Mississippi Eyesore Reborn

A year ago the building on the corner of N Mississippi and N Skidmore looked like this.

Over the past year I've watched it being restored into something much more appealing, but always didn't know what it was to become until today.

From today's Oregonian:

North Mississippi Avenue, home to several well-known if eccentric carts, will be the scene of a new slice of food-cart culture.

Stephanie Yao Long/The OregonianDeveloper Roger Goldingay (left) and designer and contractor Michael Tunson will open Mississippi Marketplace in this open lot in August. The building will house a brewpub called Prost! adjacent to 10 food carts.

Set to open at the corner of North Mississippi and Skidmore Street in early August, Mississippi Marketplace will be Portland's first curated food cart and market pod in a newly paved 10,000-square-foot lot. The project has been designed with an anchor tenant, a spiffy brewpub called Prost! set in a building transformed from a seedy board-up to a handcrafted Greek Revival beauty.

Ten food carts will be selected by developer Roger Goldingay, along with a cluster of booths devoted to crafts or a farmers market, depending on interest. Each cart will have amenities rarely available to food-cart owners: six to 12 seats per cart; access to a portable toilet; full-service electrical; a recycling plan; and someone to keep the grounds clean and tidy.

You can see a bit of what the building looks like today in the photo above. I'm looking forward to checking it out when it's all done.

Absentee landlords beware!

My wife stumbled across this listing (MLS #8024635) over the weekend, and liked how the house sat up high on the hill. So before we looked any further I decided to pop over to Zillow and get the scoop on the location, and what Zillow thought it was worth.

At first I was a little puzzled by the photos posted on Zillow (4804 N Borthwick), but then I realized they must have been posted by the tenants. We found this info an the subject of who can post photos to Zillow:

"Who Can Upload Photos?
Anyone can upload photos of a house — owners, agents, neighbors — anyone! Since Zillow is a community site, we want everyone to contribute — even your neighbors or someone who has lived in the house 20 years ago. Photos uploaded by owners and agents will show up first. Also, community-uploaded photos cannot be deleted, but if you see something that doesn't look right or is inappropriate, please click the "Flag content" link and Zillow Customer Support will review it."

This photo shows the rotting windowsill with the title "massive water going in", other photos show the moisture in the walls and other fun discoveries.This is not the first house I've seen in the Mississippi area that appears to have been bought by investors, never had any maintenance, and is now being unloaded for what they hope is a tidy profit.

To all the absentee landlords out there: be careful what you try to get away with, your tenants now have more and more tools at their disposal to let the rest of us know just what you're up to, or not up to.

Good luck trying to sell this one. We'll check back and see how much it gets marked down over the next few months.