The winning proposal to develop Portland’s Williams-Russell block calls for affordable rental and ownership housing, low-cost retail and office space, and a central plaza and garden.

How the project team gets there is perhaps as interesting as the development itself. The effort is led by Black-owned firms, including an experienced local developer who recently went out on her own.

The project team is largely composed of firms based in North and Northeast Portland. They will answer to a newly created nonprofit corporation made up of local community leaders, most of whom are Black.

All the $71 million project must do is offer restorative justice to a Black community torn apart by decades of displacement, gentrification and neglect, provide affordable housing in an increasingly expensive urban environment, and reactivate a keystone block that was left vacant for decades by the same organizations whose wrongs are now being righted.

Enter Anyeley Hallova, who is coordinating the project team.

Hallova, founder of Adre, is leading the project alongside two affordable housing developers – Community Development Partners and Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives. Many of the principals involved have worked with each other before, but it is Hallova who must bring them all together.

According to her admirers, she’s uniquely suited to that task.

“She’s kind of masterful at coalescing disparate groups of people and galvanizing people around a vision,” said Tom Cody, managing partner at Project^. “She’s an incredibly good manager and coordinator, and she’ll bring those skills to something so collaborative and vision-based.”

Hallova founded Adre last year after 12 years as a partner at Project^. There, she earned a reputation for socially driven development projects, often with sustainable elements such as cross-laminated timber construction and strict energy performance goals. Hallova led development of the Meyer Memorial Trust headquarters project, and was part of the team that delivered the Oregon Conservation Center for The Nature Conservancy.

The Williams-Russell project, also known as the Hill Block development, is part of Hallova’s mission to develop projects that benefit the wider community.

“I specifically started this company with mission-oriented projects in mind,” she said.

Hallova is quick to deflect attention to other project team members – housing developers CDP and PCRI, Colas Construction, LEVER Architecture and Hood Design Studio. Only Hood Design Studio – a Black-owned landscape architecture firm in Oakland, California – is not based in North-Northeast Portland. That means most of the project team is within walking distance of each other’s offices, and they share a sense of place.

“This is also our community, too,” Hallova said.

The vision for the development is set out in the project team’s response to a request for proposals from Prosper Portland and the project working group. The Adre-led team is proposing affordable rental and ownership housing, office and commercial space, and a public plaza and garden.

The project team’s plan calls for a five-story, 94-unit multifamily building. Rents would be restricted to levels affordable at 30 percent to 80 percent of area median income. The project team is also looking into state funding for a possible early education center on the building’s ground floor.

Separately, 22 for-sale homes would be available in attached one-, two- and three-bedroom configurations. Homebuyers would be required to complete education and counseling.

The housing developers plan to seek out persons who were displaced by the construction of Interstate 5 and what is now a sprawling Legacy Health campus.

“The goal of the preference policy is really trying to reach out to the community that was impacted by the local policy,” said Jessica Woodruff, director of development for Community Development Partners.

Gap financing from the Portland Housing Bureau and affordable-housing tax credits are expected to help finance the project, Woodruff said.

The commercial building would comprise approximately 41,000 square feet, conceptualized as a “communal office,” Hallova said. The building would function as a business incubator, with workforce training also possibly included.

“What’s great about this project is that we can create a beautiful new building, Class-A office space, but figure out a way to have affordable rents,” Hallova said.

The aim is to “create an ecosystem” for emerging businesses – particularly those owned by people of color and other historically marginalized groups, Hallova said.

“We see this not just as a place for established businesses to be in, but for new businesses to incubate and grow,” she said.

A measure of restorative justice is being sought for the Black community in North-Northeast Portland, where 171 families – 74 percent of whom were Black – were displaced by urban renewal projects in the early 1970s. Those projects were led by the Portland Development Commission (now Prosper Portland) and Emanuel Hospital (now Legacy Health), according to a Prosper Portland history.

