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Address: 3747 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
Year built: 1954
Square footage: 5,160
Market value: $2.6 million
Owner: Candace Goodman
How long it’s been empty: 2 years
Why it’s empty: Jeff Bezos
When gourmet grocer Pastaworks announced plans to end its 32-year run on Hawthorne Boulevard in 2016, another Portland institution stepped in to take its place.
Powell’s Books announced plans to merge the Pastaworks space with its stores on both sides of the grocer. The resulting 23,000-plus square feet of space would be a third of the size of Powell’s downtown flagship.
It never happened. Nancy Chapin, an administrator for the Hawthorne Boulevard Business Association, says the space needed an earthquake retrofit but the bookseller got cold feet. Powell’s did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2020, the bookseller closed its next-door Home & Garden specialty store for good, citing the “onslaught” of COVID and the continuing “evolution” of retail.
(The following year, its owner, Emily Powell, told The New York Times the company was focusing on improving its online presence. “If we can’t solve our internet problems, we’re probably dead in the water,” she said.)
Meanwhile, the building’s owners have struggled to fill the storefronts left vacant by the retreating bookseller.
The old Pastaworks shop sat empty until 2020, when an upscale secondhand clothing shop from Japan snapped it up. (For sale: a $1,199 pair of Balenciaga sneakers and $79 designer T-shirts.) Another specialty grocer, its walls lined with artisan chocolates, exotic bitters and Himalayan salts, moved into the small storefront next door.
But the abandoned Powell’s remains an eyesore—and needs a lot of work.
“Its windows have been broken three times,” says Debbie Thomas, the building’s real estate agent. “They finally just boarded them up, and it looks awful.”
The owners spray-painted the boards black after they were covered in graffiti. “It just keeps getting trashed again,” says Chapin, who made note of the building while leading officials from the city’s new anti-blight office on a recent tour down Hawthorne.
There are other reasons for hope. Thomas says she’s close to inking a deal with a new tenant: a retailer out of Salem. She’s keeping mum on the details: “I don’t want to jinx it.”
Every week, WW examines one mysteriously vacant property in the city of Portland, explains why it’s empty, and considers what might arrive there next. Send addresses to newstips@wweek.com.