Northwest Portland sites sit barren amid bustle

TribTown • In dense shopping district, empty storefronts puzzle neighbors

By Peter Korn

The Portland Tribune, Nov 27, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (15 Reader comments)

SARAH TOOR / TRIBUNE PHOTOS

Butcher paper obscures the inside of what was once local landmark Quality Pie. The property, owned by a family that lives out of state, has been vacant since the restaurant closed in 1992.

The brick and cinder-block corner building has the look of a place that’s been deserted for a long time.

Blue graffiti mars cement in front of the door. Brown paper covers the windows, with blue masking tape struggling to keep window cracks from growing into full-blown fissures.

Abandoned storefronts like this are a part of city life. But what makes this site notable is its location, right in the middle of the highest-rent commercial street in Portland — Northwest 23rd Avenue.

The shopping district called Nob Hill, where storefronts rent for up to $30 a square foot, rarely has shops stay vacant for long. But the old Quality Pie space, at the corner of Northwest 23rd Avenue and Northrup Street, defies economic logic. The land is worth about $4 million, brokers say. It could bring in more than $200,000 in annual rent. But it has been deserted for 15 years, since the Quality Pie restaurant shut down.

Jim Gillespie, a commercial real estate broker with Keller Williams Realty in Portland, used to handle the property. He says the explanation is both simple and complicated — family dynamics. The building’s owners, Gillespie says, are family members who live out of state and don’t always agree on what should be done with the property.

Owners aren’t around

Kyle Cook says he’s been scratching his head over the Quality Pie property for years. Cook co-owns Shogun’s Gallery, a Japanese antique furniture store three doors down from the abandoned storefront. In fact, the entire block is one property, so Shogun’s Gallery leases the space from the same people who own the vacant storefront.

A sign on the window says the property is available for lease and directs inquiries to “Langberg, Merrill and Pagni,” a firm unfamiliar to local brokers. The sign includes a post office box but no phone number.

“You won’t find the firm,” Cook says.

Cook says he never meets or talks to the owners, even though he filed a lawsuit against them four years ago over terms of the lease. He says it took nearly three years and a great deal of persistence to get the lease for his store.

“They had no interest in leasing it,” he says.

And, he adds, no interest in selling it. Cook says he’s offered to buy the building, as have a number of Portland developers.

Count Richard Singer among them. Singer owns and leases many of the properties on Northwest 23rd Avenue, and he has a hard time understanding the owners’ apparent uninterest in either leasing or selling the property.

“It really defies logic,” Singer says. As for attempts by developers to buy the site, he says: “People have just given up.”

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