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For more than three years, a group of Northwest Portland neighborhoods has been trying to sell the Northwest Neighborhood Cultural Center, a onetime church building that until recently housed the Northwest Children’s Theatre. The 25,000-square-foot building, located at 1819 NW Everett St., is owned by a nonprofit led by six nearby neighborhoods.
The building is a financial albatross for its collective owners because it has amassed a backlog of major maintenance needs and is seismically vulnerable. When the Children’s Theatre announced its impending departure in the summer of 2022, the NNCC board declared its renewed intent to sell the building.
In the spring of 2022, after offering a price dip, NNCC membership overwhelmingly approved the sale of the building to a Las Vegas company called Founders Developments that envisioned a boutique hotel at the site. That deal was supposed to close in early 2023.
But Founders is encountering issues in securing the necessary loans, and WW has learned that the NNCC board is now negotiating details to grant Founders a second extension for the sale that would expire in September 2023.
In an email to NNCC board chair Dan Anderson on Jan. 12, Founders Developments CEO Tanya Toby wrote: “In attempt to achieve financing for the building we have been through two rounds with lenders at this point and after spending months of completing the loan approval process and outrageous expenses associated, the lenders back out after understanding the building condition, of the seismic upgrade necessary and little or no tenants suitable.”
WW spoke with Toby and her business partner, Max Sass, 27, via phone in November. The duo described their vision for a boutique “lifestyle” hotel outfitted with nightlife, lounges, a wellness center, a library, a speakeasy room and event spaces. Toby and Sass plan to erect a five-story hotel with 80 rooms, including a rooftop penthouse, on the empty parking lot and to stick all the hotel amenities in the existing historical building. (Because the building is considered a historic landmark, Founders must get approval from the city’s Historic Landmarks Commission before it can proceed with construction.)
“We stumbled upon the building and fell in love with it,” Toby, who lives in Las Vegas, said at the time.
Founders supplied the NNCC board a list of local projects it was working on when the board was first mulling the sale in the summer of 2021. Fewer than half had been developed or had begun development.
When pressed by WW in November, Toby and Sass said the NNCC was Founders’ only current project—and that the others listed were Sass’ personal projects. This development would be Founders’ first historic preservation project.
In an email to WW on Jan. 26, Toby said that “all is on track and going very well.”
“We are completing entitlements and then permits, as you know these are lengthy and complicated processes,” Toby said. “Thereafter we are going straight to a construction loan as opposed to two tier financing.”
Anderson, the NNCC chair, tells WW the board “has voted to approve terms for a second extension. The parties (buyer and seller) are negotiating details of this possible second extension.” He added: “As has been observed relative to Wagnerian opera: ‘It’s not over until the fat lady sings.’”