Food Loop Northwest Hopes To Expand in NW Portland’s Cordage Building

A regional food hub and project called Food Loop Northwest is hoping to expand from their current offices into the larger capacity of the old BridgePort Brewery and Pub space. BridgePort operated for many years in the historic Portland Cordage Building in the Pearl District.

Founded by Aiyesha Christian and Eddie Hill, Food Loop Northwest helps underrepresented producers—including BIPOC farmers—navigate barriers and challenges surrounding access to local food supply-chain opportunities. Assisting these producers with product development, processing, manufacturing, and distribution is also part of their work. Note: this article has been updated to reflect new information from additional sources.

Our Initial Research

Back in November 2024, someone posted on Threads wondering about what was up with this building that had set empty for a while:

“Bridgeport Brewery update: lots of people working, seemingly 7 days a week. Artwork has been hung. Interior window sills painted. Some fixtures moved out. I can’t find any news about it online though. What’s happening in there?”

My research revealed that Food Loop Northwest has interest in expanding their work in there, with a post on Instagram regarding that. Fast forward to February 2025, and I was able to sit down with founder Aiyesha to learn more about Food Loop Northwest’s work. I later met with both her and Eddie to tour the Cordage Building space, which is indeed massive. You can find the full number of photos I took over on this Flickr album.

What Is Food Loop Northwest?

On the Food Loop Northwest website, they describe themselves as a “B2B + B2M food aggregation, small batch maker, warehousing, and cold-chain innovation project.” In conversation, Aiyesha described it like this: “It’s about connecting the food and local farming community together with buyers, with consumers, and with business.”

It’s important to know that they center “BIPOC and allied food makers, producers, and food/farm-based business development advisors” in their work. Food systems design is another key element of this project. They will work in the Seattle and Portland regional foodshed.

Food Loop Northwest’s Work

Currently, needs in Washington State have been their focus this year, though there are some future events elsewhere scheduled this year—virtually and at PSU in June. And of course, they will eventually stabilize, with the aim of operating in Portland in the Cordage Building.

As to why they are starting in Washington, it has to do with connections. “I think a lot of it is that Eddie’s been in that [Washington] food and farm system for a really long time,” Aiyesha said. “He’s been going back and forth to Washington and has been highly connected in the area for decades. And so when we started Food Loop, him talking about that [part of the PNW] was a natural thing.”

She told me about some of their recent Washington work: “We did a food purchasing project with the city of Seattle. They requested a case study on value-based purchasing from us, focused on improving the City’s approach to local purchasing. We did research on several different value-based purchasing programs that were going on around the country—the pros and cons, different ways of how they brought them together—and gave them a nice document. And they were super stoked!”

She continued, “Now, hopefully, they’ll be moving to the next phase of vetting and starting to purchase from local farmers and things for city contracts, for the schools—all of that.”

Value-Based Purchasing

What exactly is value-based purchasing? I didn’t know, so I asked. “So, value based purchasing is like the DEI of food,” Aiyesha explained. She continued to lay it out by using an example to help illustrate it.

“Generally, you look at human welfare—how it affects the community. You look at animal welfare—how the animals are being treated, and the distance from consumption sites. And also how to grow the community.

“Instead of just going to Sysco and having your contract there, you use smaller, more localized aggregators. And then you’re able to also share that story and have elements that are more culturally relevant to what people and whatever the community needs.

“For instance, we recently had a call with the gentleman who’s a farmer from Nigeria, and he did really well with growing corn. And we were like, ‘Commodity corn?” And he replied, ‘No, I have a very specific kind of corn I grow.’ So he’s got this cool corner on the market with this specific type of corn that the African community likes. And on top of that, it was extremely profitable for him to do it.

“And he said, ‘I’ll be doing it again. And I’ll be doing more of it.’ It’s culturally-relevant food for the community and a solid path for revenue.”

Connections

At one point, Aiyesha and Eddie noticed that within the maker and producer communities—and even the farming community—people tend to work in these silos that become really inefficient. Aiyesha and Eddie both know, through their experience and expertise, that if you want to be able to scale and grow, you have to venture beyond your silos and work with a group.

