- address: 4926-4936 NE Fremont Street
- Year of Construction: 1974
- area: 2,560
- market price: $1.2 million
- owner: CZ Properties LLC
- How empty was it?: March 2020 onwards
- Why is it empty?Casualties of the pandemic
Peering into the window of Eclectic Kitchen on Northeast Fremont Street, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was just closing for lunch and reopening in the morning.
The table is set with silverware wrapped in napkins, jam-jar glasses are upside down waiting for juice, and a bus tray is placed in the center of the bus.
But look closer and you'll see that Eclectic Kitchen might have been closed for much longer: The plants on the tables are dried and dead, and a chalkboard says avocado toast for $5, a price not seen since 2020 (it's $7.50 at TwentySix Café and $9 at The Society Café).
In short, Eclectic Kitchen is a place where time stands still, like Pompeii after Mount Vesuvius spewed hot gases and ash, transfixing the city in its final act.
Public records show that a married couple named Ian and Laura Bramson created a company called Eclectic Kitchen LLC in November 2009, using an address at Fremont and 50th Street. The couple divorced in October 2016. Ian, now 59, acquired the restaurant and paid Laura $20,000 for her share, according to court documents. Ian continued to run it for three more years, receiving mixed reviews.
By text message WorldwideIan admitted that the pandemic took him down.
“We closed down at the beginning of COVID-19 and never looked back,” he wrote.
The building and attached home are owned by CZ Property LLC. CZ's owners include the Milton O. Brown Trust, which has an address on Highway 99 in Vancouver, Washington.
Milton O. Brown, 95, is a lawyer who was disbarred in Oregon in 1998 over a deal for the Totem Pole shopping center in Vancouver, according to court records. His company, MOB Investments, Inc., is run by Brenda Christina and Shauna Frydenberger, according to Washington records. Christina is his daughter and Frydenberger is his granddaughter, according to a person familiar with the companies. She is also a professional psychic, according to Frydenberger's LinkedIn.
MOB Investments did not respond. The address listed in the company's public filings is an office above an auto battery shop on Highway 99 in Vancouver, Washington. No one answered the bell, but an employee at the battery shop said MOB operates from an office above a loading dock in the back. A woman who answered the door said she couldn't speak to a reporter.
The little Fremont Street restaurant may be an afterthought for MOB: In February, the company bought a 75,000-square-foot retail complex in Wilsonville for $25 million, according to real estate services firm CBRE, which represented the seller. It has a Red Robin and a Jimmy John's and isn't covered in searing COVID-era ash.
