PORTLAND, Ore. – A building formerly home to the Gypsy Restaurant and Velvet lounge is proposed to be demolished and replaced by a mixed-use building.
Photo credit: Portland Chronicle
The structure, located at 625 NW 21st Ave. in the Northwest District, was built in 1963 on a 15,000-square-foot lot. The restaurant itself is 6,197 square feet, with the rest of the property occupied by parking spaces.
Photo credit: Portland Chronicle
The Gypsy Restaurant and Lounge, described by Willamette Week as a “disco-balled Nob Hill dive offering fishbowls of booze,” closed in February 2014 with a note posted explaining the owner had decided to sell the property. A Wikipedia entry for the establishment gives a detailed history of its many-decade run.
Photo credit: Portland Chronicle
Over the summer the city received a complaint of a “pop up beer garden” operating on the property. Two months ago another complaint was lodged regarding “some debris lying on the Irving side of the property that may belong to the homeless.”
Photo credit: Portland Chronicle
On New Year’s Eve the county recorded a sale of the property but has yet to include the sale price in the official records. The former owner was SHR Properties LLC, listing Robi Gurganus as its registered agent.
Photo credit: Portland Chronicle
The buyer and new owner is 625 NW 21st LLC, listing Timothy Parks of law firm Radler White Parks & Alexander LLP as its registered agent and giving no additional names of business members. However, city records show Urban Development Partners-NW as an associated owner.
Photo credit: Portland Chronicle
Urban Development Partners, a development company registered to Eric Cress, is responsible for a number of multifamily complexes on Southeast Division Street. Cress, who “was 34 when he moved to Portland to retire” according to Portlandafoot.org and found his company Urban Development Partners “flush with cash — and buying land” when the housing market peaked, is also involved with an industrial mixed-use building in the central east side district.
Photo credit: Portland Chronicle
On March 25 the city received an application for design advice for a new development on the site of the former Gypsy restaurant. The application explains the one-story restaurant and bar will be removed to make way for construction of a mixed-use building with underground parking.
The applicants on the new construction are Brian Emerick and Anne Marie Kuban, both of Emerick Architects. This architecture company worked on a custom home project on Southeast Division Street that was profiled by the New York Times last year.
Photo credit: Portland Chronicle
A design advice request is an early step in the process toward redevelopment of the property.