really did learn to skate, beginning at age 3, at the Lloyd Center rink.) It’s not just the DMV space itself that feels creatively promising. The whole Lloyd Center Mall, after some rough times in recent years, is experiencing a rebirth of its own, attracting creative local businesses through reduced rents. Along with some mall staples like a Barnes & Noble and an Orange Julius, the iconic Portland comic-book store Floating World closed downtown and moved into the mall. There’s also a record store run by a DJ and a photo studio that uses weird digital effects to take formal portraits. Not long ago, the abandoned Marshall’s suddenly turned into an overnight roller disco. “All these creative people are moving in like raccoons,” Kreher said. “To be clear, it’s not even slightly cool in a traditional sense. It’s weird as hell being in a mostly empty mall. But there’s an energy bouncing around. And it feels very transient. Nobody knows what will happen in 18 months—that’s the max lease they’ll give out—so it feels very experimental and scrappy.” The Meow Wolf influence If the whole thing feels a bit Meow Wolf, well, no wonder. Kreher has worked on several projects with the group—which creates strange, artistic, immersive multimedia spaces, like Omega Mart, a futuristic grocery store in Las Vegas—and Kreher is enamored with their approach.Related news: Meow Wolf hires its first CMO The DMV is installation-like, too, and the aesthetic feels similarly raw. For example, below is a video Kreher made for an investors’ meeting (he's looking for other investors for the space) that was held Tuesday night. As you can see, it’s ... not overly crafted. “I’m so inspired by Meow Wolf’s founding artists and their pure source creative energy,” Kreher said. “As someone who grew up in advertising, I think I’ve gotten a little precious about the craft of my work. Which is great, but can also be a barrier to trying new things. A big part of the draw of this place, to me, is the lack of budgets and the lack of constraints. But the ugly, low-res jankiness of that video also lets people know this place is not very fancy and I don’t want to fucking hear about it if the light bulb is burned out.” Ad Age Best Places to Work 2023 50 companies doing a standout job See the full list here Membership details are still being worked out, though Kreher said he will have discounts for artists and makers. He expects a lot of ad people to use the space at first, but hopes to grow a community that’s “truly diverse in background, thought and creative output.” He’s also hardly expecting to make a profit. “Frankly I’m just hoping to break even,” he said. “But I do like the idea that this is some kind of capitalist art experiment happening inside the mall where Tonya Harding used to practice ice skating. I am fully cognizant that it could be an utter failure. But I don’t think it’s going to be. I believe in the power of Dan Wieden’s slime-mold analogy, and I’m excited to set up another little Petri dish and see what happens.”

Portland’s next creative hot spot? An abandoned DMV in a mostly empty mall

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