Margulis Jewelers to shut soon after 90 many years in downtown Portland

Margulis Jewelers will near immediately after 90 decades as a downtown Portland fixture.

Operator David Margulis declared the closure in a letter to consumers March 3, citing a “perfect storm” that has hurt organizations like his, which occupies a prominent place throughout the road from Pioneer Courthouse Sq..

“This was an agonizing decision—it was in no way our strategy to close our doors,” Margulis wrote. “But Portland has seasoned the great storm of adversity and impartial organizations basically are unable to endure the financial forces which have triggered the deterioration and ensuing emptiness of Downtown Portland.”

The closure comes 3 months immediately after the family members-owned great jewelry store held its very first-ever sale — which it called a “survival sale” — in hopes of drawing new and old buyers back again to downtown immediately after virtually two many years of confined foot targeted visitors and frustrated profits. Margulis explained he hoped men and women would see that downtown was still a constructive location and “very safe during the day.”

Margulis informed customers in his March 3 letter that the sale assisted but was not sufficient to maintain the small business.

A individual answering the cellular phone at the jewellery company verified the closure but reported Margulis was unavailable to converse with a reporter Wednesday.

It is unclear when the store will near for fantastic. The letter advertised it was promoting jewellery at a deep discounted, amongst 40% and 70% off, by way of Saturday.

Margulis is not the initially longtime downtown Portland jeweler to near.

Past calendar year, Goldmark Jewelers shuttered its Southwest 10th Avenue and Southwest Taylor Avenue retail store immediately after 46 years downtown. Another longtime downtown jeweler, Kassab Jewelers, has not reopened its downtown area considering that the retail store was looted all through a riot in May perhaps 2020.

Downtown corporations have confronted exclusive challenges in excess of the last two several years ever considering that the pandemic emptied out close by office towers and brought tourism to a halt in the spring of 2020.

Lots of office towers remain largely empty two decades later. The downtown space has also witnessed a sharp rise in homeless tenting through the pandemic, which company groups have complained preserve customers absent. Protests that in some cases turned violent or destructive drew national awareness in 2020 and gave the metropolis a popularity for upheaval that has been challenging to shake as effectively. Some downtown properties continue to remain boarded up, and small business closures have left driving vacant storefronts.

Margulis explained to The Oregonian/OregonLive in December that downtown had improved substantially considering that previously in the pandemic, but the adverse push it gained at the peak of the pandemic was continuing to retain men and women away.

A February report, dependent on aggregated smartphone site facts and posted by the Portland Organization Alliance, discovered that the quantity of downtown site visitors was nevertheless off by 40% as in contrast to pre-pandemic.

— Jamie Goldberg [email protected] @jamiebgoldberg