A bittersweet ending on a Burnside corner
Thursday, February 15, 2007
By Stephen Beaven
The Oregonian
Another glorious Portland dive, the kind of place where you could sit in a booth and have a half-pound burger or a plate of chow mein, has bitten the dust. It will be replaced by condos and shops.
It's a bittersweet ending for Ann and Alan Cohen, owners of the Hungry Tiger, a family-owned landmark at East Burnside Street and Southeast 28th Avenue.
But it's a new beginning, too.
The Hungry Tiger Too has opened nearby on Southeast 12th Avenue, and the Cohens plan to launch a more upscale restaurant on their corner once the redevelopment is complete.
"It's really with a heavy heart that we're doing this," says Ann Cohen, sitting in the empty restaurant after it closed late last month. "We have very strong ties with the community."
Cohen's parents, Sun and Rosie Wong, opened the Sun and Rosie Restaurant and Lounge in 1964. Ann and her five siblings grew up three blocks away.
Eventually, the kids took over the family business. Ann and her four surviving siblings own the half block of property where the restaurant sat, which includes three other storefronts the family leased through the years.
Ann and Alan own the restaurant and renamed it more than 20 years ago. It was like a neighborhood living room, Ann says, known for chop suey and potato salad.
But as the Kerns neighborhood began to gentrify, the building that housed the restaurant began to fall apart. A few years ago, it became apparent that the family would have to spend about $1 million to refurbish it.
"We're looking at that," Alan says, "and thinking there would be almost no return."
So they began considering alternatives and asked developer Randy Rapaport for help.
Rapaport, a family friend, is known for redeveloping underused properties in dense urban neighborhoods by building big and architecturally daring mixed-use projects.
He had wanted to buy the property from the family and rebuild it himself. But he agreed to serve as the developer.
The family will maintain ownership of the four ground-floor commercial spaces, which will be topped by 32 condos on three floors. Rapaport hopes to break ground by May and open the new development by June 2008. All the leased businesses on the property have closed, and demolition could start as early as April.
The name of the new project? The SunRose Condominiums. It'll still be a family business, but something Ann Cohen never imagined growing up.
"My dad had six kids," she says. "He sent us all through college. Once you go to college, you never think you're going to come back and run the family noodle joint."
Stephen Beaven: 503-294-7663;
stevebeaven@news.oregonian.com
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/o...740.xml&coll=7
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