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The Loyal Legion bar will feature 99 all-Oregon beers and Olympic Provisions sausages inside the former Portland Police Athletic Association building.

(Michael Russell, The Oregonian)

Is Yard House the new measuring stick?

Even as decades-old Portland dives close one after the other, new jumbo-class beer bars -- warehouse-sized watering holes, ala Yard House, with 30, 40, or 50 beers on tap -- seem to open every couple of months.

Kurt Huffman, a onetime brewer turned Portland's top restaurateur, has surveyed the new brew landscape and come up with a surprising conclusion. What's missing, he says, is beer. Or rather, Oregon beer, and lots of it.

This spring, Huffman and his partners, Alex and Chris Briggs, plan to open The Loyal Legion, a new Southeast Portland beer hall with 99 Oregon brews on tap and an all-local menu featuring Olympic Provisions sausages. Construction begins in February on the space, the former Portland Police Athletic Association building at Southeast Sixth Avenue and Alder Street.

"We will have the largest selection of Oregon beers (on tap) anywhere in the world," Huffman says.

Kurt Huffman

Beers -- some on cask, some on nitro, some "iced" (kept and served at cooler temperatures) -- will be selected from Portland, Astoria, Eugene, Hood River, Bend and beyond. But delivery trucks won't cross the Columbia River.

"We wanted a beer hall that celebrated the Oregon beer tradition, as opposed to craft brewing in general," Huffman says. "So we won't be serving beer from Vancouver, Washington."

Expect about 120 seats clustered around a circular bar, with kegs kept in a 50-foot-long walk-in cooler in the basement.

The food menu will feature sausages both fresh and cured from Portland's premier meat mavens, Olympic Provisions, including a line of sausages made specifically for the Loyal Legion. Buns and pretzels will come from ChefStable's house bakery, Philippe's Bread. Huffman is already at work on a vegan option.

The bar, which opens in the heart of Portland's hottest new drinking district, is named for an old logger's union employment agency -- the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen Employment Services (sometimes called the "Four L"). Huffman found the company's old sign gathering dust in Chinatown's Hung Far Low space; it will hang in the bar.

"We don't want it to be pretend English or Irish or German," Huffman says. "We're looking for something much more rooted in Portland's past. A lot of the work we're doing now (is asking), what does it mean be an Oregon craft beer hall?"

Look for The Loyal Legion to launch in April.

Meanwhile, construction is already underway on a new, 7,000-square-foot events space destined for the former PPAA building's top floors. Portland Assembly, a new space from Union/Pine founders Summer Killingsworth and Patrick Triato will be built around a 1905 ballroom, with 25-foot ceilings and art-deco touches throughout.

-- Michael Russell