Massalia Books & Coffee Will Open on NE Glisan in Portland

Last month I wrote about a commercial conversion going on at a house on NE Glisan Street in the Kerns neighborhood. Through my research I had learned that the business intended for that space is called Massalia Books & Coffee. Shortly after publishing the piece, I was contacted by the person behind the project. I meet up with him and his daughter at Domingo’s to chat about it, and here is what I’ve learned.

Massalia Books & Coffee Owners John and Kate Liu

John Liu was the person who emailed me after I published the original piece, and had some nice things to say about it. He also shared with me the basics of what’s up: “I own the building, my daughter will own the business, we are restoring this old FourSquare with a lot of sweat equity.” Kate, his daughter, will be renting the space for the cafe/bookstore space from her dad.

John Liu

John is Principal at Laurelhurst Asset Management, which is also the name of the LLC that owns this property. He does portfolio management and analysis, focusing on tech and healthcare, and has been working in this field for over two decades.

Aside from all his financial work, he has a deep interest in coffee. “He’s a big coffee head,” Kate remarked. And not only does he like to drink coffee, he likes to refurbish espresso machines. Years ago, he found one free on the street—a commercial machine, an Electra—fixed it up and it’s been in their dining room for the past ten years. “It’s his side hobby,” said Kate.

Kate

Kate is John’s daughter and she has worked in the food industry over the years. “I’ve worked a lot in food service and restaurants,” she remarked. She’ll be handling the cafe side of the business.

“When I was living [in France] and going through my life, I was trying to figure out the next chapter—I had to decide between settling in France, staying more long term; and coming home. And I felt really pulled towards staying with my family. We have such a good relationship.” She moved back and is very happy with that decision, which eventually led them to starting this project.

Massalia: What’s in a Name?

“It’s like you said, it’s the the name of the Greek colony that eventually became Marseille,” said John. “Which is actually one of like the longest continuously settled cities in Europe.”

“We ended up naming it Massalia partially because I lived there for about four years,” said Kate. “And I love it—it’s just one of my favorite place in the world. I had them visit multiple times, and we had friends over there. It’s just one of our favorite cities.”

Finding a Home for Massalia Books & Coffee

“So we walked past the house and it had a for sale sign on it,” said Kate. “And we just live about three blocks up the street—we’ve lived here for 20 years in this area. I grew up here for much of my life.”

She continued, “Anyway, we had walked past it a million times and never noticed it before.” After it caught their eye, they started fantasizing about it, because they thought, “What are the odds we’ve actually found something that works with all our parameters?” 

Those parameters were wrapped up in their search for a space. The rents they’d been looking at felt excessive. “If you found something built out for food service, the rents were high,” said John. “Or, you could find a place that had been a retail establishment and then have to do a buildout. Then you’re spending—you’re investing—let’s say, $150,000 on somebody else’s property, and you just improved it for them,” said John.

In the end, buying a property seemed like the better choice for their wants and needs. This building on NE Glisan suited their needs both financially and location-wise.

What Is Massalia Books & Coffee

Massalia will be a bookstore cafe—this is an established genre of retail establishments. “So it’s a bookstore, and it’s coffee, with a small light, simple menu to start,” said Kate. “We’re building out our kitchen facilities a bit more than we technically need—this is to leave ourselves some room further down the line in case we want to amp up the food side of things.”

There aren’t many bookstore-cafe combos in Portland, so this is a welcome addition. Thinking about other similar places, Kate mentioned the Rose City Book Pub, which is a bookstore and a bar with food. John pointed out that Literary Arts recently opened a cafe in their spot, where you can also purchase books. There’s Guilder inside Powell’s Books downtown. And I can’t forget Field Day Books & Bottles, which sells used and new books along with canned and bottled non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverages.

If there are others I’ve missed, I welcome knowing about them. And as far as the bookstore side at Massalia goes, they’ll be selling used books, not new.

