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It all started with Quality Pie.
In July 2022, reporter Nigel Jaquiss wondered about an empty building at 1121 NW 23rd Ave. Until 1992, it contained a 24-hour diner and people-watching hub called Quality Pie. But when the diner closed, its low-slung masonry building lay vacant for the next 30 years.
Jaquiss was puzzled. The property sits right across from Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital and in the middle of one of the city’s most desirable neighborhoods. Yet even after a new owner, Vancouver developer C.E. John, purchased it for $6.6 million in 2019, the building remained unused.
The mystery got him to thinking: How many other properties in Portland are lying fallow, and why? So we posed the question to readers, asking them to submit abandoned buildings for our consideration. We then combed through property and tax records, picked up the phone and knocked on doors, trying to uncover the secrets hiding in plain sight. We called the project Chasing Ghosts.
The premise was simple: In a real estate market where housing was in short supply, it made no sense for property that could be used for residential purposes to lie vacant.
More than two years and 120 buildings later, we’re closing a chapter on Chasing Ghosts. Every series needs a finale before it starts getting tired or descending into gimmicks. (Nobody wants to watch Henry Winkler jump his motorcycle over a graffiti-covered warehouse.) In the coming year, we’ll still examine buildings when their condition merits coverage; it just won’t be a weekly feature.
Related: Find every Portland vacant property we’ve explored with this interactive map.
We’ve learned a lot over two and a half years of peering into the void.
First, we’ve learned that development is complicated, slow and difficult even when housing prices remain stubbornly high.
Second, our eagle-eyed readers know this city intimately. We worried that we’d quickly run out of mysteries, but after chasing down answers on more than 120, we’ve still got a pile of nominations from neighbors who want to see blighted buildings redeveloped, neglected houses refurbished, or eyesores scrapped. The level of reader engagement in this series underlines the city’s collective desire to see Portland return to full strength.
Some of our reporting simply answered questions: It was dwindling attendance that caused the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to shutter and offer for sale one of the state’s oldest and largest Mormon temples at 2931 SE Harrison St. Sometimes we were prescient in spotting neighborhood hazards: At least three of the vacant buildings we examined went up in flames after we wrote about them.
And some of our reporting got results: The shuttered office building at 444 SW 5th Ave. called Washington Center had become downtown’s busiest open-air fentanyl market when our series highlighted it in March 2023. That story galvanized police and City Hall to take action, which included enforcement patrols, lots of plywood and graffiti abatement. Yes, flushing the dealers from Washington Center might be part of a citywide game of whack-a-mole, but neighboring businesses were glad those particular moles got whacked.
It’s that spirit of seeking results that animates the following pages. As 2025 opens, we’ve revisited some of the properties that have seen actual change. Some are in the permitting stage, others changed hands or appearance, and some long-fallow properties have returned to productive use. Looking back provides a useful reminder that as difficult as conditions may sometimes seem, Portland, in ways that are sometimes small and subtle, is moving forward.
As for Quality Pie: In November, C.E. John applied for permits to build 50 new apartments above ground-floor retail on the spot. That’s progress! —Aaron Mesh, Editor
