Where did 3rd Street Pizza go?
You’ve seen the news stories. “Downtown pizza place plans to reopen next year“, “McMinnville pizza parlor rebuilds with support from community 1 year after fire“, and more on TV and in the paper stating 3rd Street Pizza & the Moonlight Theatre are coming back soon after burning down on May 24th, 2023.
However, if you ask around town, be that a random person on the street or a knowledgeable business owner, “When is 3rd Street Pizza Coming back?”, you’re likely to get a variety of answers.
Why hasn’t it been rebuilt?
If you ask the McMinnville Downtown Association (which has no association with the business or the building) why 3rd Street Pizza hasn’t been rebuilt, I don’t know what they’ll tell you, but they told me that it’s not being rebuilt because of “insurance”. This feels like a cop-out answer but probably holds a lot of truth.
However, construction began inside the building before being stopped last year. Heck, you can see walls and beams up in the building now! So, even if they found asbestos during the demo (which is what I’ve been told) and that raised the costs of the reconstruction, that’s not an insurance problem; that’s seemingly a monetary one. To me, what seems likely is that funds ran dry for the rebuild and the insurance wasn’t going to pony up. But, that’s just my take.
If you ask the owner of 3rd Street Pizza why it’s not being rebuilt, Al Whitaker, he might tell you about the rent going up. Substantially. During a meeting that I was invited to by Whitaker in which the lease was being discussed, the building owners, the Wright Trust, purportedly wanted to break the established lease that 3rd Street Pizza had and increase the rent from $4,000 a month to $10,000. In terms of numbers, that causes a huge problem for the business owner.
And, seemingly, one business owner’s problem is a building owner’s windfall. Why? After rebuilding, the building owners stand to gain access to selling, leasing, or renting prime wine country real estate at a time when millionaires and billionaires are buying up shops and lots and changing the fabric of downtown Mac.
After all, 3rd Street Pizza isn’t the sort of bougie restaurant that fits in downtown next to James Beard-rated establishments. Up to the day it burned down, it acted as a catch-all of misfits, a safe harbor for families, the gateway to the downtown core. And now? It sits unused.
Was there justice?
In the traditional sense of someone being held accountable, yes. Meagan Ray was arrested after an investigation determined she was responsible for the fire. Then, the Yamhill County District Attorney’s office handled her prosecution, with Judge Stone presiding over the case in circuit court.
Ray was found guilty of second-degree criminal mischief and reckless burning and received 30-day sentences for each, followed by 24-months probation.
But, if examined closer, or even stating some of the facts out loud, it might lead to a person second guessing some of the actions taken by those in charge of justice.
For instance, according to the McMinnville Fire Department, because the department had a slight association with an individual tangentially connected to the building ownership, they decided they shouldn’t investigate the downtown McMinnville Fire; they turned everything over to the State Of Oregon Fire Marshall to conduct the investigation.
This seems responsible because one should avoid all senses of impropriety when in a public position of power.
According to reporting by the News-Register, during the course of the investigation, police were informed by the fire department that they believed the fire hadn’t been started accidentally. In fact, the Portland Fire Bureau, who was asked to assist in the investigation, brought their Accelerant Detection K-9 team to the scene and it was reported that they did indeed detect the odor of accelerants near the area where the fire was believed to have started.
While the Mac Fire Department recused themselves from the investigation, not all local agencies did the same when they had connections to the case. The Yamhill County District Attorney’s (YCDA) office prosecuted the case against Meagan Ray, which resulted in what some might say was a light sentence for destroying a keystone business in downtown McMinnville that yet to come back 20 months later.
Confirmed by the YCDA’s office, Meagan Ray had a connection to the YCDA office; Ray had a sister who was a former Deputy District Attorney for Yamhill County.
Did this impact her sentence? Why didn’t Yamhill County refer it to another DA’s office, much like the Mac Fire Department did when they had a personnel connection to the fire? These are questions that I intend to ask the newly elected DA, Kate Lynch.
This much is certain: all the news stories you’ve heard, seen, and read about that say 3rd Street Pizza is coming back quickly were false. Whether it’s because of insurance, rent, market forces, or a combination of elements beyond the control of any one person, 3rd Street Pizza seems destined to forever be a memory.
-Andrew Brunello
Note: As of 1/24/25 at 3 PM PST, paperwork from the Yamhill County Clerk states that 433 NE 3rd Street is owned by Wright Trust/Wright, Donna. But really, does that matter at all?