Coffee, Where?

When they were contemplating opening a coffee shop they did their research. Part of that was looking at the coffee shops and cafes around Massalia … and there wasn’t much.

“There’s not a ton of coffee on this stretch and in this area,” explained John. “You have to go over to Crema, which is a bakery, and then coffee is kind of a secondary thing. There’s Neighbour’s Table—it’s cute, but it’s small and kind of out of the way, with odd hours because it’s run by the church. And then there’s Dear Sandy a little ways down there, but it’s not really this area.”

He added, “So I don’t think there’s really much—not like the kind of place we’ve always really wanted—like a straight up kind of a coffee shop, somewhere comfortable where you want to linger.”

More Coffee Shop Location Analysis

Further analysis showed him that if you go east, there’s no coffee until the Starbucks at 45th and Glisan. So he went on Google Maps and mapped all the coffee shops in Portland, and the results were not what he anticipated. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is a weird place we’re in—a strange coffee desert a mile wide and .6 miles top to bottom, where there’s almost no coffee.'”

The location of Massalia? It’s right in the middle of this void. At this point, he started a long process to see if they could actually buy the property. And would it even work to convert the building to commercial?

They are finding out that it is. They’ve made mistakes along the way, and have come up against some challenges. “Some would argue it turns out it’s not feasible, but we’re gonna do it anyway,” said John.

Zoning, Occupancy, and the City of Portland

I learned that with this building, the zoning’s not a problem—it’s the change of occupancy from residential to commercial that is. It should be pretty straightforward, but it’s not.

Looking at the layout of the building from when they started, it was clear that it consisted of three apartments—one in the basement, one of the first floor, and one on the second floor. “We thought we were looking at a multifamily building,” said John. “It has three gas meters, three electric meters, and three postal addresses.” Portland Maps indicates it is a TriPlex.

“Well, the city takes a position that it’s a single family house.. That’s our biggest battle,” said John. Apparently the city never permitted it to be a triplex. And the historical records have been hard to track down.

As I mentioned in the previous article, during World War II, Title 13 was implemented. There was a massive crush for housing, and that’s when the house was turned into three units of housing. “We know that’s when the conversion was, because they cut up the space. When we ripped out the drywall, I actually found evidence of that.” Apparently there are drywall historians who can help date the era of any drywall, and they helped out John with this. The drywall in question is dated to the 1940s.

Still, the city maintains the building is a single family house. “We’re not going to budge,” said John. “We did find a lot of problems, which we’re getting through.” And while he understands the challenge, he has some perspective. “At the end of the day, it’s not that big a deal, it’s a little big of a deal,” he remarked.

DIY

They’ve been putting plenty of sweat equity into this project, on a daily basis. Earlier this spring, John did a seismic retrofit. They worked on the basement, using professional materials (“Simpson URFP” was uttered) for things like brackets that tie your mudsill to your foundation, which they had to take apart. “We had to rip out the walls to do it. It was a finished basement,” John said.

Splitting Up the House for Their Needs

The first floor will be the cafe and bookstore—after you enter through the front door, the cafe bar will be right there with the kitchen behind it; the bookstore stacks will be to the right and further back. John will have his financial company’s office (his main job) on the second floor.

The whole building will become a commercial space. The basement will be the Massalia admin office as well as storage.

And then there’s the attic.

“And our attic issue—we have to basically abandon the attic,” said John. “We have to close it off.” It will be accessible for emergency maintenance. “We’re basically going to wall up the door and make a little hatch that screws in place,” he explained. This will allow them to unscrew it and access the attic when necessary.

Organizing the Space for Massalia Books & Coffee

One of the challenges they are faced with is fitting everything—from books to the cafe side—into that first floor. ‘We’re trying to fit in the book side of things—we need a certain amount of space for books and shelving,” explained Kate. “So we will have a little bit less seating than originally planned”

“We’re probably going to have what we call our ‘cozy corner’ with two kinds of comfy upholstered chairs,” said Kate. “Then we’re going to have a mix of other seating. Our porch—I don’t know if you know—is enormous.”

