An Eyesore on Powell Offers Few Clues to Its Owner’s Plans

Address: 8535 SE Powell Blvd.

Year built: 1980

Square footage: 12,040

Market value: $1.9 million

Owner: 8535 SE Powell LLC

Property tax owed: $116,038

How long it’s been delinquent: Since 2020

What those taxes could buy: Around 1,061 one-night hotel vouchers for homeless Portlanders

Why it’s delinquent: Unclear

The dust-red building is one eyesore among many along Southeast Powell Boulevard, a thoroughfare that showcases many of the city’s crises: traffic deaths, tent camps and drug addiction.

This massive eyesore is encircled by a chain-link fence festooned with napkins, trash bags and discarded food containers. Two human-sized holes facing Powell, the first cut into the fence and the second cut into the side of the building, create a path to the innards of the building.

Signs for the Wonder Spa still advertise hours of 10 am to 9 pm, though it appears to be long abandoned. Remnants of signs for a Food Depot and deli are fast deteriorating. (Calls to numbers listed to those businesses went unanswered.) The walls are covered with graffiti on all four sides, and the parking lot contains a fallen tree.

The building, records show, is owned by an LLC whose sole member is listed as 58-year-old Nita Cheung. She wears a number of different hats. It appears she runs a realty business, is the registered member of an LLC that owns a Hillsboro strip mall pub called Maguffy’s, and is registered as a member for LLCs that own a number of commercial properties in Southeast and East Portland.

She lives in a million-dollar home in Wood Village but proved impossible to contact.

Cheung, according to Oregon secretary of state records, is the sole listed member of 20 LLCs. All are registered at the same office and retail building on Southeast Division Street, owned by an LLC of which Cheung is also listed as a member.

Cheung did not answer multiple calls, voicemails and texts sent to both her and her businesses.