Call it a sign of the times.
For a certain subset of the population, one of the greatest losses of the COVID-19 pandemic may have been the closure of Portland’s only Chuck E. Cheese.
Since shuttering in 2020, the building has sat abandoned on its corner of Southeast Powell Boulevard and 92nd Avenue — haunted by the gutted, graffitied-over outline of the chain’s namesake mouse mascot. But that sordid fate ends this summer.
The pandemic may have been a death sentence for Chuck E. Cheese, but it was the opposite for pickleball, launching the paddle sport into neighborhoods across the country…