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Downtown Portland’s West End may be a burgeoning hot spot today, but Alix Nathan, one of the second-generation owners of the Mark Spencer Hotel, said that several years ago it was not so hot.

“We had all these security problems,” he said. “We had drugs. We had prostitution … I would come up myself and walk the block at night if I didn’t have security to try and keep that activity down.”

Now Nathan is preparing a hefty remodel of the West End’s Dinihanian Building to suit Roche Bobois, a French high-end furniture retailer. He sees the company’s arrival as a kind of bellwether for the area, and vindication for a long-term strategy that started 20 years ago – when all he could do was buy land and wait.

“In the ’90s, we acquired the buildings around the hotel because the neighborhood was so bad and it was the only way to provide a little more security for the hotel patrons,” he said. “We had prostitution in the street up until seven to eight years ago.”

In 1994, Nathan family members – who purchased the Mark Spencer Hotel in 1977 – bought the adjacent, 18,000-square-foot building at the corner of Southwest 12th Avenue and Stark Street. It was a parole office at the time. A few years later, they bought the Washington Plaza building and the Portland Telegram building on the same block. Over the course of two decades, they invested millions of dollars in methodical renovation work – sometimes at great risk.

“(The Portland Telegram Building) was a disaster for us,” Nathan said. “It nearly bankrupted our family and our company. It was terrible.”

Following a $6.5 million renovation of the Portland Telegram Building, its three main tenants fell on hard times and vacated – leaving Nathan without income to pay for the project. But the building eventually gained new tenants. Other property owners in the area have since followed with improvements of their own.

“It’s (the result of) a group of local property owners (and tenants) that all bought into the same vision,” said Greg Goodman, co-president of Downtown Development Group.

For instance, Skylab principal Jeff Kovel’s remodel of the building at Southwest 12th Avenue and Alder Street brought in the popular restaurant ³Ò°ùü²Ô±ð°ù, and Goodman’s revamp of the building across the street brought in Tasty n Alder and Lease Crutcher Lewis. Also, Project Ecological Development renovated the Black Box on Southwest 13th Avenue, Nathan renovated Washington Plaza, McMenamins opened the Crystal Hotel and A&R Development opened the Ace Hotel.

Combined, those projects and others molded the West End into a marketable destination – especially for brunch.

“Saturdays and Sundays – we’re just slamming,” said Cheryl Casey, owner and co-founder of Cheryl’s on 12th.

One of the next big projects for the area will be Goodman’s new high-rise to mirror the 23-story Twelve | West a block away. Ideally, he would like to include housing on the top, some sort of hip hotel in the middle, and a market on the ground floor. He’s ready to start that project as soon as he has leases in hand.

“The unfortunate thing about the district is everyone wants to be here and there’s no more space,” he said.

Property owners also jointly hired street cleaners and security guards, and installed solar-powered BigBelly trash cans on the corners. Nathan is adamant about maintaining cleanliness – he said he’s inclined to pick up items such as empty cans as he walks by.

Another challenge Nathan and others faced in attracting high-end retailers to the area was balancing that activity with the many low-income housing units present – many that previously were hotbeds for crime, he said. Communication become critical – Nathan knows the names the longtime low-income tenants in his buildings by name.

“It’s great to have the diversity that we have as long as we can also keep the neighborhood safe and clean and business friendly,” he said. “That’s where businesses sometimes – retail businesses particularly – won’t come here if we have problems with safety, drugs or otherwise. I think for the most part we’ve really solved it.”

Roche Bobois officials think so too. They searched for space in Portland for approximately seven years before finding the “right” space in the Dinihanian Building, according to company representative Tyler Benz. Jon Kellogg, Kathleen Healy and Ashley Heichelbech of Commercial Realty Advisors Northwest presented Nathan with the prospect of Roche Bobois joining the building after realizing that the lease of the current tenant, Vinopolis, was about to expire. Vinopolis is relocating to 1610 N.W. Glisan St.

The remodel of the Dinihanian – the name of a family that previously operated an Oriental rug business in the building – will involve removal of existing canopies from the facade and creation of a larger glass storefront system. A series of metal fins will jut from the second-story windows, and with LED lights will make the building – at 1025 S.W. Washington St. – glow at night.

The existing “rug/carpet” rotating sign will be preserved and restored. Nathan expects work to begin later this month; Waterleaf Architecture is the project’s designer.

Nathan also has plans to convert the former parole building at Southwest 12th Avenue and Stark Street into creative office and retail space. He’s already garnered interest from Bamboo Izakaya, Kure Juice Bar and San Francisco-based bag manufacturer Timbuk2.

After waiting patiently, Nathan is glad to see his investments picking up steam.

“It’s a 35-year-plus, long-term vision,” he said. “We’re just starting to see it come together, but there’s a lot more to come.”