The Hill Block site held a commercial center for the surrounding Black community during the mid-20th century before it was condemned and demolished. In the decades since, the 1.7-acre block has sat empty.

In 2017, Prosper Portland officials rediscovered a 1980 deed provision requiring Legacy to develop the site. That kick-started discussions on what should be done with the block.

Prosper Portland continues to provide support to the project working group and the project team. Legacy has agreed to convey the property to the Williams-Russell Community Development Corporation at no cost. The CDC will serve as the project team’s client.

“The powers that be have recognized this historic injustice and are giving the land back to the community and supported development on the site,” Hallova said.

The firms involved with the project are keen to right past wrongs.

The project team is “dedicated and poised to honor and represent those individuals that had land, property and generational wealth-building opportunities taken away from them when the development of the hospital and the interstate corridor occurred in the areas,” said Kymberly Horner, executive director of PCRI. “It is our mission and our goal to try to restore those injustices that occurred, and that is why we put our name in the ring to develop the site to honor the past and secure the future for those individuals and families to have a place to come back to and call home.”

The project team is aiming to create a model for restorative-justice development not just in Portland, but in other American cities where Black neighborhoods were displaced.

“If you came to the city of Portland to visit, you might want to come and visit and learn the history,” Hallova said.

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After years of conversations, a project work group is seeking a developer for the Williams & Russell project in North Portland.

A was issued Feb. 11, and responses are due by April 8.

The RFP marks a major stepping-stone in the yearslong effort to right historic wrongs at the 1.7-acre property bordered by North Williams and Vancouver avenues and Russell and Knott streets.

A developer’s values, familiarity with the community and commitment to an open process will be crucial, members of the work group said.

“We’re also looking for the right development partner to make sure that whatever happens here is responsive to the outcomes that we’re looking for,” said Justice Rajee, a member of the work group and a longtime community advocate.

The property is owned by Legacy Health. The hospital group has pledged to convey the property for free to a nonprofit entity that will be formed for the project, according to the RFP.

The push to build a values-driven project on the vacant parcel dates to 2017, when Prosper Portland officials discovered a 1980 deed provision that required Emanuel Hospital (now Legacy) to develop the property by 1990. That discovery, which was first reported by the 91��Ƶ, led to a memorandum of understanding involving Prosper Portland, Legacy, the city of Portland and the work group.

“The idea is that there is a restorative justice component,” said Bryson Davis, another member of the work group and a lawyer at Sussman Shank. “Some of the goal is righting the wrongs of the hospital expansion, and since the hospital expansion.”

The property once had a large mixed-use building known as the Hill Block, which housed Black-owned businesses and featured a distinctive onion-shaped cupola that now resides in Dawson Park. The building was razed, as were 158 residences and 30 total commercial properties that were located in the heart of Portland’s Black community in the early 1970s as part of an expansion of Emanuel Hospital. The land has sat vacant for about 50 years as a gentrification-fueled building boom swept over the neighborhood.

The eventual development is likely to include housing. About $7.5 million has been earmarked for the project by the Portland Housing Bureau, Davis said. The project also stands to get millions of dollars from Prosper Portland via urban renewal area funds; an exact figure has not been determined.

Prosper Portland’s board in March 2020 added the property to the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area, making it eligible for millions of dollars in tax-increment financing.

“The expectation is we’ll have some funding from them, but we haven’t gotten a number,” Davis said.

Funding from Prosper Portland is expected to be “somewhere north of $10 million,” he added.

The project also has money for predevelopment and operations remaining from a Meyer Memorial Trust grant.

Project work group members expect the project will attract Black-owned contractors and a developer with experience handling values-driven local projects.

“The focus is really on the who – who is on the team, what their experience is and their record doing projects that have a community voice,” Davis said.

Capacity also will be important, he added.

“We’re not going to pick a developer who will immediately start in over their heads,” he said.

Whichever team is chosen, a “semi-public process” will continue to be used in which meetings with various advisory groups take place, Davis said.

