Albina Vision Trust

Albina Vision has created renderings of what the Rose Quarter development could look like. The supporters hope to bring the area back to a more neighborhood-friendly place that can house community gathering spaces, affordable housing, and local businesses. The group’s aim is to have a community driven plan that determines the future development of the Rose Quarter area for the next 50 to 60 years.

The Albina Vision plans to restore a 30-acre area into a version of the largely residential neighborhood that existed 60 years ago, before it was razed for construction of the Memorial Coliseum and other structures. Led by Rukaiyah Adams (Chief Investment Officer with the Meyer Memorial Trust) and Zari Santner (former Portland Parks Bureau director), the "Albina Vision" hopes to "rebuild a community, not just physical spaces" and "be honest about the destruction of this neighborhood, not back away from that history."

Albina Vision Trust: a bold idea to transform 94 acres centered on the Rose Quarter into a high-density, mixed-use neighborhood. The area has a problematic history. The Moda Center and Portland’s transportation heart sit on what was once an African American neighborhood, bulldozed in the ’50s and ’60s. Mishmash design has bequethed us dreary plazas and traffic tangles.

In Albina between 1960 and 1970, plans to clear areas deemed blighted ultimately displaced more than three thousand residents—again, most of them African American. The people who were displaced moved to the far reaches of the city. The Albina Vision aims to reclaim the multicultural community of Portland from decades ago. The group behind the Albina Vision says it wants Albina to be representative of the people who lived there in the past and to be affordable, inclusive, and multicultural. “[The Albina Vision is] about trying to make the case for what social justice looks like in city development and planning,” Adams says. “That our voices and our benefits have to be at the forefront; they can’t just be an afterthought.” [Board Member, Rukaiyah Adams says the Albina Vision provides an opportunity to build a community for people of color. “We need more of each other,” she says. “We need to go to church together,” she says. “We need schools that have a critical mass so that kids don’t feel isolated.”

The group’s 50-year plan to transform the area around the Rose Quarter is ambitious, and a lot needs to happen to make the whole thing possible, including acquisition of the Portland Public Schools property near the Broadway Bridge. But the first steps are already underway, including an effort to get the Oregon Department of Transportation to cap the I-5 freeway that displaced thousands of families in the 1960s.

Albina Vision Trust, a nonprofit that seeks to redevelop Portland's largest historically Black neighborhood, won't support the proposed expansion of Interstate 5 in the Rose Quarter, according to an email obtained by WW. The group's support was key politically, in part because Albina Vision is exerting pressure to address historic injustices in the neighborhood, including the bulldozing of homes in the largely Black neighborhood to build the highway.

A state project to expand Interstate 5 through the Rose Quarter lost major support Tuesday after a community nonprofit leading an effort to revitalize the nearby Albina neighborhood and city, county and regional elected officials announced they no longer support the plan. In an email to the project’s manager and another Oregon Department of Transportation official, Albina Vision Trust Managing Director Winta Yohannes said the project doesn’t align with her group’s values. Elected leaders who testified against the project in January were among those who said Tuesday they supported Albina Vision Trust’s decision and that they too no longer support the project. Eudaly, the Portland City Council member who oversees the city’s transportation bureau, said Tuesday she will step down from her position on the project’s executive steering committee, calling it “the wrong project for the city,” and the existing Rose Quarter I-5 corridor “a monument to the racist legacy of our transportation system.”

Albina Vision Trust (AVT) has taken a major step toward the dream of restoring a historic Portland neighborhood. Calling it a “huge milestone,” the nonprofit announced today they’ve partnered with Edlen & Company to develop an affordable housing and community theater project in the Lower Albina district.

On Jan. 20, just two weeks after a Capitol siege rooted in white supremacy, a young poet helped lead us forward

Cleo Davis and Kayin Talton Davis are artists and activists who have made it their mission to preserve and celebrate African American history in Portland. Talton and Davis have a residency with the city archives to help the city think about reparations. Another project they’re involved with, the Albina Vision Trust, has plans to redevelop parts of the neighborhood that were bulldozed for development. But to truly fix the system, Davis says, the city needs to “make laws so it doesn’t happen again.”

AVT is looking to create a space and a place that is reflective of what we aspire to as a city and as a region in terms of equity and inclusion, but also one that builds upon the history of the Albina community. This is a community that has been devastated over the course of decades, at the expense of transportation policies and other institutional uses that have displaced hundreds of families.

Decades of distrust, displacement, and divestment are the foundations of the relationship between Portland’s Black Community whose roots are anchored in the Northeast Neighborhood of Albina and the numerous state and city offices of Portland. Restoring faith and trust with the Black Community is paramount at this juncture of the RQ Freeway project. On the table is an $800 million dollar project that, if executed with equity at the center, has the potential to make important strides to repairing the deeply damaged relationship.

The Portland School Board voted Tuesday night to give the nonprofit first rights of purchase to the Robert Blanchard Education Service Center, its central administration building nestled slightly north of Veterans Memorial Coliseum and between Interstate 5 and the Willamette River.

Portland Public Schools is not planning to sell its headquarters, at least not right now. But should district leaders decide to relocate, the first bid is likely to go to Albina Vision Trust, a nonprofit focused on revitalizing a part of Portland that was once a major hub of the city’s Black community. A resolution the PPS board approved Tuesday night allows the nonprofit the first chance at buying the property, should the district sell it.

Cleo and Kayin Talton Davis explain, “Racist housing policies in the past combined with construction projects that demolished homes led to more pavement and fewer parks, making Lower Albina one of the places that are disproportionately warmer today.” As we build the future, environmental stewardship will continue to be key to the #AlbinaVision. Environmental justice is racial justice.

Together with Colas Construction , POIC + Rosemary Anderson High School, LEVER Architecture and Edlen + Co, Albina Vision Trust will be developing Albina One, a 94-unit family-focused project. As the first development project in the Albina Vision, these units are designed to counter the intentional displacement of Black people from the neighborhood due to urban renewal, freeway siting, and long-term gentrification. The mix of one, two and three-bedroom units will serve young Portlanders, notably those that work in the trades. POICS + RAHS will support residents with culturally specific education, mentoring, family outreach, employment training, and career placement services for Black and BIPOC households.

Albina Vision is returning to Willamette Week Give!Guide again this year! Visit our campaign site to see our goals, our incentives, learn about Big Give Days and make a donation: https://giveguide.org/nonprofits/albina-vision-trust In a nutshell, Give!Guide is Portland's easiest path to end-of-year giving. The campaign begins on November 1 and closes at midnight December 31. Give!Guide is Willamette Week’s annual effort to raise funds for — and draw attention to — the good works of local nonprofits. G!G has raised over $40 million for hundreds of local nonprofits since inception in 2004.