CenterCal development plans include vision for strip club property
(the times) Tualatin, say goodbye to Jiggles.
According to concept plans CenterCal Properties submitted to the city on Feb. 22, the proposed Nyberg Rivers shopping center will encompass not only the former Kmart site, but also the lot at 7455 S.W. Nyberg Road that has housed the 18-and-older strip club that boasts “the best wiggles” in the region.
CenterCal Chief Executive Officer Fred Bruning declined to confirm whether his company had acquired the Jiggles property. But an early draft of the nearly 32-acre site area clearly includes the single-story strip club that sits just off Interstate 5, and tucked into the proposed development plan was one tax lot that was not like the others: It corresponds to the 0.93-acre parcel that has been the home of Jiggles strip club since 1984.
Early Nyberg Rivers designs appear to call for removal of the Jiggles building to make way for two restaurant structures and parking near an as yet unnamed anchor store rumored to be Cabela’s, a major retailer of outdoor recreation products.
Nyberg Rivers could add as many as 1,500 part-time and full-time jobs to the area by adding restaurant and retail spaces. Based on letters of intent, about 90 percent of the spaces in Nyberg Rivers has been preleased, Bruning said.
Spotted history
The much-maligned Jiggles Dancers sign just off I-5 at exit 289 has long marked the gateway to Tualatin, and the establishment has hosted more than its share of controversy: The nude nightclub lost its liquor license after a 1985 investigation by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission revealed hidden ownership. Although Jane Coppedge of Troutdale has been listed as the club’s owner since its 1984 opening, in 1986 the OLCC found that Frank F. Colacurcio, a convicted racketeer, had been running the club from Seattle. According to OLCC documents, Larry Martin Thomas, a member of what was then identified as the Colacurcio organized crime family, had loaned Coppedge the $42,000 needed to open the club.
The OLCC revoked the club’s liquor license in 1987, and Jiggles has since operated as a late-night “juice bar” with nude performers open to patrons aged 18 years and older.
County tax records show the property has been owned by Dean and Rana McBale since 1994, with a real market value of approximately $840,000. Although not listed as a stakeholder in the business, Dean McBale (alternately referred to as “Dean MacBale”) is the owner of the Dolphin I strip club in Milwaukie, and has owned up to four such businesses simultaneously in the past.
MacBale has recently been the subject of his own financial and criminal investigations: In 2011, the Internal Revenue Service charged him with fraud, claiming he drastically underreported income at the four strip clubs he owned in Milwaukie, Beaverton, Portland and Gresham. In June 2011, MacBale was arrested for sexual assault and has since been charged with two counts of unlawful sexual penetration and one count of first-degree sodomy, according to Clackamas County Deputy District Attorney Rusty Amos.
MacBale, a West Linn resident, has since filed a motion to hold the trial in public, rather than “in-camera,” or closed to the public to protect the accuser’s identity, which is standard for rape cases in Oregon. MacBale is also pushing to allow information about his accuser’s sexual history to be presented during the trial.
Amos confirmed that this motion is currently being considered by the state Supreme Court.
A strategic investment
Troubled legal history aside, the site is a strategic investment for CenterCal, which also developed Bridgeport Village and Nyberg Woods. With a focus on the former Kmart site, CenterCal is making a substantial financial and aesthetic mark on a city whose entrance has for the past 30 years been dominated by Jiggles’ presence.
In August 2012, CenterCal finalized a 75-year lease with the Nyberg family to develop a retail center at the site formerly anchored by Kmart. The size of the proposed outdoor shopping center is projected to be around 300,000 square feet, Bruning said in October. This did not include the Jiggles lot.
Jiggles is not the only Tualatin institution to go: If the Nyberg Rivers development proceeds as planned, Seneca Street will likely bisect the current City Council chambers to allow for better traffic flow in and around Nyberg Rivers.
The re-alignment of Seneca Street was included in the city’s recently updated Transportation System Plan, which cited a lack of connectivity in downtown parking lots. CenterCal’s response has been to realign Seneca to flow into the T intersection with Martinazzi Avenue.
