Gordon’s Fireplace Shop Is Covered in Graffiti and Tangled in Red Tape

Address: 3312 NE Broadway

Year built: 1918

Square footage: 25,665

Market value: $2.15 million

Owner: Interurban Development, Seattle

How long it’s been empty: 6 years

Why it’s empty: Red tape

Gordon’s Fireplace Shop closed in 2016 after 61 years in business selling andirons, pokers, screens and other equipment necessary for burning trees indoors—as well as lamps, furniture and well, everything.

Now a target for every tagger who can afford a spray can, the three-story structure overlooking Sullivan’s Gulch began its life a century ago as a factory where homebuilder Oliver K. Jeffery briefly built airplane struts out of spruce—hence its current name, the Aircraft Factory.

Rob Brewster bought the building for $2.7 million at the end of 2017 and says his first idea was to develop creative office space, but he and his partners have switched to two floors of housing—18 or 19 units—over retail.

Then came the pandemic. Since then, he says, it’s been agony. City permitting officials didn’t raise any major concerns, he says, they just took a long time.

“We were supposed to have been in and out of permitting in eight months,” Brewster says. “It was 14 months.”

During that time, inflation drove the price of everything higher and the Portland Bureau of Development Services slapped the developer with $50,000 in fines after complaints about the vacant structure.

But now, workers are busy along the east face of the building beginning the seismic upgrade of the shell and Brewster can see the future. “We are stewards of these properties which are part of the city’s infrastructure,” he says. “It’s up to us to make it better.”