Brick-Shedding Building on Alberta Is Labeled “Dangerous” by City Officials

Inspectors say the owner hung up on them when they called.

Beautiful Ruin: Bricks dropped off this building at NE 28th and Alberta. (Anthony Effinger)

The abandoned building on Northeast Alberta that dropped bricks from its second story over the weekend has been deemed a “dangerous building” by the Portland Bureau of Development Services, but inspectors have been unsuccessful in reaching the owner.

“One of our inspectors reached out to her, and, as of Monday afternoon, she had hung up on them,” BDS spokesman Ken Ray said in an email today. “I don’t know if our inspectors have made contact with her since.”

City records list the owner as Erzsebet Eppley and show an address in Lake Oswego. Reached by phone, Eppley says she is the custodian for the building, not the owner.

“The owner is a child, and I’m not giving you their name,” Eppley said.

The two-story brick building on Northeast Alberta at 28th Avenue—built in 1917 and abandoned since 2014—shed a pile of bricks on Saturday, dropping them on the sidewalk along 28th in a hail of masonry.

The Portland Bureau of Development Services has opened a “dangerous building case” and an inspector has visited the site. The Portland Bureau of Transportation set up a fence around the structure.

Eppley, as either owner or custodian, must hire an engineer to determine if the building might collapse.

“We need to know what the total risk is,” Ray said.

Eppley has 30 days to begin repairs. After that, she may be fined. The sidewalk will remain closed until the work is done.

The building was once home to Al Forno Ferruzza, a Sicilian pizza place that opened in 2009 and closed in 2014. At the time, owner Stephen Ferruzza said in a statement that he had to close because a pipe burst, and the landlord didn’t act in time to prevent an “excessive mold buildup” that “rendered the building unsafe for our workers and customers.”

Eppley said she’s had masons out to look at the building.

“As you can see, the city is involved,” she said. “People are stealing the bricks.”

Bricks that fell off the second story of a building at 2738 NE Alberta Street

Eppley said WW was incorrect in calling her the owner in an earlier story about the building. WW tried to reach Eppley by making calls to her attorney and messaging her on LinkedIn.

“This is why people think Willamette Week sucks,” Eppley says. “You’re not objective.”

Property records show that Eppley and an associate named James Eppley also own a house on Northeast Knott Street, just off Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. LinkedIn lists a James Eppley in Portland who owns a company called Automatic Design.

“It was a long journey but well worth the travel,” Eppley says on his LinkedIn page. “I’ve just decoded two secret messages hidden in the Bermuda Triangle using some seriously ancient technology. Details on this project coming soon!”

James Eppley didn’t return a call seeking comment.

Public records show that Erzsebet Eppley is a member of Tillamook Holdings LLC, which owns the building just to the south of the dilapidated building on Alberta. That building, too, appears abandoned.

An online obituary says that Eppley is the daughter of Erzsebet Helen Boczki, who died in 2012. Boczki was born in a manger in the barn behind the family home in Hungary in 1933, the obituary says. She emigrated to the U.S. decades later and built a real estate business with her husband, Joseph.

This house, at 4929 NE 28th, is owned by an LLC that includes Eppley as a member.



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