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6700 NE BROADWAY
- YEAR BUILT: 1948
- SQUARE FOOTAGE: 20,120 (before it burned and was torn down)
- MARKET VALUE: $1.7 million
- OWNER: Pacific Property Holding LLC
- HOW LONG IT HAS STOOD EMPTY: Since March
- WHEN WE WROTE ABOUT IT: July 10, 2024
WHY WE WROTE ABOUT IT: Pacific Market was a destination for Asian immigrants stocking up on staples from home and for high school kids looking for trans-oceanic snacks. The epicurean good times ended on the morning of March 26, when the building burst into flames, destroying the market and a Thai restaurant next door. Then things got weird. Tronghuy Pham, who controls the LLC that owns the property, put up a chain-link fence, but he told WW in July that he couldn’t start cleaning up because of a delayed insurance claim. That meant all the charred goods remained in place, including packets of instant Vietnamese coffee, coconut milk and dinnerware. Many of the perishables rotted. Food looters breached the fence and went searching for anything that hadn’t. Beat-up cars and vans, some of them serving as housing, filled the parking lot.
WHAT’S CHANGED: A city inspector visited the site a day after WW’s story appeared, and issued a nuisance complaint. When we talked to Pham in July, he said he had a contractor all lined up to demolish the store, and just needed to resolve the insurance issue. We couldn’t reach Pham this week, but a drive by the site showed that he made good on his promise. What was once a burned-out grocery store is now a flat expanse of gravel, separated from the parking lot by bags of wood chips to control erosion. We hope Pham rebuilds Pacific Market, both because it was a great store and because RVs are beginning to line the streets around the property.