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Southeast Portland bar Starky's is closed after 28 years. A 46-unit apartment complex is planned to take its place.
The little mountain chalet on Southeast Stark Street was a friendly little neighborhood bar catering to longtime regulars in the gay community with raucous karaoke, home-style food and a Sunday brunch that offered up bottomless cheap-bubbly mimosas unless you misbehaved.
Joe Waldroff, who owned both the bar and the property, had the building and bar up for sale off and on since late 2014 with an asking price of over a million dollars—a figure that seemed to be inviting developers much more than future bar owners. In March he sold the property for $1.2 million, but the bar stayed open through Saturday, September 12.
"CLOSED FOREVER, NEVER FORGOTTEN, THANK YOU ALL, WE LOVED YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" read a post on the Starkys Facebook page September 20.
"There will never be another Starky's," wrote one commenter. "Thank you for years of giving our community a home away from home!"
"Sad day in Portland...Another end of an era," wrote another.
A subsidiary of Urban Development Group, owned by Beaverton developer Dennis Sackhoff, filed an early assistance application this month for a 46-unit apartment complex at the property, as first noted in land-use blog Portland Chronicle.
Sackhoff is the father of actress Katee Sackhoff, an actress on Battlestar Galactica and, more recently, Longmire.
His company is known for building relatively inexpensive apartments without a lot of parking. In 2012, WW visited one of his developments and wrote that "its concrete stairs and siding, and the closely spaced units, suggest a complex built cheaply for economy living. It feels like a bicycle-themed Comfort Inn."
WWeek 2015