Extreme Makeover: Stark Street Edition

[May 11th, 2005] "Have you heard?" asked the front-desk clerk as we rode the elevator to the fourth floor of the historic Clyde Hotel at 1022 SW Stark St. "We have a ghost."

"No, I didn't," I replied. But what I wanted to say was, "No shit, this neighborhood is full of ghosts."

Once the central hub of Portland's queer culture, Southwest Stark Street between 10th and 14th avenues, has been surviving on minimal life support for years now. While some of that has to do with the ever-encroaching urbanization of the West End, the Pearl District and the Brewery Blocks, it also has to do with a changing attitude. Today's young queers no longer seem to need a street full of bars to call their own. It's so bad, in fact, Portland's biggest GLBT event, the annual Pride Parade, is even dropping the street from its route this year. Seems like it would take a Terry Schiavo-sized effort to save this queer-ass alley.

Or would it? Early last month, local developers Robert Sacks and Dave Schrott (the guys behind the sites for American Apparel, Masu, Vault Martini, and Cobra & Matadors) purchased the Clyde, which was originally constructed back in 1912 by the Friendly family. Looking for the ideal tenant, Sacks and Schrott were introduced to the Seattle-based Ace Hotel Group.

So what's this all mean, you ask? Bottom line: Stark Street is about to blow up big.

The trio behind the Ace (Alex Calderwood, Portland native Wade Weigel and Doug Herrick) were instrumental in the revitalization of Seattle's once-beleaguered Belltown neighborhood. The Ace, created in 1999 from the single-room-occupancy Mission Hotel, was the draw that made the neighborhood hip. And the Emerald City gurus have what it takes to repeat the magic in P-town.

"We'll keep the original fixtures," Calderwood said in a phone interview from Seattle about his plans for the four-floor, 50-plus-room hotel. "We'll just decorate it from a modern point of view." Construction begins next month, with a spring 2006 opening date.

Futuristic is more like it. Reinterpreting the traditional hotel experience, the Ace is for urban nomads who want to stay in a modern, new-school space at old-school prices, similar to what the Jupiter Hotel is doing on the east side, but without the noise of the rock-club crowd.

So where do queers fit in?

"We are the ideal tenants to address those concerns," says Calderwood, 35, who points out that all three of the hotel group's principals are openly gay men.

Portland's Schrott, of A&R Development, agrees. "We really like the area. It's 500 feet from everything," says Schrott of the building's culturally central locale. "But I don't think its new use is requires an exodus by the gay community."

The new Ace will mean the end of Scandals, though, at least in its current location. According to Scandals' owner, the 26-year-old queer fern bar will hang its shingle somewhere else on Stark Street in the near future. It will be replaced, according to sources near to the project, by a restaurant with a highly unusual (but completely appropriate) name: Sergeant Recruiter.

"It may look a little bit different," Schrott says. "But the types of business we hope to have in the building will definitely be compatible with the history of the neighborhood."

And, like it or not, different is what this street needs to have a ghost of chance at surviving.