Also in their experience, they find that food producers, like makers, get really apprehensive about talking to those government and private funding entities. But the reality is that you have to go through them to be able to produce at scale many times. “And they’re not so scary,” said Aiyesha. “They’re literally just there to help. They want to help you get your packaging right and not have recalls, and help you with the technical kind of stuff.”

They want to help connect farmers and producers together. “Right now, we’re working with WSDA to connect their services to more people—-more farmers, producers, and ranchers in Washington state,” she explained. “Because they’ve realized that not every community of farmers and makers know the services that they offer.”

“We created Food Loop originally as a side consulting project to help business owners navigate some of the systems that are really convoluted—like dealing with USDA or ODA. So we’re doing that, helping them connect those things and then connect with government contracts, just trying to bring people together to have a more holistic economy.”

More About Aiyesha and Eddie

Aiyesha

Aiyesha has many years of experience in the hospitality sector. Starting in high school, then through college and grad school, she was a server and bartender, and also worked in fine dining facilities. She also did some early work in production with Jacobsen Salt Co.

She founded a company called Nomad Mix, a kind of savory trail mix that includes at least one type of seed, nut, fruit, and vegetable in each bag. She was dissatisfied with conventional sweet trail mix during her backpacking trips (not enough variety in ingredients, plus too much candy), and wanted to make something better that she would like. She shared her creations with friends and they said, “You should make this as a product.” And so she did.

Nomad Mix is sold direct-to-consumer, and well as in stores like Market of Choice, Cherry Sprout Produce, and the Alberta Street Co-op. They also offer wholesale accounts.

On top of all that, she has a bachelor’s in linguistics, and a master’s in international business with a focus on sustainable supply chains. She traveled around Asia looking at a lot of different supply chains and manufacturing—think Toyota and Nissan, garment facilities in China, chip manufacturers, and more.

Eddie

Aiyesha met Eddie while looking for a production facility for Nomad Mix, and connected on topics of the ecosystem of food producers in the PNW. He has a 20-year background in small farming and land management, is an Army veteran, and lived in the Seattle area for 22 years. He got his masters degree in urban planning when he was in his 40s and worked in Portland as an urban land use planner for the City.

Hill has worked in food systems and community development since 1995, and is originally from Chicago, IL.

You can read more about each of them on the Food Loop Northwest website.

Why Food Loop Northwest Is Necessary

I was curious to learn more about what Food Loop Northwest was going to do and why we need it. “It’s necessary in terms of helping connect, to create the aggregation point, or facilitating shared resources,” Aiyesha explained. “It’s also filling the need of having people that have been through the system to actually talk to.”

Case in point: Aiyesha’s experience navigating the system with her consumer product, Nomad Mix. “I’ve been through a huge amount of trouble navigating the system and figuring out where to get advice, or where to how to do a certain thing,” she explained. “I’ve been down all these rabbit holes, and now I have all this knowledge, and I’m connected to all these different institutions and people.” Essentially, why hoard knowledge when you can help others succeed by sharing it?

It’s both a personal and a professional opportunity to help folks navigate the systems they have experience in.

“It’s nice to just be able to share what I know,” Aiyesha remarked. “I mean, I know we have to make money, but we try to offset that with our larger contracts.” This way they don’t have to put a heavy financial burden on their small business clientele for these consulting services.

She added, “In a lot of conventional transactions, it can cost a lot of money to have someone tell you to go look at a website. You know? This way we can offer more affordable, approachable rates.”

Food Loop Northwest and the Cordage Building

Food Loop Northwest currently is wishing to use the 30,000 square foot section of the building—the part of the building that used to be Brewery and pub. “We would [like to use] pretty much the majority of the main floor where the brewery and commercial kitchen spaces were/are,” she explained.

They also envision using the second floor, which was where the pub was located, for events and workshops with clients and the public. Funding development is currently active and if it works out, an interior buildout planning could happen in 2026.

They have also partnered on the lease with Chem Allyance, part of an organization called CHEM Global, which does some work in the cannabis field. Founded by four Black women doctors, they look into the health benefits of cannabis. One project of note is their work in diversifying the Doctor Bronner’s farmer connection.

