Walk to the end of NW Thurman Street on a Saturday morning and you will still find the same gate, the same gravel road running north into the trees, the same white bollards marking off quarter miles toward Germantown Road. What has been missing for the better part of three years is anywhere to go afterward. Two storefronts sit at that trailhead corner, and until this year, both had been dark, gutted, or in limbo since 2023. That is changing this month, and the reason it is changing now, after so long, has less to do with Portland's food scene than with the road those storefronts sit next to.
Two years of walking past empty windows
The co-op grocery at 2375 NW Thurman closed abruptly in 2023, and the building has sat vacant since. Multiple would-be buyers circled the property over the following years without a deal reaching the finish line. Market of Choice was reportedly close to taking the space in 2025 before backing away, leaving it in limbo again. According to reporting from the Northwest Examiner, investor Mark New has since stepped in, working to finalize a purchase and keep the building out of foreclosure while courting a food-service tenant.
Across the street, the storefront at 2376 NW Thurman went through its own version of the same story. Coq Au Vin opened there in June 2023, starting as a spot to park a mobile meat and cheese case before growing into a full dining room with brunch service and a multi-course Sunday Supper. By 2024, the owners decided to lean further into cooking than the Thurman space allowed, and the restaurant relocated to a converted house on North Cook Street. That left a second prominent storefront at the same trailhead sitting empty at the same time as the first.
For anyone finishing a run on Leif Erikson Drive or heading down from the Ridge Trail, the last two years meant reaching the bottom of the hill to a corner with nothing open.
What's actually moving in
Both spaces now have tenants, and both are targeting this season.
| Address | Former tenant | What's moving in | Timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2375 NW Thurman | Food Front Cooperative (closed 2023) | Better Half sandwich shop | Targeting August 2026 |
| 2376 NW Thurman | Coq Au Vin (relocated 2024) | New restaurant concept, architect Lorraine Guthrie | Buildout underway |
Better Half is a familiar name to Portland sandwich fans. The shop closed its North Fremont location last November after the building was sold to Portland Public Schools, and it is now aiming to reopen on Thurman this August with a larger footprint. Reporting from Hoodline and What Now indicates the bigger space will let the owners bring back full breakfast and lunch counters, revive housemade English muffins and chips, and expand the coffee program to include espresso drinks.
Across the street, the old Coq Au Vin space is going through a more involved buildout. The project requires a change of occupancy classification from B to A-2 with the city, which will let the new operator add seating: plans call for roughly two dozen table seats, about a dozen bar seats, a casual area, and a grab-and-go counter that may end up running on a counter-service model. The architect is Lorraine Guthrie, whose past Portland work includes Coopers Hall, The People's Courts, and the Ace Hotel. In the meantime, Dibina Coffee has been running a pop-up out of the garage where Coq Au Vin used to park its meat truck, so the corner has not been completely quiet even during construction.
The trail that never quite closes
There's a reason foot traffic at this particular gate held steady enough for two food concepts to bet on it, even through two years of vacancy and permitting delays. Leif Erikson Drive is the one route in Forest Park that almost never shuts down entirely. It runs roughly 11 miles from the Thurman gate to Germantown Road, graded wide enough for two-way bike and foot traffic, with an average grade of just 3.5 percent. When narrower, steeper trails get closed for storm damage or erosion control, hikers and cyclists get rerouted onto Leif Erikson because it's the one path built to handle the volume.
That pattern is playing out again right now. The Maple Trail, Forest Park's longest foot trail, is currently closed between Firelane 4 and the Koenig Trail, and the recommended detour sends hikers up Koenig to rejoin Leif Erikson Drive. Earlier this year, a section of the Wildwood Trail's Nature Trail segment also saw a partial closure tied to storm damage. Anyone planning a loop that ties into either trail should check the city's current trail closures page before heading out, since conditions in a 5,200-acre park change fast after weather events.
What doesn't change is that all of those detours dump people back onto the same gravel road, which empties out at the same gate, in front of the same two storefronts that spent two years empty. The volume was always there. The doors just weren't open to meet it.
Free this summer, if you know where to look
Portland Parks & Recreation launched a new pilot shuttle this summer, running free on Fridays and Saturdays from June 12 through August 22, connecting neighborhoods to trailheads including the Lower and Upper Macleay entrances. It's a first-year program, and Forest Park Conservancy has been helping publicize the routes and stops.
The Conservancy has also built out a fuller slate of free summer programming than in past years, taught by local instructors:
- Forest yoga sessions in the park
- Forest bathing paired with haiku writing
- Bilingual nature hikes for Spanish and Vietnamese speakers
- A bilingual puppet show, "Nico the Banana Slug," followed by a puppet-making activity for kids
- Ivy basket weaving, which turns invasive English ivy and Himalayan blackberry into woven baskets
None of it requires advance real estate intent to enjoy. It's the kind of programming that only shows up once a park has enough steady community investment behind it to run a full summer calendar, which tracks with everything else changing on this same stretch of Thurman.
What actually changes on your Saturday
If you've lived near Forest Park through the last two years, the practical shift is simple. The Thurman gate is going from a place you leave after a hike to a place you might actually start and end one, coffee in hand on the way up, a sandwich waiting on the way down. The trails that feed into Leif Erikson haven't changed. What's changed is that the corner at the bottom of the hill finally has somewhere to be, right as the city is putting more resources into getting people to the trailheads in the first place.
If you're weighing a move to this part of Portland, or thinking about what a property near the park is actually worth once amenities like this return, ELEETE Real Estate has spent years watching how neighborhoods like this one shift. Reach out anytime you want a strategic consultation grounded in what's actually happening on the ground here, not just what the listing photos show.
