Street Corner Series

This is a documentary blip and part of an ongoing series about this corner of Portland at NE Multnomah at NE 21st.  On this corner there were two lots, one of which was vacant from an old house that had been demolished prior to my living in NE Portland.  In late 2016 the old foursquare on the second lot was demolished and the two empty lots sat vacant for a while.  When I last documented this site in 2017 there'd not been any movement and it was unclear what was going to be developed there and I wondered if apartments might be what was in the future.

As you can see from the above building site I was sort of right - but condos, not apartments - and units are already on the market.  There aren't that many high rise condo buildings in inner NE, there's the Fontaine (you can see it on the far left in this picture) and that's kind of it, so this is a big change.  The building is massive in comparison to the surrounding craftsman, foursquare, and 3 story mid-century condo homes, but as I've written in the past Sullivan's Gulch is an interesting urban mix of old and new.  This site is also very close to the Kerns neighborhood which has been going through gentrification over the last few years.  

I've also been hearing that the Sunshine Dairy across the way from here filed for bankruptcy this year and will be closing its site - I've blipped that building and the giant rotating milk carton a number of times over the years.  I guess we'll see what happens with that next.  When I walked past this afternoon business was as usual - extra (you can see the crane of the 2020 NE Multnomah construction site looming behind the dairy building).