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SHARI’S SHUTTERS ALL OREGON RESTAURANTS: The Oregon Lottery got confirmation Oct. 21 that Shari’s Restaurants, the 24-hour pie and video lottery chain founded in Hermiston in 1978 and known for its distinctive hexagon-shaped stores, has served its last slice in Oregon. “All of them are closed as of today,” said Oregon Lottery spokesman Matt Shelby. “We just learned that.” Shari’s started the year with 42 Oregon locations but, after a series of closures, was down to 17 as this week began. The Oregon Lottery keeps a close eye on Shari’s because the restaurants’ video lottery terminals generate millions of dollars in revenue. On Monday, as rumors of Shari’s closure circulated on social media, Oregon Lottery staff queried the chain’s back office for information. Around midday, Shelby says, Oregon Lottery director Mike Wells sent out an all-staff email: Shari’s is finished. “Shari’s was an Oregon institution, and a longtime Lottery retailer,” Wells wrote. “With the closure of all restaurants, the financial risks in continuing to partner are simply too great.”
DOWNTOWN GETS 50 NEW DRUG TREATMENT BEDS: The Oregon Change Clinic, the drug and mental health nonprofit founded by state Rep. Shannon Jones Isadore (D-Northwest Portland), is moving its headquarters to Portland’s West End with plans to add 50 drug treatment beds. The clinic currently operates 37 beds at a converted motel in the Lloyd District and is now taking over an unused building across the street from the Crystal Ballroom that was abandoned two years ago by Fora, another treatment provider. Jones Isadore, who was recently appointed to her seat in the Oregon House of Representatives, says she’s renovating the first-floor clinic and converting the upper two floors into housing for clients who’ve recently sobered up. (Disclosure: WW is endorsing her bid to retain that seat in the Nov. 5 election.) The project is funded by a combination of state and county grants. “I’m quite excited,” Jones Isadore says. With the state’s new “deflection” policies to push people caught using illicit drugs into treatment, “our services will be needed even more so,” she adds.
PPS DRAFT PHONE POLICY SAYS OFF AND AWAY, EXCEPT AT LUNCH: A Portland Public Schools Board committee released its latest draft Oct. 21 of a districtwide phone policy. The general guidelines require students’ personal electronic devices to remain “off and away” during school hours, unless they’re being used for academic purposes or at lunch time. It’s more lenient than what’s been implemented at a few schools in the district this year. Grant and Cleveland high schools and Beaumont Middle School all have cellphone-free policies that mandate phones remain in locked pouches throughout the school day (“Their Own Devices,” WW, Oct. 2). As the PPS draft policy currently stands, schools may adopt additional restrictions. Several school board members voiced opinions that the general policy should be stricter—off and away from the first bell to the last—but acknowledged a generational divide. As for the controversial Yondr pouches? “Off and away during the school day does allow schools the flexibility to implement [the policy] in different ways,” says board member Julia Brim-Edwards, who heads the policy committee. “Me, personally, I’m not willing to mandate one particular tool for enforcement.”
BURIAL PLOT DISPUTE HEATS UP: The long-running battle between two families over a West Hills burial plot (“Grave Concerns,” WW, Aug. 7) took a new turn last week when attorneys for Paula Tin Nyo, whose son’s remains are buried in a plot that Skyline Memorial Gardens had previously sold to another family, filed a flurry of motions. Those motions came in response to Skyline’s continuing quest to keep the name of the first buyer confidential, even in the face of a judge’s ruling that such anonymity is not allowed under Oregon’s open courts doctrine. Skyline’s attorneys have asked the judge to reconsider that decision. In Oct. 15 fillings, the Tonkon Torp firm, which represents Tin Nyo, included a contract between Skyline and Marty and Jane Reser, who are part of the Reser Foods family and originally bought the disputed plot for their late son. That contract appears to eliminate any doubt about the identities Skyline has sought to shield. Tonkon Torp lawyers slammed “Skyline’s scorched-earth campaign against a woman of modest means,” arguing that the company, part of the nation’s largest funeral chain, has failed to take responsibility for mistakenly selling the same burial plot twice and is instead punishing Tin Nyo. Attorneys for Skyline and the Resers did not respond to requests for comment.