There are other tenant spaces in this giant building, including lease-holders that work in regenerative farming, woodworking, cabinet-making, and art. Apparently Gus Van Sant used to have his personal studio in this building, too. “It’s a very funky building,” Aiyesha remarked. On a personal note, parts of it gave me real CalArts vibes (I got my BFA at CalArts).

Offices, Consulting, and Event Spaces

Along with their current offices and consulting spaces, they are looking at incorporating event/workshop spaces (there are two of them upstairs) and they’d love to have a boutique grocery there on site. Note: No restaurants of any kind would occupy this space, but the idea of implementing some publicly-accessible food options have been discussed; any details are still in process.

There could also be multiple warehousing and kitchen areas appropriate for production needs. These production spaces would be great for those who are scaling up after starting out small. Kind of an “interim” level of production. “It would be geared towards people who are at a point where they’re scaling commissary. Because right now, there’s nothing in between [small and large scale].”

This means various pieces of industrial equipment could be rented by these producers rather than purchased—or, used there for a time before purchasing their own. So why would a producer want to do this? They can rent all this industrial equipment (e.g., packing machines, Hobart mixers, tilt kettles) and in the process figure out exactly what kind of equipment they will eventually need to buy. “Because eventually, the idea is that you’ll grow out of that space, and then you’ll get your own facility and be able to rock and roll,” Aiyesha explained.

Renovations?

Historic buildings can have more limitations on changes than many other buildings do but so far they are doing ok on that point. “Currently, we’ve had USDA and ODA walkthrough,” said Aiyesha. “The property owners actually did a huge retrofit—-seismic retrofitting and the like—a number of years ago. So it’s all up to standard and code, which is great.”

So at this point, renovations would be more on the design side of things. The kitchen needs upgrading, but there’s a hood or two already there. But what is lacking is the majority of equipment (no dishwasher, no oven, etc); it’s more or less an empty space.

“You walk into the space and it’s like a big open gallery space,” explained Aiyesha. “The floor just needs a little repair, but it’s got the seal on it that’s needed for food production. Having had that done before is a huge help.”

This Building Has History

This building was built between 1887 and 1908. In 1993 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It closed in 1935. Then in 1984, the Ponzis brought it back to life with BridgePort Brewing and the brew pub.

“It’s a historical, beautiful building,” said Aiyesha. “It’s called the Cordage Building. They used to make hemp rope here for carriages, for boats, for sailing. You have old growth beams that are huge, and the structure of it is absolutely gorgeous.”

BridgePort’s Time in the Building

The BridgePort brewery was born in Portland in 1984 by winemakers Dick and Nancy Ponzi, with the brew pub following in 1986. They claimed that they operated “Oregon’s Oldest Craft Brewery.” The Brewery and brew pub were adjacent to each other in adjoining buildings in the same complex. 

In 1995 BridgePort Brewing was purchased by Texas-based The Gambrinus Company.

The Unfortunate Closure

In February 2019, BridgePort Brewery closed up shop after 35 years in business; the Brew Pub closed in March of that year.

The Beervana blog stated in 2019 about BridgePort Brewing’s closure, “This will hurt the soul of many Portlanders. Even if BridgePort wasn’t locally owned, even if it wasn’t making interesting beer, and even if the pub had been turned into a wannabe Chili’s, it was still the oldest and perhaps most important brewery in the state.

“Exactly 20 years ago, we lost a monument to Oregon beer when Miller shut down the old Henry Weinhard brewery that anchored downtown. We will lose the most important remaining emblem of our brewing history when BridgePort shutters its doors thirteen blocks north of Weinhard’s.”

Next Steps for Food Loop Northwest

They are applying for government grants, though with the current administration’s freeze on federal dollars this source of funding could prove challenging—but who knows, maybe not. They are also applying for funding from private sources, and considering fundraising events. Realistically, it is probably going to be a little while still before full operations could possibly start up in Portland.

I’ll continue to keep in touch with Aiyesha and Eddie on the progress. And I wish them only the best as they continue their important work.

Food Loop Northwest Offices [potential expansion/opening TBD]
1313 NW Marshall Street, Portland
Food Loop Northwest website | Instagram

Updated March 21, 2025.