Despite a renaissance of new music venues sprouting up around Portland’s Central Eastside, the delayed relaunch of one of the city’s most beloved venues is on the tip of many local showgoers' tongues. The reopening efforts of the Doug Fir Lounge in the former Le Bistro Montage digs has encountered ongoing bureaucratic speed bumps due to spates of permitting conflicts, Public Works requests, and spiraling costs.
Unfortunately, the wait will continue, though there appears to be a clearing on the horizon.
The Doug Fir ownership team, headed by Mike Quinn, submitted another round of permit fees to Portland Permitting and Development (PPD) on May 30, 2025. Per PPD Public Information Officer Ken Ray, this was the final hurdle holding up the permits since the City completed several rounds of checksheet reviews concerning building plans on April 14 of this year. Ray reports that although most City review teams complete their reviews within the first month after receiving permit applications, the Doug Fir redevelopment project required six rounds of checksheets—each of which necessitated corrections and further reviews.
The logjam between the City’s response times to Doug Fir’s ownership team, and vice versa, appears to be mired in a certain amount of finger-pointing—a volley that has morphed into a 23-month ordeal since the original permit application was received by PPD.
The high number of checksheets and reviews for the Doug Fir building permit is rare, says Ray. “The first checksheet was issued by City development review staff on August 23, 2023, less than one month after the permit application was filed. The applicant didn’t respond to the first round of checksheets until January 26, 2024,” stated Ray. “Five more rounds of checksheets required further corrections. The sixth round of checksheets was issued on January 14, 2025, responses to which were not received until March 4, 2025—[only then could the] various City review teams sign off on the final plans and approve the permit.”
Quinn reports that the City took an egregious amount of time deliberating on checksheet aspects for the building permit, compromising the business’s ability to get working on revamping the 120-year-old brick building—a process that has, as of the publication of this article, cost the business $127,791 in permitting fees thus far.
Running parallel to the building permit saga is a costly Public Works project to improve sidewalk ADA accessibility outside the building. The parameters of this work are still under deliberation between the Portland Bureau of Transportation and Quinn’s team—a back-and-forth now stretching into its 15th month, which Quinn says has reached $140,000 in costs. He has submitted a Public Works Alternative request, asking to ease the modification requirements to storm inlets and curb ramp upgrades, a request that would put the onus on the City to construct the needed sewer work. Ray says this request was not workable for the City, although they did reduce some of the required frontage improvements.
“It probably depends on who you talk to,” says Quinn of the delay blame game. “[With] the PBOT thing, it’s true it was in my court for a long time because [we] had already spent $35,000 on plans, surveys, drawings, and civil engineering. I stopped because I wanted to fight it, that’s why it’s taken so long—because I wouldn’t agree to [pay for] the $140,000 worth of City work. They’re probably saying I got my bill, I should have just done it. But no.”
Quinn also points to the City’s responsibility toward a 2018 class action lawsuit settlement brought by mobility-disabled Portlanders requiring the City to upgrade or repair 18,000 curb ramps over a 12-year period.
Some of these ramp upgrades, Ray says, are paid for by City bureau capital projects, or Local Improvement District projects, as well as private development projects. PBOT is responsible for building or rebuilding 1,500 ADA ramps per year, with about 250 of those built by private developers. “Generally speaking, Portland City Code Chapter 17.88 requires developers to pay for the costs of street improvements where those improvements are not already in place or up to City standards and are commensurate with the level of activity—pedestrian, vehicular, and other means—that development is expected to generate,” says Ray.
“You go a block away and they’re doing four corners for free,” contends Quinn. “When a sucker like me goes for a building permit, they try and push everything on the guy trying to create a business and 30 jobs.”
Despite the ongoing talks around the Public Works improvements, Quinn says that with permits in hand, they can finally begin to chip away at the construction plans for the building; the limbo of the sidewalk improvements does not preclude construction or opening.
“Once we come to an agreement, [we] might be [able to] open,” says Quinn. “Then it’d be a construction site for a little bit—maybe a couple days—in front of the place, that’s all. It won’t inhibit our opening.”
Still, the reopening date is in a state of flux.
Going forward, Ray says that the City is looking to relax some of the current requirements for frontage improvements that are incurred when smaller projects—like remodels of existing spaces—are proposed. The Code Alignment Project is expecting to hold a public hearing on proposed amendments with the Portland City Council this summer.
“If adopted by the City Council as proposed, [this] would suspend the significant alterations threshold from applying to permit projects through Jan. 1, 2029,” says Ray. “This pause will allow the City to conduct a more comprehensive analysis of our frontage improvement thresholds with community input before developing permanent changes.”
In the meantime, the only noise you’re likely to hear from the corner of 3rd and SE Morrison will be from construction, not guitars.
