Produce Row Bar Closing Tonight After 40 Years

Owner reportedly told staff on Labor Day their jobs would end the next day

By Matthew Korfhage

Portland stalwart Produce Row will be shutting its doors tonight, September 2, after 40 years, they've announced on their Facebook page. 

First opened in 1974, the bar became a ramshackle hangout for multiple incarnations of Portland's music scene, from Pete Krebs and Hazel in the '90s to the turn-of-the-century electronic-music crowd hovering around B Complex in the days before it got a liquor license and became Rotture. 

Alan Davis bought the bar in 2008 and began a makeover to turn the bar into the familiar face of new Portland: a solid beer list, a revamped food menu, and DJs on the rear patio, including a turn by international hip hop night the Do-over before it moved its Portland venue to the White Owl Social Club.

For such a long-running, still-busy institution, the news of its closure was oddly sudden. In a move apparently not specifically designed for maximum irony, owner Davis apparently told his workers on Labor Day that they would no longer have jobs, starting the very next day. Davis is still owner of cocktail bar The Multnomah Whiskey Library.

The text of the bar's Facebook posting of their closure today:

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