A tired neighborhood business with a tired inventory is getting a facelift thanks to new owners who are recent immigrants from Nepal.
Keshab and Gyani Maharjan have taken over the convenience store at NE 42nd Avenue and Beech Street, renamed it the Everest M Market, pitched dumpsters of old merchandise and repainted the store.
Neighbors are thrilled. Patti Smith, who owns Patti Smith West— a vintage resale shop next door— had grown weary of the convenience store without any community spirit. Last year she went in to buy some sunscreen and found that it had an expiration date of 2007. A vital corner in a vital neighborhood deserved better, and the Maharjans bring hope.
“It’s a dream come true for me,” Smith said. “It was a market with no caring behind it. I feel everything I’ve been praying for and hoping for has come true.”
Haley Bevacqua, who lives next to the market on Beech Street, said she wouldn’t let her children go to the old store, instead sending them farther to Beaumont Market. She’s impressed with how much the Maharjans have done in a short time.
“It looks so much better,” she said.
Mae Lee had owned and operated the market as Justin’s General Store for 24 years. She had bought it from her sister, who operated it for four years before that. Lee thinks that the building has been a store for about 90 years.
Lee, who still owns the building and is leasing it to the Maharjans, said she opened a restaurant in Beaverton a year and a half ago and it became too difficult to run both businesses. She wishes Keshab Maharjan luck.
“I hope he can make it successful,” Lee said.
The Maharjans started out on the right foot with neighbors, hosting a barbecue dinner a week after they reopened the store in late July.
As a family, the Maharjans moved to Portland in 2008 from Kathmandu, where they owned the Saugal Store for 20 years. They have been helping Keshab’s brother who owns the Rose City Market on NE Sandy Boulevard and 62nd Avenue.
The family lives in the neighborhood near 34th Avenue and Going Street. Their daughter Sagen attends Grant High School and their other daughter Yogen attends Beverly Cleary School.
The Everest of the store name refers to the mountain of Maharjan’s homeland. It also happens to be the name of Patti Smith’s grandson, which she took as a good omen. Although the store takes its name from the world’s highest peak, Maharjan has not climbed it or any other mountains. The M has several meanings, including mountain and market.
Like Portland, Kathmandu has a temperate climate, neither the cold of the Himalayas nor the heat of India. Portland is starting to feel like home. Still, Keshab Maharjan misses Nepal at times.
“Everybody likes our country,” he said.
Although they are Nepali, they don’t plan to carry products aimed at fellow immigrants. There are only about 50 Nepalis in the immediate area and about 500 in the greater Portland area.
Keshab Maharjan said word is getting around about the changes at the store.
“Business is starting now,” he said.