I don't have a place to work on my car at my new apartment here in Portland. It's driving me crazy. I've heard of people renting shop space but I don't know how one goes about doing so. I know there's a few GRMers up here so I'm hoping one (or some) can point me in the right direction. I don't need to park a car overnight (unless it's being worked on), I just want a dry place with some outlets where I wouldn't worry about storing my tools.
It sucks. The last time a friend and I looked into separate shop space away from home it was eye-wateringly expensive (as in, not really tenable if it's not making money for you), and the new field of rental-cubes-for-doing-small-business-or-hobbies (e.g. Activspace) tend to have a small but significant set of exclusions (IIRC it was arc welding, cockfighting, and auto repair. I E36 M3 you not.)
The last time I looked into it was way back probably before the bursting of the last bubble, but I think all manner of real estate is, if anything, even more berzerk now.
Hopefully someone else will have something more hopeful/useful...
Are you looking for a by-the-hour kind of place or more of a monthly lease? I think I've heard about an hourly place somewhere out in Gresham(?) a few times, but don't know more than that. You might try one of the many PNW or Portland specific automotive Facebook groups.
It could be a bit of a trek, but there's a place in downtown Vancouver that rents shops; Pearson ManCaves
The owner, Richard Keller, is a decent guy. I rented a shop there for a little under a year and a half. There were some unsavory characters when I left, but he was in the middle of cleaning house and evicting all of those guys last time I was down there.
I think we paid 1k a month for a 20x25 shop with a half length mezzanine. All power (120 and 240), cable, wifi, and compressed air was included. It was by no means cheap, but once split with a buddy it almost paid for itself with a few small side jobs a month.
In reply to Ransom:
That's a rather wide range of prohibited activities. Guess my days of sacrificing chickens to the gods of combustion are numbered...
In reply to Burrito:
I guess by the hour would be best for me. For example, I'm sitting on a broken door handle replacement and what I'm guessing is a bad tie-rod end. They're easy jobs; I just don't have the space to diagnose and fix them. Getting home from work after dark makes working on stuff challenging. Which of course is compounded by the snow/ice/rain here. Seems like the weather has been waiting until the weekends to ruin my car fixin' time.
Welcome to Portland,
Sell your cars......
There's this place called Gear Head Garage in Tigard. Haven't tried it yet, but I have a few maintenance items coming up (oil change, trans fluid, brake fluid flush) and I'm going to give it a shot.
http://www.gearheadgarage.us/home.html
bentwrench wrote: Welcome to Portland, Sell your cars......
or get used to working in the street or work hard and get a place with a garage.
At one point, I rented two garages at my apartments and while I wasn't supposed to work on cars there, I did some work simply because I needed to.
GladlyTheCrossEyedBear wrote: There's this place called Gear Head Garage in Tigard. Haven't tried it yet, but I have a few maintenance items coming up (oil change, trans fluid, brake fluid flush) and I'm going to give it a shot. http://www.gearheadgarage.us/home.html
You could ask some of the folks at Portland Cars & Coffee since many of those might know a friend of a friend. There's a FB group for them as well.
If you drive north an hour, I could hook you up with about a dozen shops. 
I live in Sumner (tacoma) same question.
Javelin wrote: If you drive north an hour, I could hook you up with about a dozen shops.
You knows that's pretty tempting. What kind of shops are we talking about here?
GladlyTheCrossEyedBear wrote: There's this place called Gear Head Garage in Tigard. Haven't tried it yet, but I have a few maintenance items coming up (oil change, trans fluid, brake fluid flush) and I'm going to give it a shot. http://www.gearheadgarage.us/home.html
Oh man, I just checked out that site. $25/hr for a bay with a 2 post lift seems pretty reasonable. It's only $5 more than the bay without one.
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