Buffalo Wild Wings has closed its downtown Portland bar after a long feud with city officials over a nearby car park it said became a crime haven.
Wray Hutchinson, president of World Wide Wings, which holds the franchise for that location since 2007, vented the company’s frustrations in an email to staff.
‘It is with a great deal of sadness, anger, and frustration I share with you that, after 17 years, we will be closing our sports bar on 4th and Morrison effective today,’ he wrote.
Hutchinson explained the problems began with the pandemic in May 2020 as the city center suffered a ‘deterioration of the environment’.
Buffalo Wild Wings has closed its downtown Portland bar after a long feud with city officials over a nearby car park it said became a crime haven
Portland’s downtown deteriorated in the pandemic, and a ‘lack of consequences’ for those vandalizing the parking garage (pictured) above made it a ‘haven for crime and drug use’
‘Many of our team members had windows broken and reported feeling unsafe due to the people who were permitted to loiter in the garage and throughout its stairwells,’ he wrote.
As time went on, a ‘lack of consequences’ for those vandalizing the multilevel parking garage above the bar made it a ‘haven for crime and drug use’.
Hutchinson described the bar’s awnings being set on fire, cars frequently being broken into, and junk being tossed from the top of building to the road.
‘Despite spending tens of thousands of dollars in building and vehicle repairs, we fought hard to stay,’ he wrote.
The city responded to the three years of complaints by shutting down the car park entirely last August, which devastated the bar’s business.
‘We finally thought that we were going to be getting some support here, what they did instead was board it up,’ Hutchinson wrote, and closing the parking was like pulling out ‘ the last leg of the stool’.
Sales quickly dropped 25 per cent and by half during March Madness this year, which is typically the bar’s busiest month.
Portland developed a serious crime, drug, and homelessness problem during the pandemic that the city is still struggling to fix
Buffalo Wild Wings responded by not paying rent from last August, claiming closing the garage was a breach of its rental agreement, triggering a feud with city officials that dragged on for months.
The bar claimed two allocated parking spots for the bar ‘establishes the relationship between the premises and the parking garage’.
City officials disagreed, writing to bar management that the car part was ‘not included in the lease’.
‘Tenant was and is free at any time [to] choose to have their employees park at a location of their choosing,’ it wrote.
The city finally sent the bar an eviction notice on March 29, claiming it owed $106,395.83 in rent and had to be out by April 15.
‘For months, the City of Portland has been in communication with Buffalo Wild Wings to help address their concerns and bring them into compliance with their written lease agreement by requesting that they pay their rent,’ the city said in a statement.
‘We have made numerous good faith attempts to find solutions while also prioritizing and carrying out downtown revitalization efforts.
‘We believe this was a necessary step, and we are hopeful to find a business to rent the vacant space.’
The car park on SW 3rd and Alder was ‘temporarily closed’ on August 18 to allow ‘consolidation of resources across four other public parking garages downtown’.
Sales quickly dropped 25 per cent and by half during March Madness this year, which is typically the bar’s busiest month
A notice explaining the closure said peak-hour occupancy in the garage fell from 90 per cent in 2019 to 29 per cent in June 2023.
Parking revenue across downtown Portland fell 38 per cent between June 2022 and June 2023.
‘With parking occupancy rates being consistently below pre-pandemic levels, PBOT is consolidating resources,’ it said.
Mayor Ted Wheeler’s chief of staff, Bobby Lee, just three weeks earlier described the horrible conditions inside the parking garage.
‘No one in their right mind would want to park inside these facilitie,’ he wrote in a July 31 email, according to The Oregonian .
He added that he ‘walked through crap, urine and drugs’ when visiting it, saw people sleeping there, and was told three cars were broken into the night before.
Hutchinson later explained that he stopped paying rent ‘because it’s the only leverage a tenant has when a landlord is not fulfilling their responsibility’.
‘We hung in there naively under the assumption that that’s where the city would start and we could weather the storm here,’ he told KOIN.
‘And again, it’s cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars for that belief only to have the city turn around and go, ‘Yeah, we’re done. We’re done talking to you’.
‘It’s sad, it’s frustrating, it’s infuriating.’
Aerial view of the huge car park above the bar that was shut down in August
Hutchinson lamented how much the Portland downtown had deteriorated since the pandemic, when it was a vibrant place to do business.
‘When we opened this location, it was the center of the universe. On a Friday night before a Blazer game, we had a UFC fight,’ he said.
‘There were literally people standing on the sidewalks watching the fight, and through our windows, it was the place to be what energy and excitement we brought, and it was just a place for people in the Portland community to gather and celebrate our teams.’
The Portland Bureau of Transportation said the situation was improving as there used to be multiple daily car prowls, but in the whole of March four of its five parking garages had none.
‘Downtown is cleaner and safer, and I encourage anyone who has not come downtown recently to do so,’ Commissioner Mingus Mapps said.
