ForeLand Beer Files for Lloyd District Taproom at 240 N Broadway

ForeLand Beer has filed a liquor license application for a taproom at 240 N Broadway in Portland's Lloyd District, targeting a space that craft-beer regulars will recognize immediately: the former home of Upright Brewing, which went dark in December 2024. The application, filed at the Leftbank Project development, lists operating hours of 3 to 10 p.m. weekdays and noon to 10 p.m. on weekends, with 20 seats inside and 16 outdoors.

The timing matters. ForeLand's McMinnville brewery at 777 NE 4th St, the brand's production home since it launched in 2020, has been sold to a new owner. The brewery will exit when its lease expires, leaving the label without a permanent base for the first time in its history. The Lloyd District filing is the clearest public signal of where co-founder David Sanguinetti intends to reestablish the brand's Portland footing.

It would be ForeLand's second run at a Portland taproom. The first, a cozy 1913 craftsman bungalow at 2511 SE Belmont known as The Study, became one of the city's most warmly regarded small-format beer spots before closing on December 31, 2024, just over three years after opening. The move to a downtown-adjacent address in the Lloyd District represents a significant shift in venue scale and neighborhood character: transit-accessible, surrounded by office corridors, and built for a mix of after-work traffic and weekend visitors.

ForeLand was co-founded in 2020 by Sanguinetti, who also owns the McMinnville bottle shop and taproom The Bitter Monk, and brewmaster Sean Burke, a Germany-trained brewer who previously built a reputation for farmhouse ales and lagers at The Commons Brewery and later Von Ebert Brewing. The brewery won Best New Brewery at the 2021 Oregon Beer Awards and built its identity around lagers, West Coast IPAs, and mixed-culture beers, with a visual brand rooted in Pacific Northwest terrain.

Taking over the Upright space carries its own weight in Portland beer history. Upright, known for its French and Belgian farmhouse-style ales, occupied that Broadway address for years before closing, and the Leftbank building has long been part of the city's beer geography. Whether ForeLand brings production equipment into the space or operates it purely as a taproom pouring McMinnville-brewed beer is not yet clear from the application.

Final approval still requires clearing the standard municipal hurdles: public-comment windows, building permits, and health department sign-offs. The hours and seating figures in a liquor license application are typically filed with some flexibility built in, so the taproom's actual operating schedule could settle narrower once the buildout is complete. Watch ForeLand's own channels alongside Portland's licensing calendar for the next concrete movement.