Skip to main content
ADDRESS: 7405-7415 NE Fremont St.
YEAR BUILT: 1949
SQUARE FOOTAGE: 1,356
MARKET VALUE: $463,970
OWNER: Margaret Bogart
HOW LONG IT’S BEEN EMPTY: A decade or more
WHY IT’S EMPTY: Absentee owner
For as long as neighbors can remember, the beige duplex at the corner of Northeast Fremont Street and 74th Avenue has been an eyesore. The yard is overgrown, the walls scrawled with graffiti and doors caved in by squatters.
“It has been empty and a nuisance since the late ‘90s,” says Leigh Wheeler, who lives down the street and tipped off WW to the property.
For at least a decade, the city has been trying to do something about it—until recently, to little avail. Police were called to the area nearly 200 times, mostly on reports of disorder or crime. Neighbors would complain to the city about overgrown grass and squatters in the backyard.
Every once in a while the city would send out an inspector, and then a crew to clean it up. Monthly invoices, more than 400 in total, have been mailed to the owner, 74-year-old Margaret Bogart. She never responded. (Nor did she respond to WW’s repeated voicemails.)
She does not appear to live there, although it’s her mailing address on file with the DMV. Notices of unpaid parking tickets have been returned, undelivered.
Someone, however, was paying the property taxes. That is, until 2019, when the city, in an attempt to recoup $80,000 in fees and penalties, announced it was foreclosing on the property. At a City Council meeting, Commissioner Amanda Fritz declared it, along with four other properties up for foreclosure, the “worst of the worst.”
A foreclosure auction was scheduled for 2020, but was postponed by the pandemic. Meanwhile, the city kept footing the bill to clean up the property. It paid contractors around $2,000 to pick up trash, clear weeds, and board up the doors in 2022, according to city records.
On Oct. 17, 2022, the property was finally put up for sale in the City Hall atrium. A man named Wesley Mahler made the minimum bid, $147,746, and won. (He may have been the only person to show up—no one bid on the other properties for sale.)
Bogart had one year to pay up and redeem the property, during which the city spent another $2,600 cleaning it up. She didn’t. Now, it appears to be Mahler’s.
The barista at the cafe across the street says Mahler is a nice guy—he’s a regular. He owns the other two buildings across the street, she explained, and plans to redevelop the decrepit duplex.
But WW was unable to learn the details of those plans. Mahler, as well, didn’t respond to our calls.
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.