Skip to main contentCaptain Ankeny’s Pizza & Pub is calling it quits, and the owner of the Old Town institution is very clearly identifying the primary cause: the overall deterioration of the central city.
Jon Abrahamson announced Sept. 27 that he was shuttering the nearly four-decade-old business at 116 SW Pine St. in an email sent to WW.
The “general poor condition of downtown played a major part in the closure,” he stated in the press release. Abrahamson also cited a lack of workers returning to the neighborhood for jobs following two years of industry disruption.
This isn’t the first time Captain Ankeny’s has closed its doors. In 2016, the dive bar left its longtime location at the corner of Southwest Ash Street and 3rd Avenue and relocated to its current home a few months later. At the time, Abrahamson told WW that “it was time to get out. I’m very glad I’m no longer the bathroom for Voodoo Doughnut.”
That was Captain Ankeny’s second move. The business originally opened 38 years ago on the second level of the New Market Theater Building in Ankeny Alley.
In its early years, the bar—known as Captain Ankeny’s Well until the 2016 move—was an enthusiastic supporter of the emerging craft beer industry when many other watering holes played it safe and stuck to a few domestic handles.
“CAW had 20 brews on tap long before the general public was aware that beer had great taste and offered endless styles to drink,” Abrahamson added.
You have until Friday, Sept. 30, to get Captain Ankeny’s hand-tossed, Chicago-style deep-dish pizzas in its current storefront.
However, goodbye is apparently not farewell forever. Abrahamson says you’ll still be able to find his pies at Portland Saturday Market for the foreseeable future.