Day: January 19, 2015

Northrup Food Center

I lived downtown from 2002 to 2005.  Back then, a few of my jogging routes would take me through Northwest Portland, so between that and walking around, I had a pretty good lay of the land.  I had to be at 24th and Northrup, so I walked from Union Station through the neighborhood just to see what had changed.

In short: nearly everything.  Huge buildings where there once were none, huge multi-unit places where once there was a house, stores, stores, stores, restaurants, restaurants, restaurants and parking just as horrible as it always was.

So I was thrilled to come upon the Northrup Food Center, which has not been bought, torn down, spiffed up ironically, or anything else.  It looks exactly like it did a decade ago.

I love the incredibly grimy 70’s white rock.

I spied an R2D2 hidden away.  Old promotion maybe?

Whoever takes over this property has a lot of junk to dispose of.

Here’s a link from 2008 about a mural on the other side of the building.  I’m not sure if its still there.
Here’s a link from 2010 about the man who owns the building which also provides insight about why the store hasn’t been redone.

City of Roses Motel. Buttoning up.

All of the wooden awnings have been squared off and the south side of the work site’s framing has been covered.

I’m interested in what these big indentations are going to turn out to be.  There is more than one of them.  Recessed mini-courtyard?

The north side of the site has these big beams going in, which leads me to believe that I’m right about this part having more stories than the south side. Also the constructed nature of those big beams is prompting me to tell you that in my work building, all those big beams are solid wood. Because my work building was built when they were still cutting the old growth and it was no thing to mill huge beams like that.

I’m pretty good with spacial relations, but I can’t quite figure out the configuration of the space without walking through it.