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East Oregonian/Hermiston Herald
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
PROGRESS SPECIAL SECTION
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
A furnished studio apartment on display during an open house in the Bowman Building recently in Pendleton.
Developers give historic
buildings new life
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
UMATILLA COUNTY —
At a June 14 open house, Pendle-
ton developer Al Plute got to cel-
ebrate a rare run of success.
Some units were still under-
developed, but Plute’s finished
studio and one-bedroom apart-
ments at the Bowman Building
show his effort to convert old
offices to upscale apartments is
coming to fruition.
Plute said he tried to save as
many historic features of the
third floor of the 17 S.W. Frazer
Ave. building, which started its
life as a hotel before it was con-
verted to an office building in the
late 20th century. Although the
building has been in use since
he’s owned it, he recently made
the decision to convert the entire
third floor to apartment units.
Plute isn’t the only person
who’s tried a hand at restoring an
old building for modern use.
The owners of Oregon Grain
Growers Brand Distillery in
Pendleton decided to turn an old
car dealership at 511 S.E. Court
Ave., into a combination restau-
rant-liquor production facility in
2015 and are now one of the more
popular dining establishments in
town.
And a group of business part-
ners are in the midst of turning
a vacated Elks Lodge into a per-
formance venue and bar.
The city’s been supporting
these kinds of projects for years,
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
A one-bedroom apartment on display during an open house recently in the Bowman Building in Pendleton.
but Plute has been the only one
who has consistently been able to
turn the downtown’s underused
buildings into viable projects.
The Pendleton Development
Commission, a subsidiary of the
city government, has studied the
issue and found that most build-
ing owners are too wary of the
risks and effort to take the plunge
on a seven-figure restoration.
Within the downtown core,
Plute has restored the St. George
Plaza, the Brown Building, and
the Bowman Building into mod-
ern apartment complexes.
Some projects have been more
difficult than others.
Plute said he acquired the St.
George in 2008, and he’s still
restoring a building that was in
rough shape when he bought it,
pointing to new mailboxes he
recently installed at the 15 S.E.
Emigrant Ave. building.
Plute advised other developers
looking into restoration to have a
good idea of what they want out
of the building before starting
and applying for grants from the
development commission if it’s
within the downtown area.
With three downtown res-
toration projects nearly under
his belt, he’s already aiming for
another. Plute recently purchased
the Odd Fellows building on
Dorion Avenue with the plans to
turn the empty upper story space
into more upscale apartments.
Hermiston developer Mitch
Myers is on the same track. He
renovated one of the city’s old-
est buildings, the town’s origi-
nal bank on the corner of Main
Street and Highway 395, into
mahogany-lined offices down-
stairs and an Airbnb apartment
upstairs.
The apartment was restored
as close to its 1910-era origins
as possible, with Myers even
tracking down a wallpaper com-
pany that creates prints using the
methods employed at the turn of
the century.
Myers has repurposed other
century-old Hermiston build-
ings, including an old coal stor-
age facility he plans to lease to
a restaurant and turning an old
railroad storage facility into the
Maxwell Siding Event Center.
Rounding out restoration
efforts in Hermiston, the Union
Club of 1940s Hermiston is mak-
ing a return later this year. The
building at 140 N.E. Second St.
has housed a wide variety of busi-
nesses in its more than 100-year
history — including, for a time,
the offices of the East Oregonian
— but will once again become
the “Union Club,” a gathering
space serving coffee by day and
becoming a bar by night.
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