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ADDRESS: 3037 SW 2nd Ave.
YEAR BUILT: 1918
SQUARE FOOTAGE: 6,456
MARKET VALUE: $1.4 million for the entire property, which includes Lair Hill Park
OWNER: City of Portland
HOW LONG IT’S BEEN EMPTY: Since 2001
WHY IT’S EMPTY: Portland Parks & Recreation is broke.
The stately, two-story brick building on the corner of Lair Hill Park in Southwest Portland has had a rich life.
It was first built as a dormitory for county nurses in 1918, before being remodeled two decades later into offices for a New Deal youth employment initiative. Then, in 1949, it was converted into a museum for children, which it remained for the next half century, until the Portland Children’s Museum moved up to Washington Park in 2001.
The building has sat vacant since. Neighbors aren’t sure who owns it, and they’ve never seen anyone in it. Even the restrooms on the ground floor that open out onto the adjacent playground are locked and scrawled with graffiti.
In 2016, the city contemplated renovating and leasing the building. But there was a hitch. When it obtained the building from the county more than a century ago, the deed restricted the property to “public park use.”
So, in a remarkable moment of city-county cooperation, the two sides came up with a deal. The county would give up the restriction on the former dormitory, and the city would give up its interests in a section of a Troutdale pig farm the county wanted to sell to McMenamins, which was expanding Edgefield Hotel.
The upshot: McMenamins got its 65-acre farm, the county got $3.2 million, and the city of Portland got a dilapidated building it had no hope of fixing.
The building needs millions of dollars in repairs and seismic upgrades, says Portland Parks spokesman Mark Ross. But there’s no money to do it (see “Grand Canyon,” page 12).
“Portland Parks & Recreation has been significantly underfunded for decades, and the public assets which comprise the parks system are aging,” he noted.
The Children’s Museum closed for good in 2021, after a two-decade run in its new location high up in the West Hills. And the outlook for its former building in Lair Hill Park isn’t any better. Without new funding, a fifth of PP&R’s assets will be “removed or closed” within the next 15 years, Ross says.
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.