Former Village Inn owner says the pandemic destroyed her business
A proposed In-N-Out Burger at Bridgeport Village in Tualatin remains alive and well with the news that the popular fast food chain purchased the site of the former Village Inn restaurant for $3.3 million.
The Portland Business Journal first reported the June 15 sale of the property, and it has since generated a flurry of interest around the Portland metro area. It is just one of several potential In-N-Out locations currently under consideration, with others being in Beaverton and Hillsboro.
For Connie Watt, former owner of the Tualatin Village Inn restaurant, and former co-owner of the property at S.W. 72nd Avenue and Lower Boones Ferry Road, it’s the end of a long and enjoyable trip that was brought to a premature end by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s been a family business this entire time,” said Watt. “My dad retired from the army and he wasn’t sure what he was going to do, so he opened the first one (Village Inn) over by Lloyd center in 1968.”
That proved to be a success and the family expanded to Tualatin in 1977.
“I came to help them out in a rough patch and I never left,” Watt said. “I couldn’t leave my employees and my guests, but I loved it. My cousins and my brother and I shared the other half of the property, which my dad left us, and my brother actually worked at the restaurant for many years.”
Watt said they were first approached by In-N-Out about selling the property in 2019. It took over two years for the sale to close. In the meantime, the whole world changed with the March 2020 onset of the pandemic. That happened to follow the bankruptcy of the Village Inn parent company just two months before.
“People who read the news thought we were closed, but we weren’t, and that affected us,” Watt said. “But then when the pandemic hit, there was no way. I had to make a quick decision, otherwise I would be stuck with a lot of debt, and I didn’t want to get behind. I’m happy I made that decision (to close the Tualatin location) because it’s too hard for our kind of business – we need every seat filled on the weekends. But I loved what I did because I was there for so long. My guests were my family.”
She noted that In-N-Out has been an excellent business partner, despite long periods between communication.
“On May 10 (2020) on Mother’s Day we closed for good and we just had to make that decision,” she said. “I knew In-N-Out was going to buy it, we had a contract, and it went on and on and I just didn’t hear from them that often. But then all of sudden came June 15, 2021, and they had to make a decision, they had to make a closing on that date.”
After the Village Inn closed its doors last year, In-N-Out generated plenty of local interest in September 2020 when it held a community meeting to discuss a possible restaurant at that site.
That came after the company submitted a development application to the City of Tualatin’s planning department for a 3,885 square foot restaurant. That application expired in November of last year.
More recently, In-N-Out spokesperson Kathleen Luppi said that a new application has yet to be submitted. The company has otherwise declined to speak publicly about the potential Tualatin restaurant or any other locations in the metro area.
The debate mirrors that which has been taking place in Beaverton for the past year. There, In-N-Out has been looking to place a new restaurant at the busy intersection of SE 107th Ave. and Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway.
A Dec. 28, 2020, online meeting held for Beaverton residents to discuss the planned restaurant raised similar questions about traffic. But In-N-Out Project Manager Cassie Yee tried to smooth over those concerns.
“In-N-Out Burger is very careful about site selection,” Yee said during the meeting, which was held on the Zoom platform. “Our experience is that those areas zoned specifically for commercial uses have the infrastructure in place and the community plan in place to accommodate high traffic demand.”
Yee also claimed that In-N-Out’s heralded opening of a Keizer location in 2019 had no impact on Interstate 5 traffic.
“Even with the amazing crowds we saw, especially over that first week, it is important to note we did not block any entrances to any of the neighboring businesses,” Yee said at the December meeting. “We went through months of planning and preparation to prepare for the opening, and we didn’t impact I-5 at all.”
