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Just about every weekend since the pandemic, Portland’s hottest electronic dance music club, The North Warehouse, rumbled to life just as much of the city went to bed.
Located at 721 N Tillamook St., The North Warehouse built a following by offering raves featuring classic Portland touches: DIY merchandise, local openers, even food carts. Lasers, glow sticks, and a throbbing bass enlivened the 99-year-old, 18,000-square-foot warehouse in a gritty slice of the Eliot neighborhood.
Last week, The North Warehouse was gearing up for a busy holiday season, culminating in a huge New Year’s Eve show, and it was selling tickets for events as far out as May.
But on Dec. 16, Portland Fire Marshal Kari Schimel abruptly shut the club down.
That closure came five days after WW began asking city fire and building code inspectors about hundreds of pages of emails and inspection reports that showed The North Warehouse’s yearlong history of noncompliance with city code.
The end came as a shock to owner Scott McElroy, who as recently as Dec. 15 insisted the club’s regulatory challenges were over. In a lengthy interview, McElroy expressed confidence he could satisfy skeptical regulators and persuade the city to grant him a zoning change that officials said he needed to operate legally.
McElroy says The North Warehouse has been a bright spot in a struggling city.
“Some of these artists have never even played Portland before,” McElroy says. “And they won’t play Portland otherwise because they don’t have a space they want to play in. This brings a ton of revenue to the city, and it brings people a clean, safe, good space for them to enjoy entertainment.”
The closure of The North Warehouse is the latest chapter in a long-running battle between Portland Fire & Rescue and the city’s live-music industry over safety requirements.
In 2013, for instance, after a Brazilian nightclub fire killed more than 240 people, the Portland City Council passed an ordinance that required all nightclubs in the city with a capacity of more than 100 to have automatic sprinkler systems, which spawned litigation lasting for eight years (“Hot in Here,” WW, July 6, 2016). Subsequently, the fire bureau updated its code for “non-assembly” venues that offer events periodically, such as The North Warehouse, establishing strict guidelines for how many customers they could serve.
McElroy proceeded as if the new policy didn’t apply to his club.
Michelle Coefield, a special events inspector in the Fire Marshal’s Office, told zoning officials in an email this summer that she could not get McElroy to comply with fire code.
“As time has gone on, he has turned the space into a nightclub only, which goes against our policy,” Coefield wrote in a Sept. 2, 2023, email. “Basically, he has been using the space illegally.”
Meara McLaughlin, executive director of MusicPortland, a group that advocates for the city’s independent music industry and helped McElroy get permits for shows, says city officials are missing the point.
“Shutting down a locally owned venue that is serving an audience not being served by anybody just seems so shortsighted,” McLaughlin says. “It seems to be driven by the competitive challenge The North Warehouse has given other venues.”
McElroy agrees. “We’ve created this great space, and the majority of the heat that we’re getting, the reason that this is all going on, is because of the Roseland complaining about us,” he says.
Longtime Roseland Theater owner David Leiken acknowledges urging fire officials to crack down on what he considers unfair competition from a club he says doesn’t meet the safety standards Roseland and other clubs must meet.
“It’s really an affront to everybody who has done what they are supposed to do,” Leiken says. “It was travesty that the public was being let into an unsafe environment.”
Documents WW obtained from public records requests show that city inspectors, from both Portland Fire & Rescue and the Bureau of Development Services, prodded McElroy over the past year to comply with safety rules.
City code, strengthened in 2018, says if a venue doesn’t have sprinklers, “the occupant load shall not exceed 300.” It doesn’t matter how big the space is. The same policies require permits for building modifications and limit the number of shows in venues like warehouses.
Records show, however, that beginning in January 2022, inspectors dinged The North Warehouse, which does not have sprinklers, for violating those policies, some repeatedly.
At 11 pm on Feb. 19, 2022, for instance, a fire inspector reported the crowd was “200 over the assigned occupant load.” The inspector gave the club an hour to reduce that number, but when he returned, “they were now 400 over.”
As for permits, records show city inspectors wrote up The North Warehouse for having done unpermitted electrical work. The warnings grew more serious on Nov. 12, 2022, when a fire inspector cited the venue for installing doors between two adjoining buildings without a permit. The risk: A fire might spread between buildings and people couldn’t exit in a hurry.
Six months later, the problem still wasn’t fixed.
“He is giving me the run around,” Coefield wrote to a BDS inspector regarding McElroy. “He is still pulling event permits with large amounts of people and I just want to make sure the building is safe.”
McElroy pulled a lot of event permits. He says he was on pace to host “60 or 70″ shows this year, well over the city’s cap of 24.
Last week, WW asked Portland Fire & Rescue about The North Warehouse’s repeated violations of city code.
Lt. Rick Graves, a bureau spokesman, says McElroy believed the pre-2018 city code governed his club’s capacity. “At that time,” Graves says, “the assembly inspectors made an exception to allow the applicant to continue with the max occupant load of 666.” (The North Warehouse contains three different spaces, and McElroy says he sometimes spread 1,500 customers across them.)
McElroy says he’s tried his best to be responsive to city concerns. He acknowledges having done some unpermitted work but says that happened during the pandemic when contractors were scarce. He contends that the show permits he received covered multiple shows. More recently, he said he believed he was on track to gain city approval for a zoning change that would have made his operation fully compliant.
BDS officials repeatedly expressed skepticism whether that could happen.
Matt Wickstrom, a senior BDS planner, wrote to a colleague on Sept. 22 that The North Warehouse had little hope of meeting city requirements: “They’ve been given this information many times now. Since there isn’t a solution to allow the event space on his site, they need to start looking at other sites that would allow the use (and they never should have started their business in the industrial zone to begin with).”
That point became moot on the night of Dec. 15, when a fire inspector visited The North Warehouse and found a crowd well above code, Graves says. “Unable to close them down at the time because of unavailable police officers, our inspector remained on site and acted as fire watch in the event of an emergency.”
And with that, Graves says, the fire marshal revoked The North Warehouse’s future permits, effective immediately.
McElroy hopes to reopen. “Our primary concern has always been the safety of concertgoers at The North Warehouse,” he says. “We are committed to working closely with the Portland Fire & Rescue to ensure that our venue is in compliance so that we can continue to be a safe and fun space for Portlanders.”
