Deal with city isn’t manifesting for downtown bar and brewery owners

When Manifest Bar and Brewery abruptly closed the bar/restaurant portion of its business at 710 Willamette St. in February, owner Brandon Woodruff told The Register-Guard there were several reasons for shuttering, according to a Feb. 24 story.

There were troubles with staffing, there was burnout, and there were struggles with recovering from the pandemic, he said, along with unkept promises from his landlord, the city of Eugene.

But this wasn’t mentioned: A hand-delivered notice of default on his lease with the city, dated Feb. 17, 2025.

It was delivered by the city’s property manager, Pacific Real Estate Services, for failure to pay $64,950 in monthly rent dating back to March 2024, according to the letter, obtained by Lookout Eugene-Springfield in a public records request.

And that was just for the 3,444-square-foot space at 710 Willamette St. that was formerly Doc’s Pad sports bar until Woodruff and his wife, Kasia, took over the lease in January 2023 from their former business partners and Doc’s Pad owners, Gary and Kacey Miller.

The Woodruffs also owed the city $18,046 in back rent for their brewery space at 740 Willamette, according to another notice of default, also dated Feb. 17, 2025.

More than six months later, those totals — at $6,141.83 a month for the main space and, since July 1, $1,480.65 for the brewery space — continue to accumulate, according to the city. The Woodruffs now owe the city more than $120,000 in back rent and could end up owing more than $150,000, because the five-year leases don’t expire until Dec. 31.

The Woodruffs, in turn, served the city with a tort claim notice July 15, a precursor to filing a lawsuit for damages against a public body under the Oregon Tort Claims Act.

They say they’ve incurred $4,228,500 in “financial and operational damages arising from the city’s breach of lease obligations and failure to maintain safe and functional commercial premises” at the two spaces, according to the notice, obtained from the city in a public records request.

The damages continue to accumulate in the amount of $1,500 per day, the notice says.

Brandon Woodruff told Lookout earlier this month that he was planning filing a lawsuit on Aug. 12, but that didn’t happen.

He responded to a text message that day, saying he was giving the city “one last chance” to respond to his tort claim notice until Aug. 15. A Lookout search of court cases filed since then in Lane County Circuit Court did not turn up a lawsuit regarding Manifest.

Back-rent issues

Brandon Woodruff told Lookout he stopped paying rent to the city last year because it hadn’t followed through on what he says were promises to build out a troublesome breezeway on the south side of his businesses and other improvements, or take care of things like leaking from the parking garage above or a faulty HVAC system.

“We have no intention of paying a single dollar of what the City referred to as ‘past due rent’ unless and until we are made whole,” Woodruff wrote in an Aug. 3 email to Denny Braud, executive director of the city’s Planning and Development Department.

“The idea that the City could ignore its own obligations, delay resolution for years, and then demand back payment without addressing those failures is not acceptable and will not be entertained.”

Woodruff said the city’s response to the leaking was to “put a bucket under it.”

The city says the leak was repaired.

“The bucket reference from the property manager was a standard temporary mitigation request to contain any water in order to avoid potential water damage prior to repair,” wrote Lindsay Selser, a department spokesperson, in an email.

“The property manager was responsive and repairs were initiated within less than 24 hours,” Selser said in the email. All HVAC repair requests were also responded to and completed in a timely fashion, according to the city’s records, Selser said.

‘Certainly an important location’

The Woodruffs met at least a couple of times with Braud and Jeff Petry, the department’s curbside and administration services director, in the months after closing the restaurant and bar.

Braud and Petry did not respond to email requests for interviews, instead having Selser answer questions and handle public records requests by email.

Eric Brown, the city’s downtown manager, said he couldn’t comment specifically on the Woodruffs’ situation, but the space on that corner is “certainly an important location, and we’d really like to see an active and vibrant business in that space.”

An inactive space means fewer pedestrians walking in that area and Hult Center visitors are less likely to have any reason to cross the street, Brown said.

In a March 18 email to Braud, Woodruff proposed the city let him resume business with unpaid back rent forgiven and a proposed rent of $2,800 a month for both spaces, instead of the current rate of $7,622.48 for both.

Woodruff also asked that the city provide a $500,000 working capital loan at 1% interest, matching essentially what they’ve invested in the business since 2016.

“Without the loan, we won’t have the ability to complete necessary improvements, stabilize operations, or position the business for long-term success,” Woodruff wrote. He offered “our current equipment and fixtures as collateral for the loan.”

The email also mentioned the Woodruffs believed they had a strong case “for breach of contract, breach of good faith and fair dealing, fraudulent inducement, promissory estoppel, and negligent misrepresentation,” but they were hoping to “work together on a resolution that benefits both us and the city — and ultimately strengthens downtown Eugene.”

New ‘facelift’ never happened

Woodruff first operated a bar and restaurant under the Manifest name (he moved his brewing operation to 740 Willamette St. in 2018, according to a Register-Guard story) in a former Starbucks space on the northwest corner of Broadway and Willamette from 2019 to 2022.

He told Lookout that not only was the breezeway, which runs between Willamette Street and Willamette Alley underneath the Parcade parking garage, not built out to keep unhoused people from using it as a bathroom amid reports of drug usage, but the city also showed the Woodruffs design plans for street-level upgrades on the Parcade’s first level that included new paint, lighting and other improvements to create a “more vibrant street edge.”

The open breezeway has posed safety and maintenance issues for tenants in commercially leased spaces, according to the pre-2020 design proposals provided to Lookout by the city.

Possible upgrade options included installing chain-link fences and creating storage spaces for tenants or rebuilding the space and closing it off with new leased spaces along Willamette Street.

“If they would have done everything they said they were going to do, downtown would have, by their words, a new facelift,” Woodruff said.

The city’s Selser said the design proposal upgrades the city showed Woodruff prior to 2020 “were (conceptual) ideas only.”

Meanwhile, the restaurant and bar has been inactive for more than six months. Empty beer bottles and glasses sit on tables as if everyone left mid-shift.

Woodruff reiterated the couple’s initial vision for the space, as a place for Hult Center patrons to visit before and after shows, especially on Thursday through Saturday nights, with a full-service bistro, serving dishes such as miso-glazed salmon, braised short ribs and vegan mushroom risotto.

Kaz Oveissi, who owns the Perugino coffeehouse across the street in the Smeede Hotel building, said he’s never been fond of having a bar on that corner, going back to when Jogger’s Bar and Grill was there from the mid-90s to around 2010, but he added: “Being closed is not good for the block.”

Oveissi leased space for imported rug company Oveissi and Co. from the city at 22 W. Seventh Ave. for years, directly across the street from the Hult Center and just around the corner from 710 Willamette St., as far back as 1993.

Having a bar almost next door was not ideal, Oveissi said. Some days, there was vomit at his door and the smell of urine.

The problem with downtown has always been a lack of vision, he said. And having the city serve as a landlord, through a property management company, is also problematic, Oveissi said.

After meeting with Braud and Petry on May 28, Woodruff said he sent them emails about once a week for most of the summer but didn’t get a response until Aug. 1.

Braud gave Woodruff a couple of options in that email, including terminating the leases before they expire on Dec. 31.

“If this is your preferred option, we are happy to sit down with you to discuss a more formal proposal,” Braud wrote.

The city is not in a position to give the Woodruffs a loan to help them restart the business, Braud wrote, and any future agreement with the city would hinge on first taking care of the past due rent.