Most Food Front Cooperative Grocery members and NW Examiner readers want a grocery store to replace the co-op store that closed two years ago, and so does Mark New, who recently signed a agreement to purchase the property for $1.5 million.
New and his company, Development Company of the West, Property Services, are pursuing a list of 12 grocery/food service businesses as possible tenants for the building at 2375 NW Thurman St. He hopes to close the sale in about two months.
In the meantime, he will make payments on the co-op’s loan and cover other expenses to avoid foreclosure, which would have been likely next month had he not stepped in.
Over a career of 40 years, New has developed several neighborhood commercial projects in the city, including The Original, a food cart pod at Southeast 35th and Powell streets. Tenants in his other properties include Dollar Tree, Ace Hardware, Barnes & Noble and Dick’s Sporting Goods.
His Northwest Portland connections are extensive.
“I grew up at 25th and Pettygrove, when Bill Walton was playing at Wallace Park,” he said. “My mother grew up on Thurman Street and my daughter’s first condo was on Savier Street.”
He hopes to receive guidance on what the community would like to see on the property from “an advisory panel of five or six people from the neighborhood.”
He works with his daughter, Rachel, who persuaded him to try a food cart pod on SE Powell Boulevard.
