Fentanyl Market in Downtown KeyBank Is No More

Washington Center, the vacant building complex that was host to an open-air fentanyl market on one of downtown Portland’s most prominent blocks, has been boarded up completely.

After WW highlighted the block’s blight back in March, Menashe Properties, the real estate firm that owns the complex, boarded up two corners of the office buildings, including the iconic front steps facing Southwest 4th Avenue and Washington Street. But workers left the eaves over the abandoned KeyBank on the other side of the block untouched—to the frustration of city officials and nearby businesses, which have long complained about the buying, selling and consumption of fentanyl that had come to define that stretch of downtown Portland.

Now, that corner, too, is surrounded by 10-foot boards.

Mayor Ted Wheeler hailed the recent development. “I’m grateful that the property owners are continuing to secure the site which is a commitment they made during the initial board-up of the Washington Center building,” Wheeler said in a statement to WW. “My expectation is for efforts to continue in the weeks ahead, which includes working to address loitering. I look forward to the demolition or resale of this property to allow downtown to move forward.”

But the Menashe family, which runs the firm that owns the building, weren’t the only ones to make empty promises over the past two years as the block became one of Portland’s most visible examples of blight. The mayor’s office had agreed to pay for the board-up and then never followed through, WW revealed earlier this month.

On Monday, many of the corner’s former denizens had moved a block north, to a stretch of sidewalk along a parking lot that was once home to a handful of food carts—and a frequent target for police drug stings.

But those carts have all been removed and the pavement dug out after one of the carts exploded earlier this year. And the sidewalk’s new residents might not be able to stay there long.

Expensify, makers of the “payments superapp,” whose 2021 IPO was one of Portland’s biggest in nearly two decades, lies across the street. It’s now behind an effort to redevelop the block as a beer garden. “It wasn’t doing great before COVID, and the quarantine sure didn’t help,” CEO David Barrett said in an announcement last week.