New restaurant to take over spot in University Place

A local food service company will soon take over the space now holding LV’s Uptown restaurant and catering operations at Portland State’s University Place Hotel, starting a five-year contract Dec. 1.

Rafati’s Inc., a fixture in the Portland food scene since the 1980s, will take on the hotel’s roughly 1,000 annually catered events, feeding an 8 percent cut of gross catering revenue to the university after two months. Last year’s catering food sales were $440,000, said Dennis Burkholder, general manager of University Place.

The company will take over the hotel’s 150-seat jazz club, full-service restaurant and bar. Called Encore310, the restaurant will be open seven days a week, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. After two years, the university will collect 4 percent of gross restaurant sales, which will increase to 8 percent after the third year.

Dee Wendler, associate vice president for finance, said that collecting rent as a percentage of sales would encourage the company’s success, which come back to benefit the university.

“When they do well, we do well,” Wendler said of how the contract is written.

Burkholder said that after inviting numerous local companies to consider the space, only Rafati’s Inc. was willing to take on both the restaurant and catering segments. Local caterers Salvador Molly’s and Elephant’s Deli considered the proposition, but ultimately did not want to take on the restaurant portion, Burkholder said.

“We knew that the catering part of this was key,” Burkholder said. “We didn’t want to split the operation into two parts–we’d never get anyone to come in there just to operate a restaurant. That would be too risky.”

Aramark’s contract with PSU allowed them to operate the space until a replacement was found, by Dec. 1. Rafati’s will cater all events at the hotel, said Julie North, director of Auxiliary Services, and Aramark will cater all events held elsewhere on campus.

“We purposely did just a five-month contract with Aramark because we knew we wanted to go local,” North said. Aramark just didn’t have the expertise to be able to create the kind of revenue-generating restaurant the space requires, North said.

“By having a seven-day-a-week destination restaurant,” Burkholder said, “we’ll have a place that people want to go to.” A successful restaurant could supply income to the university to pay off the investment made in the property when it was purchased, he said.

The staff now working at LV’s, the restaurant’s current name, has been offered positions at Encore310 or within Aramark’s operation, both Burkholder and North said.

In preparation for the opening of the new restaurant, the dining room will be remodeled, Burkholder said, moving the stage, replacing carpet and removing the trademark chandeliers. The update will be paid for by Portland State.

“The place still has the Red Lion decor of the late sixties — with heavy woodwork and dark fixtures,” Burkholder said. “We’re going to try and lighten that up somewhat.”