PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — In 31 years, not much has changed inside The Dockside Saloon and Restaurant. It takes people back to the day when families went to saloons and it has withstood the test of time.
Kathy Peterson’s husband bought the restaurant out of the blue in 1986.
“[He] came home and said, ‘Honey I think I bought a restaurant today!’ And I went ‘OK,'” Peterson said.
But in the once industrial part of town, the neighborhood outside has evolved with the decades. Developers often demolish the old to make room for the new, but one Portland company called Project^ had a different idea.
They had no interest in buying Dockside, instead planning to build 300,000 square feet of office and retail space around the restaurant.
“It’s a link to the past,” Project^ field office director Jonathan Ledesma said. “We don’t want to lose sight of that. Once we wipe all that stuff away, we just have I feel, a more soulless type of neighborhood.”
Peterson said they have a close bond with the neighborhood and three generations of regulars who keep coming back to the Dockside.
“He said you’re the cornerstone of the neighborhood. You’re iconic, you’re all of these things,” Peterson said of when the developers told her their ideas.
Dockside also has a claim to fame for a garbage bag that was used as evidence in the Tonya Harding case. Peterson said she found a Skater’s Associated check stub with Harding’s name on it in the trash just days after Nancy Kerrigan was attacked.
For now, Peterson says the “nothing foo foo” saloon isn’t going anywhere.