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Address: 2436 SE 12th Ave.
Year built: 1927
Square footage: 13,568 (lot); 3,399 (warehouse)
Market value: $1.46 million
Owner: Carter Machine & Tool Inc.
How long it’s been empty: At least two years
Why it’s empty: The longtime owner died.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more attractively located ghost building than the graffiti-festooned warehouse on a triangular-shaped lot at the intersection of Southeast 12th Avenue and Division Street, on the southwest end of Ladd’s Addition in the Hosford-Abernethy neighborhood.
Some of Southeast Portland’s choicest residential real estate lies just north of the lot. Popular restaurants—Double Dragon, Genie’s, Pine State Biscuits and the Apex beer bar, among many other hot spots—lure crowds to lower Division, and parents covet the adjacent Abernethy Elementary School. All that makes the building’s disuse a topic of fascination—and concern—to neighbors.
Brad Copenhaver, 40, who rents a house adjacent to the property, says there have been few signs of life in the Carter Machine building since he moved in a couple of years ago. The only sign of activity: A contractor stores forms for shaping concrete under a frazzled tarp outside the loading dock on the building’s western face.
“I was worried about it when we first moved in,” Copenhaver says of the building’s vacancy.
Some campers occupied space adjacent to the building for a while, but they’ve moved on. Copenhaver says a caretaker periodically replaces broken windows with plywood and keeps trash picked up. “It’s actually been OK,” he says.
For decades, the building belonged to Russell Carter, who, according to his Oregonian obituary, was a decorated World War II soldier who founded the Carter Machine & Tool Co. in 1973.
Records show that after Carter’s death in 2020 at age 96, ownership of the building passed to his daughter, Wanda Osgood of Portland, and his son, Ron Carter of Sarasota, Fla.
Osgood declined to discuss the building’s history but tells WW its days of lying fallow are numbered. “We are in the process of selling it,” Osgood says. “We are fielding offers on a daily basis.”
Every week, WW examines one mysteriously vacant property in the city of Portland, explains why it’s empty, and considers what might arrive there next. Send addresses to newstips@wweek.com.