Trust Issues

THE PORTLAND Development Commission (PDC) faces a struggle to
convince African American neighbors in North and Northeast Portland
that its latest effort to economically develop the area won’t result in
further gentrification.

PDC held the first of 11 meetings with its community advisory
committee for the North/Northeast Economic Development Initiative on
Wednesday, August 19, at the recently renovated Billy Webb Elks Lodge
on N Tillamook—a venue full of historical significance in the
African American neighborhood. Built in the early 1900s, the building
was once known as the Colored YWCA, and remains one of the few
remaining black-owned buildings in the district, nine square blocks of
which were razed in the 1960s under a PDC urban renewal initiative to
make way for Legacy Emanuel Hospital.

Close by, African Americans have seen young whites move into the
Mississippi and Alberta areas to regenerate the areas as arts districts
over the last decade, taking advantage of PDC dollars to improve their
storefronts and buying up cheap residential real estate with private
dollars, thereby raising it above the affordability of historic
residents.

Most recently, Mayor Sam Adams suggested and then abandoned a hasty
plan to use millions of Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal dollars to
fund the destruction of Memorial Coliseum to make way for a Minor
League Baseball stadium. As a consequence, trust is at a premium in
this new process.

The new committee aims to give neighbors the opportunity to weigh in
on the future use of hundreds of millions of dollars of urban renewal
money in two North and Northeast urban renewal areas: Interstate
Corridor, and the Oregon Convention Center, which were originally
created in 2000 and 1989 respectively. But committee members spent much
of the meeting expressing frustration at the failed efforts of the two
urban renewal areas to halt gentrification and bring quality jobs to
existing community members, to date.

“We have had years of trying to do all this, but what we have found
is how hard it is,” said real estate broker Walter Valenta, co-chair of
the Interstate Urban Renewal Area. “How do we stop gentrification? How
do we keep people in their homes? It’s structurally and politically
hard for PDC to do that.”

“Only 19 percent have a college degree in these areas compared to 35
percent citywide,” said Sarah Carlin Ames from the Portland Public
School Board, suggesting PDC still hasn’t managed to bring an influx of
educational achievement to the area along with its development
dollars.

“We haven’t had anything more than a janitor” from PDC’s job
creation efforts, said neighbor Faye Burch.

“Will this cause more gentrification of seniors?” asked Roy Jay,
from the African American Chamber of Commerce. “As developers come here
looking for tax breaks, you tell me what are you going to do to employ
people who are already here?”

A facilitator earnestly took notes, writing “what about seniors?” on
a sheet of paper as Jay spoke. PDC Commissioner Charles Wilhoite
promised, over an intermittently functioning PA system in the
building’s sultry 95-degree heat, to address all the committee members’
concerns over the coming weeks. Attendees were even encouraged to
Twitter about the meeting, although nobody did. The following day on
Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, African American delicatessen owner
James Posey remained unconvinced by the committee’s attempts to engage
people like him in the process.

“This is typical of PDC to invest a lot of energy on the front end
but not do any follow up later,” says Posey, who opened the E-Mat
Café, an internet café and laundromat, on the street back
in 2000. “It sounds like PDC is Santa Claus and they’re going around
sprinkling sugarplums.”

Posey says he hasn’t made a dime on his business since it opened,
and that he’s been subsidizing it with money from his construction
contracts in the meantime. He wants to see PDC reward business owners
like him who have stuck it out in the area, rather than just bend over
backward to lure new employers from elsewhere using Portlanders’ tax
dollars as an incentive.

Posey spoke up during the public comment phase of the previous
night’s meeting, saying PDC employees have no incentives to look after
the interests of poor African Americans in North and Northeast
Portland.

“You’re not monitoring these dollars, there are no checks, and these
are very scarce dollars,” he said. “I would encourage you all to reach
inside yourselves and think about these issues, not just have meeting
after meeting after meeting.”

The next meeting is scheduled for September 16, with PDC expected to
adopt a final report from the group next March.