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By early next year, there may be a mezzanine opening out onto Southwest 12th Avenue.
Multnomah Whiskey Library wine sommelier Anthony Garcia is partnering up with longtime cocktail pro Alise Moffatt (Ron Toms, House Spirits, Angel Face) to open a new 2,800-square-foot "cocktail bar with strong wine presence" called Shift Drinks at 1200 SW Morrison. Garcia filed a liquor license application on October 14. Both Garcia and Moffatt will be handling service, with Garcia focusing on wine and Moffatt on the cocktails.
If plans and permits go through, Garcia would leave his post at the Whiskey Library at the end of the year. (Founding "head librarian," bartender Tommy Klus, left the Whiskey Library in February of this year.)
Shift Drinks is expected to open in January 2015.
"It's in a historic building," says Garcia, "the Terminal Sales Building, built in 1927, on the historic register. So there are a couple extra hoops to go through." The space was previously empty, and had been advertised for lease.
Garcia says their plans for the bar buildout involve taking things out, not putting them in. "Once you remove that drop ceiling," he says, "the columns are fantastic." The upper deck of the bar is intended to seat 24 patrons, and will look out onto 12th Avenue. The bar is expected to seat 83 total.
"It's more space than we needed," says Garcia. "We wanted a small place where we could work shoulder to shoulder, sixty seats at the top end—but the space was so charming."
Plans for the bar came about when Garcia's brother Joseph, a businessman in Austin, Texas, offered to help Garcia and Moffatt start the bar so he'd have a reason to visit Portland more often.
"We were trying to keep it quiet," Garcia said when WW called. "[Multnomah Whiskey Library owners] Alan [Davis] and Greg [Goodman] are nice enough to let us work while we put it together. Hopefully people won't ask us about the new project while we're working somewhere else."
WWeek 2015