Downtown Portland landmark, once a notorious scene from the city's Gay History, becomes a boutique hotel!

Once a den of Portland's own flavor of iniquity, the three-story building at Southwest 12th Avenue and Stark has stood forlorn, a down-at-heel island of city history all but abandoned in the middle of the rushing river that is West Burnside Street, details in The Oregonian..

In the 1970s and 1980s, the building became central to the "gay triangle" in downtown Portland. The nightclub operated under a string of owners and names; the last was Silverado, which left the building in 2007.

Today, the building has survived its notorious past and the 2008 recession to return to life. On May 3, the 100-year-old building will open as the Crystal Hotel, a boutique 51-room lodge with a restaurant – wood-fired oven! – on the first floor and a below-ground bar.

The intent is to hook the hotel in customers' minds to the Crystal Ballroom, the legendary music venue just a block on West Burnside. Perhaps not surprisingly, both businesses are owned by the McMenamin brothers, Mike and Brian.

"They bought the building in 2008 with the intent of turning it around right away," says Renee Rank, the company's marketing director, while leading a walkthrough this week. "Then the economy came alone and put a halt to what we wanted to do."

So for more than two years, the company bided its time, making minor repairs to the structure, until credit relaxed, "and then this past December, Mike said, 'It's back on, and we're opening in May.' " The construction company, Pacific Crest, added an extra shift of workers last week, Rank says, to make opening day, now just six weeks away.