A day after announcing its sudden closure, employees at 900 Wall were clearing out the restaurant. A social media post on Monday, May 5 said “We did all we could to continue to provide a living for our employees, a sense of community for our guests and a platform for all of the local farmers and producers we’ve worked with for the past 17 years.”
In an interview with Source Weekly, co-owner Cliff Eslinger said the number of customers has dropped significantly since the start of this year. There’s more competition and, he says, overall people aren’t spending money like they did last year.
“Every night I walk around downtown before I get on my bike and go home or ride a lap, and, like, every business is a third full at seven o’clock, eight o’clock. …There’s a lot of people really hurting right now. And if we had come forward and said that we’re hurting, we would just get cannibalized.”
According to its website, 900 Wall opened in May 2009 in a historic building on the corner of NW Wall and Minnesota in the heart of downtown Bend. The location had previously been Merenda Restaurant. Eslinger was involved in the opening of that restaurant as a sous chef.
Eslinger explains why he decided to suddenly close 900 Wall, laying off 40 employees. “I have a need to protect everyone and make sure that we did this in an honorable way. …We could have strung it along for longer, but then we would have left vendors hanging or employees hanging, and I don’t want to start bouncing checks all over town.”
With emotion in his voice, he goes onto say, “Support local businesses and restaurants, like, if you care about our community, you should be spending your money right now, because we’re not the only ones that are suffering.”
This article appears in Source Weekly May 1st, 2025.
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All these places have to rely on are tourists. They are the only people paying $25 for a burger and $8 for a beer. Locals shop smartly and eat at home. This is all the fault of the City of Bend leaning into tourism and development and forgetting about the community. Period.
It’s also about what downtown Bend has become. It is hard to get there and even harder to park. The parking problem leads to endless cars creeping around downtown streets, impeding traffic. Not a pleasant experience.
Reduced foot traffic downtown since January. Any relationship to closing the intersection at Wall and Portland??
Locals know that downtown Bend is becoming less accessible for cars with reduced and more expensive parking, constricted streets, and frequent road closures.
You can thank the city council and fees, fees, fees put on the people, giving people less spendable cash, and as mentioned, accessibility to downtown. Sadly, people loved the happy hour, but a restaurant can’t sustain itself, wages, building, utilities, food costs, etc. on Happy Hour customers. I see their regular menu is $30-$50 price range. That’s not my budget for eating out.
People are spending less with the economic chaos of Trump 2.0. But, yes, it is harder to find a place to park downtown and many of the businesses cater to tourists. Turning one of the streets into the Ariel Mendez Mall won’t help.
Unfortunately, tourism kills off the locals. Seen it in many towns in my 70+ years. Chasing the dollars never leads to anything good.
As a 20+ year Bend resident who’s dined and drank at 900 Wall dozens of times I’m saddened by this news. But I am also very much rubbed the wrong way by the comment “if you care about our community, you should be spending your money right now”. This has got to be one of the most arrogant, tone-deaf things I’ve seen in print in 2025. Instead of pointing your finger at the community that helped pay your bills for 17 years perhaps you should do a little introspection and identify how it is you let 900 Wall fade into obsolescence in the face of real competition. Because i hate to break it to you, the restaurants in town we DO frequent regularly in your price range are impossible to get into, often even a week in advance. 900 Wall has felt dated for at least a decade and it was the complete lack of innovation and creativity that led to us not dine there any more, not a lack of caring or support for our community. Thank you
What is the Downtown Bend Business Association doing during all of this? They need to turn their attention away from sexually harassing their employees and focus on supporting the local businesses!
The parking garage around the corner from the Oxford hotel is one of the cheapest parking garages I’ve ever come across. So parking shouldn’t exactly be an excuse.
When acreage in Bend was $100,000, a dive in San Francisco was $1 Million. It didn’t take long for them to realize they can sell that dive, buy a home, a business, and 5 rental properties in Bend with room to spare.
They weren’t harder workers, they weren’t smarter, what they were was living in an inflated economy.
Fast forward 20 years; they own 2/3 of the land, businesses, and money in Bend. Chances are, if your child is 18-40, they’re renting from one of them, and working for one of them.
900 Wall needs people to dine there, right?
Sorry- 50-60% of their income is going to a bunch of posh liberals that love the smell of their own farts.