Western Culinary Institute Consolidating Into H. Naito's Galleria

PORTLAND-H. Naito Corp. now has a much better picture in its head of how to proceed with reviving its historic five-story Galleria property, a 140,000-sf shopping mall and c-class office complex that anchors Downtown Portland’s West End but for years has been struggling to attract and retain retailers.

A big part of the decision was made earlier this week when the Naito family and Western Culinary Institute, a division of publicly-traded Career Education Corp., inked a binding letter of intent to seal a 60,000-sf long-term lease deal that will consolidate and expand the school’s disparate local operations in a single building, adding two new sit-down restaurants and a bakery/coffee shop to the building’s ground floor and culinary classrooms and administrative space in the building’s top two floors.

Verne Naito tells GlobeSt.com the agreement means some existing tenants on both the upper and lower floors will be affected and some may have to be relocated within the company’s 2-million-sf property portfolio to make it all work out. The upside, however, is that millions of dollars will be spent on interior and exterior renovations to the building, which should become a lunchtime magnet, helping not only the retailers that remain in the building but also other retailers in the vicinity.