Where you at?
I’m debuting a new segment here that I’m calling “where you at?” It’s where I’ll give the updates on the progress of Beaker & Flask and the timeline for opening day.
As I’ve already stated, Beaker & Flask is located at 720 SE Sandy Blvd. It’s a great old building and I’ll be occupying about 1900 sq. ft. of the 5100 sq. ft. available. The entire building was occupied by Krueger’s for a good long time until they sold to the new owners last December. As I expected, it’s somewhat of a process to remodel the space into three separate units, but progress is being made and, at this point, I’m still hoping for a June opening date. I’ll keep that until June comes and goes, at which point I’ll update.
I’ve been working with a great local architect, by the name of Mark Annen, who has years of experience designing restaurants and he’s been a great help in taking my ideas and putting them on paper in a way that will actually be functional and make the best use of the space available. Mark also did the design work for Park Kitchen, , Rocket, Country Cat and some other great spots around Portland. I think he was the right man for the job. Below is a basic drawing of what the layout will look like.
The rounded front is the curved windows that you can see in the above picture. The view from there overlooks the large intersection where Sandy Blvd. becomes 7th Ave., with the West Hills and a modest view of the Downtown skyline forming the background. It should have a nice active, urban feel. Inside it will feature mostly booths for the floor seating and that big triangle will be a, sort of, three petal flower shaped pub table. The kitchen will be open, but I like that it’s in the back and behind the bar so the bright lights won’t dominate the environment.
I’ll put some more pictures below to show the current state of things and then we can all have fun watching the work get done, because it will happen, right?