Kate wants to treat the porch as an extension of the cafe; a terrace in France is her inspiration, with seating all around the porch.

“And then on the inside, we have a sort of shallow bay window,” she explained. “And we’re going to have three café tables there with two to three people per table. And then we’re going to have kind of longer communal style table. It’s nice to have a bit more space.” She thinks it will help people connect more easily. “I like places where people sort of have to make eye contact a little, and sit next to each other. It would also be good for bigger groups.

They envision having about 26 seats—16 indoors and 10 outdoors.

The Coffee

I asked them what coffee roaster they plan to go with. “We’re still kind of shopping around,” said John. “Our opinions on coffee are a little unusual for what’s trendy and cool in Portland. We’re big believers in and like the Italian/French approach to coffee.” I bet Andra at Simply Coffee could relate.

For them, this means using a dark roast. “It’s smooth, it’s meant for drinking straight espresso. We’re not trying to go for a blonde or a medium roast with a bunch of raspberry notes. We’re going to have one dark roast and our machine is going to be gorgeously calibrated to it, so you can get an espresso you’ll want to drink.”

Matcha and Chai

Aside from coffee, they’ll have matcha and chai; and possibly some seasonal drinks. “I kind of wanted it to be more like in France,” said Kate. “You go in some little town and you get your coffee, and that’s it.” They plan to offer just one size of latte or a cappuccino, most likely 12 oz.

And they like the idea of down the road of perhaps roasting their own coffee. “We have a setup where we could set up a small roaster,” said John. And they know some folks who could help train them in roasting.

Baked Goods

They’ll be making some of the baked goods themselves—cookies and biscotti, muffins to start. They’ve also going to offer bagels and sourdough bread (for sandwiches) from Gabriel’s Bakery.

They’d also like to stock croissants and baguettes but they haven’t yet settled on who they want to work with and source from.

Plans for Activity at Massalia Books & Coffee

Kate pointed out some other Portland bookstores that she admires on the events side, which includes the aforementioned Rose City Book Pub. “I really love the way they’re very community-oriented and there’s a lot of events. They make space for it and I just really enjoy that.”

She continued, “Mother Foucault is another bookstore that I love, and they also host events, parties, and open mic nights. I went there recently, and we listened to someone read a really long French poem, and I just love that kind of thing. I love third spaces that are about more than just selling a product or a meal or a book. And I love the idea of a place where people can come and find others in real life—not just digitally.”

While they plan on having their hours be more standard coffee shop hours (e.g., 7am to 4pm), they do want to have some pop-up nights, too. “Cocktail pop-ups are something we’ve talked about,” said Kate. “There’s been this wine pop-up that’s traveled around Portland a bit that I kept trying to get tickets to and it kept selling out! So I think people want it.”

She also talked about snail mail letter writing evenings and little analog events that people in the neighborhood and greater Portland can come to. And as a future bookseller, she has an appreciation for physical media that extends to CDs. “We’re going to have a big 200 CD player with a lot of our music on that!” she exclaimed.

And along with selling used books, selling used CDs (maybe even DVDs) are in the plans. She has a lot of faith in what she calls a “Renaissance resurgence”—back to physical books, reading as a hobby. “It’s really fascinating and it’s fueling a lot of success in the book industry right now,” Kate remarked. “I know that 2024 was a record year for indie bookstores in Portland. Books are back.”

Opening Massalia Books & Coffee

They are looking to open Massalia Books & Coffee by the end of August, but would not be surprised if ended up being in September.

This is a pretty great addition coming to the area. Wishing John and Kate all the best as they work to get Massalia Books & Coffee open in Northeast Portland!

Massalia Books & Coffee [projected opening August 2026]
2953 NE Glisan Street, Portland