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In the early 60s, the Oregon Highway Department (now known as the Oregon Department of Transportation, or ODOT) tore apart Portland’s largest Black neighborhood, the Albina District, to build the Interstate 5 freeway.
Sixty years later, Albina Vision Trust is leading the charge to repair the damage. Earlier this year, the nonprofit won a massive $450 million grant from the federal Department of Transportation to build a cover over the freeway at the Rose Quarter. The project will create 8 acres of new real estate and knit the ravaged parts of Albina back together.
The grant came after AVT played an extended game of hardball, forcing ODOT to change its design for its long proposed expansion of I-5 in Albina to include the freeway caps.
Rukaiyah Adams founded AVT in 2017 as a response to the devastating impact that a slew of government projects had on Albina: not just I-5, but also construction of Portland Public Schools’ headquarters and Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
“We are not trying to undo damage, we are trying to create something greater than ever existed,” says AVT executive director Winta Yohannes.
Last year, the nonprofit broke ground on a 94-unit apartment complex, Albina 1. It’s teaming up with the Portland Trail Blazers to reconnect Albina to the Willamette River. And it’s negotiating what could be its biggest deal yet—the acquisition of PPS headquarters. Redeveloping that site, which sits on 10.5 acres of land, could transform the neighborhood. “We are talking about an opportunity to bring back thousands of families to Albina in the next decade,” says AVT spokesman J.T. Flowers.
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