“There’s always going to be the voices at the table that we want at the table for the project as it moves forward,” he said. “The idea behind this is to keep everything open, so you don’t have too many cooks in the kitchen, but you can see the kitchen and talk to the cooks.”

Affordable housing is a likely component, given funding from the Housing Bureau and the work group’s goals. The RFP mentions both affordable rental housing and affordable home ownership as potential developments.

“There’s a preference for ownership, but there’s a recognition that you can impact a higher number of people with rental,” Davis said. “The shape of the housing is still to be determined as far as what’s feasible, and what makes sense and what has the highest impact.”

The work group also expressed a desire for education and workforce training space, community space and entrepreneur space.

Legacy’s ongoing involvement in the property that it let sit vacant for decades is another open question. The RFP states that Legacy Health “will convey the 1.7-acre property for no consideration to the body selected by the Project Working Group to implement the project that supports and honors Portland’s African-American community as described in the MOU.” The RFP also mentions the “potential for Legacy-owned or leased medical facilities based on the (project work group’s) direction.”

It’s not clear what type of medical facilities Legacy envisions for the property. A Legacy spokesman could not be reached for comment.

Project backers hope Williams & Russell will serve as a model for developments focused on restorative and racial justice.

“Our intention,” Rajee said, “is to honor what the community has stated.”

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Prosper Portland‘s board voted unanimously Wednesday to bring the historic Hill Block parcel into the Interstate Urban Renewal Area.

The move expands the urban renewal area’s geographic boundaries to include the 1.7-acre block. The board also agreed to raise the URA’s debt cap by $67 million to allow funding for development.

The moves indicate the future of the Hill Block parcel – stakeholders now prefer to call it Williams and Russell – is beginning to come into focus after more than two years of study, outreach and conversation that were preceded by decades of inaction and neglect by city and health care leaders.

Raising the URA’s debt cap provides capacity for an injection of tax-increment funding to redevelop the vacant block in North Portland. Approximately $45 million will be available for affordable housing and $20 million for economic development, said Lisa Abuaf, development manager for Prosper Portland. Other dollars will cover administrative costs.

The board’s approval followed tense testimony from some residents who said the agency is repeating past mistakes and not adequately consulting with the African-American community. Prosper Portland officials disagreed, saying that after extensive discussions by a project work group led by African-American community members, it was time to move forward.

“What I’m struggling to understand is why there continues to be such tension,” Prosper Portland Commissioner Alisha Moreland-Capuia said. “I don’t think the history is lost on any of us. We can’t revise history, but we certainly can work to reconcile it, and that is what we have earnestly set as our goals. I understand the anger is real, but we’re not going to get anywhere if that’s where we stand.”

The parcel between North Russell and Knott streets and North Williams and Vancouver avenues is fraught with the troublesome history of Portland redevelopment. It was home to a large commercial building that was a center for black commerce before its demolition in the early 1970s by the city of Portland and the Portland Development Commission (now Prosper Portland) for a planned Emanuel Hospital expansion.

That expansion never happened, and the increasingly valuable parcel has since sat vacant. In 2017, Prosper Portland officials rediscovered deed language requiring Legacy Health Systems to develop the property. That led to an August 2017 public announcement of a joint effort to plan for the property’s future.

A move in August 2017 to bring the property within the URA was halted after neighborhood leaders protested at a Prosper Portland board meeting that they were not adequately consulted. A work group made up of church, community and city representatives was formed and given broad powers to shape the property’s future. The group has met 19 times and conducted public outreach.

“They spent much of the past couple of years focused on two key areas: Understanding the development-related opportunities and constraints, and where community resources could come from,” Abuaf said. “And, also, undertaking community outreach to understand what are the community priorities on the site.”

Two members of the North/Northeast Community Development Initiative board voted against increasing the URA’s maximum indebtedness. The co-chairs, Gwen Thompson and Maurice Rahming, registered their concerns in a letter to Prosper Portland Executive Director Kimberly Branam.

