The Burnside Blog

Posted By Mike Thelin on 01/31/2008

With the Ace Hotel still getting write-ups in national rags (last month Metropolis sang praises), Clyde Common packed nightly (and featured in this month’s Bon Appetit) and Kenny and Zukes selling a compact car’s weight in pastrami every week, you’d think that this retail space on the corner of SW 11th Ave. and Stark would have been rented by now. Instead, it has sat empty since last summer when the Red Light Clothing Exchange abandoned its 4,700 square feet for new digs one block east. A giant “For Lease” sign plastered to the storefront window of 1103-1121 SW Stark has greeted passersby for months now. What gives?

Leasing agent Cathy Boshears with Income Property Management says owners (the Portland Development Commission) plan to redevelop the site. Purchased by PDC in 2001 for $1.475 million, the building housed the legendary record store Django for nearly three decades before that store’s demise in 2004. Its upper three floors are subsidized apartments for low-income tenants.

So what could be looming for this site? The street is currently undergoing massive changes. One block west, Gerding Elden plans to redevelop the so-called “Bathhouse Block,” which was until recently home to a gay bathhouse and the popular all-make strip club, Silverado. As reported by Willamette Week columnist and editor Byron Beck, the site plans are still up in the air, with scenarios ranging from a renovation of the existing building to a new 20-story tower. Gerding Edlen’s 22-story 12W building is already under construction one block south, just paces from where another proposed tower may sprout up in 2008. See both renderings here.

For the time being, would-be tenants may occupy the space with a short-term lease that expires in September of this year, and on a month-to-month basis thereafter for $4,600 per month. That equates to about $12.40 per square foot. That’s about half the going rate of a long-term lease along Stark Street, says Broker Kathleen Healy of Urban Works Real Estate.

So what does PDC have in mind for this prime site? Stay tuned.