Today in North Portland beer garden news...

Prost! co-owner Dan Hart has purchased the seven-year-old German beer bar's building as well as Mississippi Marketplace, the food cart that wraps around the bar.

The purchase allows Hart and partner Chris Navarra to rehab the historic building's facade, build an official relationship with their neighbor food carts and avoid worrying about the eventual end of their 15-year lease.

"We've been leasing this place for a long time, and we wanted to secure our long-term future," Hart says.

Cart pod owner (and former Portland Timber) Roger Goldingay developed the property in the late 2000s, rehabbing the 1890s-era former drug store and church and building one of Portland's first curated food cart pods, with individual electrical hook-ups and other facilities for each cart. The pod launched prominent carts such as The Big Egg, Garden State and Nuevo Mexico, plus the recently fire-damaged Homegrown Smoker. Prost has long had an open-door policy for food from the pod's carts.

Now Hart will be able to work directly with the cart owners, help choose any replacement carts and, eventually, provide additional coverage and heating for the winter. And he plans to some day extend Prost's liquor license throughout the property, meaning one of Portland's busiest beer patios is about to get a whole lot bigger. Get a first glimpse of what that will look like during the Mississippi Street Fair on Saturday, July 8 at 4237 N. Mississippi Ave.

Widmer Brothers beer garden

Not to be outdone, Widmer Brothers Brewing recently opened a pop-up beer garden just down the hill from Prost and across Russell Street from their North Portland pub.

The beer garden features small-batch beers from Widmer's innovation brewery, live music, food carts, lawn games and views of the Fremont Bridge.

Rob and Kurt Widmer opened Widmer Brothers Brewing in 1984. The company moved to its current home in North Portland in 1990.

"The original brewery plans called for a beer garden in this location when it was built in the '90s," Widmer Brothers Pub general manager Shane Johnson said in a press release. "We're excited to bring those plans to life ... with games, eclectic food carts and live music."

The new beer garden is kid- and pet-friendly and is pouring four rotating taps plus cans of Hefe from noon to 10 p.m., Thursday-Sunday across from the pub at 929 N. Russell St.

-- Michael Russell