Whiteaker neighborhood a hotbed for new businesses


Previously known as a bad or just plain weird area, Eugene’s Whiteaker neighborhood is becoming a hub for new businesses.

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Previously known as a bad or just plain weird area, Eugene’s Whiteaker neighborhood is becoming a hub for new businesses.

“It’s kind of a working man’s neighborhood, and it’s Eugene’s oldest neighbor­hood,” said Bill Mahoney, who has lived in the Whiteaker area for 25 years and started the New Day Bakery there in 1989.

In the past few years, at least 10 new ventures have started in Whiteaker’s business core, which stretches along Blair Boulevard approximately between Third and Seventh avenues.

“It’s amazing,” said Mark Jaeger, owner of Jaeger Real Estate and a partner in Sam Bond’s Garage, a music venue and pub housed in the 1918 garage that truly used to be the repair shop of a guy named Sam Bond.

“It’s been flourishing this whole time,” he said. “You think of the number of new businesses that have come in — Papa’s Soul Food Kitchen, Pizza Research Institute, Izakaya Meiji, and, of course, Ninkasi is really the big player down here now.”

Read more at The Register-Guard.

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