A West Burnside Landmark Is Behind on Taxes

Address: 1717 W Burnside St.

Year built: 1906

Square footage: 18,993

Market value: $2.75 million

Owners: Haralambos and Diane Polizos

Property taxes owed: $78,871.41

How long it’s been delinquent: 3 years

What those taxes could buy: More than 315,000 condoms for distribution in Multnomah County student health centers

Why it’s delinquent: A death in the family

Like many of the properties behind on their property tax payments, the Acropolis Hotel still hums with activity.

Its ground floor is anchored by an outlet in the Fantasy for Adults Only sex shop chain. The window displays offer an array of jockstrap thongs, baby doll nighties, and more complicated underwear, although the store, once open around the clock, has shrunk its hours to noon to 8 pm.

Next door in the same building, a tattoo removal parlor run by homeless services nonprofit Outside In closed on March 17, 2020, and never returned—the pandemic closure notice still hangs in the window. Above it are apartments. Despite its name, the Acropolis Hotel isn’t taking bookings.

Eagle-eyed readers will note that the hotel shares a name with the Acropolis Steakhouse, the Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard strip club where the $7 rib-eyes came from the owners’ Estacada ranch. Those owners, Haralambos “Bobby” Polizos and his wife, Diane, also own the Acropolis Hotel.

The Polizos family is behind on property taxes at both locations, though the tab run up on Burnside is about twice as large.

While the past three years couldn’t have been easy for operators of nudie bars or low-rent apartments, the more likely explanation is the 2019 death of Bobby Polizos. He was 80.

Shortly after his death, Diane Polizos said she would keep the strip club going. A woman who answered the phone at the family home this week said Diane wasn’t available. Her son, Andreas Polizos, who is listed as the Acropolis Steakhouse’s contact by the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission, also said he would pass a message to her.

We asked him if the failure to pay property taxes had to do with the death of his father. “I’m sure it has a lot to do with a lot of things,” he said.