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Address: 3550 NE Broadway
Year built: 1983
Square footage: 3,192
Market value: $5.6 million
Owner: Raleigh D. Lau and family
How long it’s been empty: 4 years
Why it’s empty: Fast food contraction
The closure of the city’s third-best Burger King, tucked off Broadway on the lip of Interstate 84, isn’t all that mysterious.
But its nomination by a reader gives us a chance to explore what happens to the husks of fast food franchises when they fold. The distinctive shapes of former Wendy’s and Pizza Huts can be spotted across Portland, recognizable even after they’ve been repurposed.
Such turnover is common. In fact, two Burger Kings have shuttered in Central Portland in the past five years. The closings occurred as the Whopper’s parent company, Toronto-based Restaurant Brands International, launched a “closure program” for poorly performing outposts. (The company shutters about 200 Burger King locations nationwide each year and opens about the same number of new restaurants, according to QSR magazine, a trade publication for the quick-service restaurant industry.)
In most cities, those shuttered restaurants are quickly replaced. But the Portland City Council banned new construction of drive-thru lanes in 2018, seeking to reduce carbon emissions from idling cars. That means when a Burger King is razed, a new one won’t sprout elsewhere in the city.
In theory, that should make an existing drive-thru window more valuable. Especially because one of those empty structures is on prime real estate: at the east end of the Hawthorne Bridge. That Burger King property, at 1525 SE Grand Ave., has a market value of $1.9 million. It’s up for sale, but its real estate broker didn’t return a call from WW.
As for the Broadway location, its owners—the Lau family of Happy Valley—have listed it for sale for the past three years. Their broker, Eleanor Aschoff, tells WW that vandals broke into the building a couple of times early in the pandemic and stripped out what was left of the kitchen.
“We’re actually selling it more for the dirt,” Aschoff says. “It’s an acre of land. We have it priced below market.” Her hope is that a developer will snag the property for an apartment block, like Grant Park Village a quarter-mile west.