ALBINA VISION TRUST, INC.

The story of Albina is the story of urban America.

Historically, Albina was home to 80% of Portland’s Black population. Dubbed “Harlem on the Willamette,” Lower Albina was a vibrant community with world-renowned jazz venues, family-owned small businesses, and single-family homes. Children played in walkable streets and neighbors looked out for one another. During the 1950s and 1960s, racist urban renewal policies displaced families and forced them to leave this stable and abundant community. Albina was classified “blighted” and redlined with properties condemned for cents on the dollar. Thousands of homes were demolished to build Interstate 5, Veterans Memorial Coliseum and the sprawling, 10.2-acre Portland Public Schools (PPS) headquarters.

Today, the entire neighborhood boasts just 12 total property owners across a nearly 100-acre footprint and a mere 66 units of existing housing concentrated in a single historic apartment building. The totality of the destruction of Lower Albina leaves us with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to restoratively redevelop at scale without displacing, disrupting or uprooting existing residents.

The values that guide us are:
1) Honor what was, what happened, and what could be;
2) Heal ourselves and our communities;
3) Build a place to live, work, and play;
4) Integrate arts in the process and product;
5) Reconnect to the River;
6) Be intentionally remarkable.