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12350 NE SANDY BLVD
- YEAR BUILT: 1971
- SQUARE FOOTAGE: 118,000
- MARKET VALUE: $6.2 million
- OWNER: RFC Joint Venture
- HOW LONG IT STOOD EMPTY: Since 2018
- WHEN WE WROTE ABOUT IT: Aug. 24, 2022
WHY WE WROTE ABOUT IT: Amid what Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability called a climate crisis, Prologis, a San Francisco-based company that ships packages around the world for the likes of Amazon, pushed ahead with plans to build a freight warehouse on the site of the old Kmart on Sandy Boulevard. Neighbors got wind of the project and protested, saying the facility would bring more semi trucks onto roads with school crossings and that they would expel diesel exhaust within feet of an apartment complex. Argay Terrace, already a heat island full of warehouses, would get hotter, they warned. WW wrote about the project in August 2022, revealing that the land underneath it was owned by an entity controlled by Zygmunt Wilf, the billionaire owner of the Minnesota Vikings. The old Kmart caught fire a year later, sending chunks of burnt, black insulation across a swath of East Portland. Opponents kept fighting to stop the warehouse, in court and out.
WHAT’S CHANGED: Wilf and Prologis are winning, and only a Hail Mary would likely save the resistance. The Bureau of Development Services approved a building permit for the warehouse in November 2023. The Northwest Environmental Defense Center, 1000 Friends of Oregon and Neighbors for Clean Air filed a petition with the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals seeking a review of the permit. LUBA denied the petition in September, saying it didn’t have jurisdiction. Warehouse opponents took their plea to the Oregon Court of Appeals and await a decision. In the meantime, Prologis has torn down the torched Kmart, and warehouse construction is underway. The company expects to finish most of the work in the first three months of this year. “We’re looking forward to finishing construction and leasing the building,” Prologis spokeswoman Jennifer Nelson says.