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ADDRESS: 6640 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
YEAR BUILT: 2023
SQUARE FOOTAGE: 13,602
MARKET VALUE: $2.52 million
OWNER: Cornice Group LLC
HOW LONG IT’S BEEN EMPTY: At least 3 years
WHY IT’S EMPTY: COVID and a death in the family
From the outside, a brick and metal-clad apartment building in the Woodlawn neighborhood looks nearly complete. There are new Pacific Power electricity meters on the front, and through the street-level windows, you can see walls and floors ready for a final finish.
But progress has been puzzlingly slow on a street that has witnessed rapid change. Neighbors wrote to WW perplexed why the apartment complex wasn’t finished six years after its owners applied for construction permits.
“At different times, there have been safety fences around the adjoining parking lot, and a RV/trailer was stationed there for a bit, but no one seems to be working on completing the project,” wrote one neighbor who asked not to be named.
That tracks with public records and what the city’s permitting agency, the Bureau of Development Services, has seen.
Portland Redevelopment LLC, then operated by West Linn developer Vladimir Ozeruga, acquired the property in 2012. It appears to have been a vacant or nearly vacant lot, according to property assessments at the time. In April 2017, Portland Redevelopment sold the property to Cornice Group LLC, a construction company Ozeruga owned with family members.
In November 2017, Cornice applied for city permits to build a four-story, mixed-use building with 18 apartment units over ground-floor tenant space.
Ken Ray, a spokesman for BDS, says the city has not halted construction and there are no pending complaints that would have slowed development.
“The main building permit on this property expired, and we received interest in reactivating the permit, but the fees have not yet been paid,” Ray says. “We’re not clear on the reasons why the permit languished.”
One reason: Vladmir Ozeruga died Oct. 21, 2021, according to public records. One of his sons, Eric Ozeruga, is now the managing owner of Cornice LLC.
“My father and I ran a construction company together,” Ozeruga says. “This was one of our first commercial projects and one of the biggest. We started pretty slow.”
Ozeruga says he still has a fence around the building to keep taggers away, but he plans to finish the project this summer. “We had some setbacks during COVID,” he says. “But I’m hoping to have a hard opening in the beginning of September.”
Every week, WW examines one mysteriously vacant property in the city of Portland, explains why it’s empty, and considers what might arrive there next. Send addresses to newstips@wweek.com.