Good News/Sad News
Aug. 7, 2024
By: Fred Leeson
A Portland company renowned for saving and finding new uses for historic buildings has added another notch to its entrepreneurial belt with purchase of the four-story former Taft Hotel.
Through no fault of the McMenamin brothers, their purchase of the 117-year old building became possible after the sad failure of Portland’s disjointed systems for managing housing for troubled residents afflicted by personal tragedies including homelessness, mental disabilities and drug issues.
Until its closure late in 2021 because of management issues and maintenance problems, the Taft Hotel had provided housing for 70 low-income seniors, many suffering with mental and behavioral issues.
The $1.5 million purchase by the McMenamin brothers amounted to an interesting business opportunity, since the Taft building at 1337 SW Washington St. abuts the rear of the company’s popular Crystal Ballroom venue fronting on W. Burnside. Purchase price for the 37,000 square foot building with 70 housing units and ground-level retail spaces amounted to no more than a single upscale Portland house.
The building had been owned by Reach Community Development, a non-profit low-income housing provider. The Taft had been leased to a for-profit management company that walked away, citing building maintenance and other complaints.
Mike and Brian McMenamin have built an eating, drinking, entertainment and lodging empire since 1984, by concentrating heavily on restoring historic buildings. Besides the Crystal Ballroom, their notable Portland-area venues include a former elementary building (Kennedy School) a funeral home (Chapel Pub) and county poor farm (Edgefield Lodge.)
The company speaks little to the press and keeps its plans tightly held. The obvious opportunity at the Taft building is renovating into a boutique hotel since it sits close to the Crystal Ballroom and another McMenamin property, the Crystal Hotel, less than two blocks away.
While loss of the low-income housing is a blow to Portland’s fragmented low-income housing community, sale to the McMenamin chain could be an encouraging sign for downtown Portland, where numerous storefronts and office units remain vacant stemming from the COVID epidemic and downtown’s problems with unhoused campers and drug users.
The Taft building, completed in 1907, was designed by Portland architect Edgar Lazarus, who owned it until his death in 1939. Lazarus also designed the nine-story Electric Building is best known for the Vista House at Crown Point, which takes advantage of magnificent views high above the Columbia River highway in eastern Multnomah County.
The Taft reflects what some historians call the "Chicago school" of architecture, with the tri-partite windows and wide spandrels. The building was known for many years as Hotel Ramapo until changing to the Taft Hotel nameplate in 1955. It because a residential care facility in 1985/86.
While the interior of the Taft building is reported to be in awful condition, the building has already been retrofitted with earthquake bracing which rates as a plus for the buyers. That alone, along with the McMenamins’ reputation for undertaking responsible preservation projects, could provide the Taft building with many honorable decades ahead.
Fred Leeson is a former president of the Bosco-Milligan Foundation and a member of the foundation's Board of Advisors.