Every year, just as birds head south, a gaggle of Portland restaurants find that they can't make it through the winter. This year is no different.

At least three major local restaurants have closed or will close this month. Those include

, an Asian fusion spot on the western edge of the Pearl;

, a Peruvian place in Northwest Portland with solid ceviche; and

, a 17-year-old Chinese restaurant, bar and banquet hall in Southeast Portland.

Legin, which closes Sunday, is remarkable not just for its longevity, but also for its pioneering eastside location and for that massive hall, a key gathering place for Portland-area Asian communities. The room, as big as a Bavarian beer hall, is among the largest such spaces on the West Coast, according to Legin owner Siou Bounketh.

Bounketh came to Portland in 1975 as a refugee from communism's domino-like spread from Vietnam to Cambodia to his native Laos, he said (Bounketh is part Chinese, part Laotian). In 1995, he took over the Southeast Division Street space that had been home to a Lung Fung restaurant, a small local chain with one remaining Portland location on North Lombard Avenue. Bounketh remodeled and reopened as Legin, serving an expanded Chinese menu and dim sum at brunch.

"At that time, business boomed, because 82nd didn't have so many Chinese restaurants that were very good. The Chinese restaurants were just in Chinatown," said Bounketh, 72, who plans to retire after the restaurant closes.

By 2001, Legin was

and had become a favorite of the local Chinese American community. But as the years went on, diners' attention wandered to other dim sum spots, including the glitzier Wong's King Seafood a few blocks down Division, and Ocean City just around the bend on Southeast 82nd Avenue. Recently, top Chinese food options have begun appearing in Beaverton as well.

Replaced by parking lot

The restaurant's closure isn't a surprise. In 2009, Portland Community College bought the Legin building, 8001 S.E. Division St., with its distinctive green-roofed pagoda, as part of a larger expansion of the Southeast Center campus, a PCC spokeswoman said. The college

.

Esther Newberry, 64, and Tina Henderson, 63, two friends and fellow Cleveland High School grads who stopped by Legin looking for lunch on Wednesday, have been coming to the restaurant since the 1980s, when

played rock classics in the bar now known as the Phoenix Lounge.

Henderson said good dim sum like Legin's is hard to find: "I've gone to a couple of places downtown and seen bugs on the floor."

Newberry said she'll miss the restaurant, but with "so many places now, you have to get used to change."

"I have noticed in the last couple of years there are fewer and fewer people here," she added.

Yet even as customers have dwindled, the banquet hall still served as an anchor for the city's many Asian American families.

"Not just Chinese," Bounketh said Wednesday. "Filipinos, Laotians, Cambodians, Vietnamese" all use the hall. "Tomorrow we have a Chinese concert. Almost 600 people."

The hall has hosted weddings, concerts, fundraisers and, in 2007, several heated meetings over a controversial Chinatown dragon statue that was installed, then removed, after public outcry.

Where will these events go once Legin is closed?

"I have no idea," Bounketh said, pointing to his temples. "That's their headache now."

Holden Leung, CEO of Southeast Portland's

, said his organization has held its annual conference at Legin's banquet hall for about 10 years. This year's event was planned for tonight, with an eight-course banquet, songs from the center's preschool students and appearances expected by elected officials, doctors and other members of the health care industry.

"Tomorrow we are expecting over 500 people," Leung said Wednesday. "We need a banquet hall that has the flavor of Asian culture but is large enough to hold a large audience."

Leung said he's looked at hosting next year's event at the Embassy Suites hotel by the airport or at the Oregon Convention Center, but neither location has the cultural connection the center wants.

"I've been thinking about it every day," he says. "We've been using Asian restaurants for the venue for years" (before Legin, the center their hosted conferences in Chinatown). "But housing more than 500 guests? I'm still searching for an answer."

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