Infamous site now neighbors’ delight

Community center may rise out of ashes of nefarious business

By Anna Johns

The Portland Tribune, Sep 27, 2005, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Mount Tabor area resident Amy Gredler always wondered how the minimarket near her home stayed in business. Although it was remodeled in 1999, the small store at the corner of Southeast 57th Avenue and Division Street never seemed to have many customers.

“When a business doesn’t do much business, you wonder how it stays open,” she said.

In 2003, the whole neighborhood found out what was happening at the store when federal marshals in SUVs surrounded the building and pulled its owner out in handcuffs.

“The place was just mobbed,” recalled resident Paul Leistner.

The owner, Adnan Fares, was charged with selling pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in making methamphetamine, to drug labs. He pleaded guilty to the charges and, last February, was sentenced to 135 months in prison, forfeiting the store to the county and leaving its future in limbo.

Now Leistner is heading up a plan for the 20-neighborhood coalition Southeast Uplift Neighborhood Program Inc. to purchase the property and transform it into a community-owned center.

It’s an enormous undertaking.

The Multnomah County sheriff has agreed to give the property to Southeast Uplift instead of selling it at auction, but the group needs to reimburse the county and the federal government for their costs, which total $50,000. In the last three weeks, they’ve raised a little over $20,000. They need the rest by Friday.

“I feel fairly confident that we will get it,” Leistner said. “We’ve had people offer to make up any difference with low-interest loans.”

The feds still need to sign off on the deal. Southeast Uplift expects to take ownership of the property in mid-October, but no one has been in the building since U.S. marshals boarded it up in 2003, so Leistner isn’t sure what he’ll find inside.

“We’ve got to see what it would take to open it up,” said Leistner, who anticipates he’ll need a lot of city and county permits to make improvements.

There’s also an environmental concern. The minimarket is on the site of a former gas station and, according to the city’s Bureau of Environmental Services, the old underground fuel tanks are leaking. The cost of cleanup is estimated at $200,000 Ñ for which, Leistner said, there is state and private funding available.

Social outlet is needed

While the cleanup is under way, Leistner hopes to open the building to serve nearby Atkinson Elementary School, which is bursting at the seams. Atkinson, at 5800 S.E. Division St., has 560 students this year Ñ 40 short of its capacity.

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