Laurelwood Brewing will close its Sellwood restaurant this weekend after its landlord raised the rates when its leased expired, owner Mike de Kalb said Thursday afternoon.

The last day of food and bar service will be Saturday, de Kalb confirmed to The Oregonian/OregonLive. Workers will continue through Monday to close the restaurant and clear out the site, at 6716 S.E. Milwaukie Ave. in the Sellwood-Moreland neighborhood.

“We’ve been there for six years – we had a six-year lease – and the landlord wanted to raise the rate, and we couldn’t afford the rates,” de Kalb said. “We tried to work with him, but he didn’t want to budge.

“We’re not happy about it, but he can take a restaurant out and put in a retail shop and get more money per square foot,” de Kalb said. “That’s just the economics of it. It didn’t work out anymore for us.”

De Kalb said about 25 employees were notified Wednesday, and the company will try to move as many workers as possible to the Northeast location. He said he wasn’t sure how many would be transferred but that managers were working to determine how many could be retained.

“There will be a good percentage that will come over,” de Kalb said.

The Laurelwood owner and founder said he didn’t want to give employees only three days’ notice, but a deal wasn’t able to be reached and the lease was expiring. De Kalb said he had no details on any severance deals that might be offered to employees, saying that was being worked out.

Laurelwood, which opened its first location in 2001 in the Hollywood neighborhood of Northeast Portland, also faces the Nov. 13 closure of its only other remaining location, in Portland International Airport’s Concourse A. De Kalb said that pub is closing because the Port of Portland is shutting down the concourse as part of redesign work at the airport.

Laurelwood lost its other airport location late last year as SSP America, which operates restaurants at the airport, rotates breweries every 10 years in an effort to keep fresh and current. Hopworks Urban Brewery took over the space in January.

De Kalb said Laurelwood would likely submit another proposal for a pub in the airport next year, when the airport accepts its next round of applications. He said that round would be for locations going into PDX in 2022 or 2023.

He said Laurelwood’s brewpub on Northeast Sandy Boulevard is “doing great,” as are distribution sales after Laurelwood recently switched to Maletis Beverage distributing. He said the recent addition of an axe-throwing venue at the Sandy pub has helped bring in more customers.

“That’s the problem is foot traffic,” de Kalb said. “You can go to Henry’s Tavern and get our beer, so why go to the pub anymore? But you have to come to us to do axe throwing. This afternoon, we had a party of 20 in there.”

Laurelwood previously had locations in Northwest Portland off of Northwest 23rd Avenue and in Battle Ground. De Kalb previously told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the increase in breweries in Portland has made the industry considerably more difficult.

“It is tough, I’m not going to lie, it’s tough,” De Kalb said. “It gets tougher every year.”

And although the Sellwood closure was because of a lease problem, de Kalb said it’s still hard.

“I’m sad. I didn’t want to shut it down,” he said. “It was a great space for us, good for the community, we had great support. Good people, great employees.”

-- Andre Meunier

Check out Andre Meunier’s beer reviews on Untappd, where he’s andremeunier13, and follow him on Instagram, where he’s @oregonianbeerguy.

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