“Our support depends on the successful transfer of the Legacy-owned property to an African-American community organization or significant progress towards this goal,” Thompson and Rahming wrote.

They also expressed concern that setting aside funding to develop the property while Legacy Health Systems still owns it “sends the wrong message.”

“We strongly recommend,” the letter states, “when working with a large corporation with a history of predatory development in the North-Northeast community, that you exercise caution and provide appropriate consideration to the message this sends to the impacted and displaced community.”

At Wednesday’s meeting, Branam said the agency’s current drive to develop the site is an attempt to ameliorate, rather than extend, the city’s 20th-century land grab.

“There is nobody on the board or on staff that is an apologist for urban renewal,” she said.

Legacy Health Systems has agreed, in a memorandum of understanding, to donate the block to a development team selected by the work group. The group is preparing an initial request for interest from developers, nonprofits and any other organizations that want to participate in the project. The request for interest is likely to be issued after the work group meets in April, Abuaf said. A request for proposals would follow this fall, she said.

The Portland Housing Bureau is involved with an eye toward providing affordable housing on the parcel, Abuaf said.

“PHB is a key partner on this one,” she said. “Affordable homeownership or rental units are a priority coming out of that conversation.”

Prosper Portland has not modeled development scenarios for the site, Abuaf said.

“We really have started with what are the project working group’s priorities for the site, and undertaking a pretty robust community engagement process,” she said.

Officials are well aware of the possibilities for a sizable parcel in an increasingly dense area of urban Portland.

“It’s a pretty large parcel, so you could have multiple uses on the site and perhaps multiple projects,” Abuaf said.

The post Updated: Community development eyed for Hill Block parcel appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Hill Block Project Working Group has approved a memorandum of understanding giving the panel broad authority to shape development on the vacant North Portland parcel.

The agreement, passed Wednesday, gives the 25-member group the task of selecting a developer and choosing a development program on the 1.7-acre block bounded by North Vancouver and Williams avenues and Knott and Russell streets.

The block has sat vacant since the early 1970s, when the Hill Block building and other businesses and residences were condemned and demolished by the city of Portland as part of Emanuel Hospital‘s expansion project. In all, 188 properties were demolished, forever changing the historically African-American neighborhood.

Prosper Portland officials last year discovered a 1980 deed to Emanuel (now part of Legacy Health) that said construction should be concluded by Jan. 1, 1990. Prosper Portland officials last year gave Legacy notice that the agency intended to enforce the deed. That started a round of discussions that resulted in the two sides agreeing to form a working group.

Now the working group faces a tight timeline to make decisions on the property. Members must weigh whether to recommend the property be brought into the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area. Joining the URA could bring a source of funding, but also constraints, working group members said at Wednesday’s meeting.

“I think everyone understands what’s at stake in terms of funding,” said Alisha Moreland-Capuia, a Prosper Portland board member who is serving on the working group.

Any request for urban renewal funding would be made to the North/Northeast Community Development Initiative Advisory Committee, a group set up by Prosper Portland to evaluate spending decisions in the 3,990-acre urban renewal area. The Interstate Corridor URA has $32 million to spend by June 2021.

The eventual development on the Hill Block could involve some mix of office space for Legacy, affordable housing, community and nonprofit space and perhaps other uses. The working group will have to lean on Prosper Portland staff for development expertise because few members of the working group come from industry backgrounds.

The decreasing availability of capital should spur the group to get moving, said Stephen Green, a working group member who represents the Black Investment Consortium for Economic Progress.

“Development financing is getting much more difficult nationally right now,” he said.

Funding for the group itself is also in question. Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office provided $15,000 to get the working group off the ground, but city officials warned not to expect additional funding. One member of the working group asked if Legacy had considered contributing financially to group. Legacy’s representative on the board, Charles Wilhoite, said Legacy had not discussed funding the working group.

Wilhoite did not object when working group members voted to make the health care provider a non-voting member of the board.

“Legacy is here in the spirit of collaboration,” he said.

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