Skip to main content
3312 NE BROADWAY
- YEAR BUILT: 1918
- SQUARE FOOTAGE: 25,665
- MARKET VALUE: $2.61 million
- OWNER: 3300 NE Broadway LLC
- HOW LONG IT STOOD EMPTY: 8 years
- WHEN WE WROTE ABOUT IT: Aug. 17, 2022
WHY WE WROTE ABOUT IT: For nearly three decades, Gordon’s Fireplace Shop occupied a prime corner at Northeast 33rd Avenue and Broadway in the Grant Park neighborhood. The building Gordon’s occupied had a storied history, having briefly served as an airplane parts manufacturing facility more than a century ago. In 2017, a Seattle development group bought the building for $2.7 million, initially hoping to convert it into creative office space. There were reasons for optimism—the developers had pulled off successful redevelopments of Pine Street Market in Old Town and The Oregonian’s headquarters on Southwest Broadway. But by the time we first wrote about the building, permitting delays and dysfunction had made the former Gordon’s building one of the city’s biggest eyesores and a high-profile canvas for graffiti taggers. The developers shifted their focus to creating apartments and contractors began work, but it didn’t go very far and the contractors didn’t get paid.
WHAT’S CHANGED: As WW has reported, the city of Portland moved to auction off the building in September to collect on a stack of unpaid nuisance liens. The project’s lender, a Cayman Islands investment firm, stepped in to pay off those liens to protect its interest in the building. That lender foreclosed on the property, and after negotiations with borrowers to restructure the debt fell through, a court-appointed receiver contracted with an online auction firm to sell the property. That auction is now set for Jan. 21. Neon Brooks, the land use chair for the Grant Park Neighborhood Association, says it’s about time. “This has been a frustrating and exhausting roller coaster for the Grant Park Neighborhood Association for the past five years or more,” Brooks says. “We are cautiously optimistic about the auction and hopeful that a new owner will be motivated to address the current safety and livability issues on the property and develop it into a community asset.”