The building that previously housed gourmet foods shop and café Aurora Provisions in Portland’s West End was sold Thursday at auction.
The roughly 5,000-square-foot building, at 64 Pine St., was sold via auctioneer Tranzon LLC for $1,075,000 to local real estate developer and broker Tom Landry of Benchmark Residential & Investment Real Estate.
The seller was Madeline LLC, owned by former Aurora Provisions proprietor Melissa Carr.
In an interview Friday, Landry said he was interested in the property because his office is nearby and he wanted to ensure that the property’s new owner would replace Aurora, a West End fixture that opened in 1997, with a similar type of business. Aurora’s gourmet market and café shut down in August, followed by the closure of its catering business in November.
“We missed it when it went out of business,” Landry said.
Aside from a desire to incorporate some sort of dining option, Landry said he doesn’t yet have a clear vision for the property’s future. He plans to meet with his investment partners over the next few weeks to come up with concrete plans.
The property is zoned for a variety of uses, including retail and residential. Landry said he may make cosmetic improvements to the existing building, or bulldoze it to build a new structure.
“It’s really too early to tell, and it will be a group decision,” he said.
Real estate broker Jed Rathband of The Rathband Co. at Keller Williams Realty, who attended Thursday’s auction, said at the price for which the property sold, he doesn’t think it would make good business sense not to redevelop it and add some sort of residential component.
“I was surprised, really, on some level,” Rathband said about the sale price. “I didn’t think it would go over $1 million.”
The property’s current value for tax purposes is $464,700, according to city records.
J. Craig Anderson can be contacted at 791-6390 or at:
Twitter: jcraiganderson
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