Enough already. Can we stop fawning and drooling over Portland, Ore., and how they fixed up their downtown? I’m all for hearing success stories from other locales and considering how Tucson might adapt them here. But this drumbeat  that’s been going on for three years about how wonderful things are in Portland is, frankly, getting tiresome.

If Tucson leaders were serious about adopting any of Portland’s successful ideas, they would have done it by now.

Oh wait, does Tucson have any leaders?

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Portland did.

That, at least, was a take-away from a speech given by Alan Webber at the annual luncheon Oct. 29 for Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities (TREO). Webber cofounded Fast Company magazine — and since sold it — and before that was editorial director of the Harvard Business Review.

I’ll admit my ears nearly slammed shut when Webber started to talk about Portland’s downtown revival at the luncheon. But I resisted the temptation to go back to work and listened awhile longer.

Webber, who was an administrative assistant to the mayor in Portland in the 1970s, talked of the changes that led to the revitalization.

Aside from the lack of direction in Tucson, there are other differences between Portland and here:

• Portland in the 1970s had a downtown retail environment that was dying. Tucson’s retail in 2009 is dead except for the last few breaths of life yet to be kicked out of it.

• Portland had a transportation plan. It called for freeways but it was a plan that could be reworked. Tucson has no plan. Instead it’s a transportation system built from years of piecemeal appeasement. That thing we voters approved in May 2005 called a 20-year regional transportation plan is nothing more than fixing long-neglected projects. There is a plan for a “modern streetcar” in Tucson — an idea that’s so stunningly innovative only one company in the country builds the streetcars and wouldn’t you know, it’s Oregon Iron Works Inc. in Portland. The company’s very first contract outside of Portland is from Tucson, which is spending $26 million to buy seven streetcars.

There are also a few qualities about Portland that clearly aren’t worth embracing. Portland’s unemployment rate is one of the highest of any metropolitan area in the country, 11.7 percent as of September. Portland is not a city that’s ethnically diverse — it’s almost 79 percent white. And people there have a history of intolerance that goes back to 1971 when then Gov. Tom McCall was famously quoted as saying he didn’t want people to move there.

But there may be opportunity from Portland.

City leaders there are in the process of kicking out their Triple-A baseball franchise, the Portland Beavers. The city, which was a charter member of the Pacific Coast League in 1903, is converting the ballpark into a soccer stadium and the baseball team’s owner is talking about leaving after the 2010 season.

Now if only we had some leadership in Tucson to take advantage of the situation.

Contact David Hatfield at dhatfield@azbiz.com or (520) 295-4237.