Beaumont-Wilshire’s second business district is experiencing a revitalization, but one distinct from the dramatic, upscale rebranding experienced by neighborhoods such as S.E. Division or the inner west side. The 42nd Avenue district, north of Fremont, encompasses the intersection of three neighborhoods: Cully, Concordia, and Beaumont-Wilshire, with Cully and Concordia historically among the most ethnically and racially diverse communities in Oregon. Taken as a whole, the community is also increasingly economically diverse, and therefore at risk of the kind of change that displaces or alienates long-term residents. (All too often these kinds of situations devolve into a protracted face-off between opponents of change, the city’s conflicting goals, and the market-driven forces of real estate appreciation.)
The N.E 42nd Avenue business district is taking a different path. Our 42nd Avenue is charged with implementing the Portland Development Commission’s (PDC’s) Neighborhood Prosperity Initiative (NPI). Implemented in 2011, the NPI is focused on community economic development at the neighborhood level. There are eight NPI networks, selected with a focus on neighborhoods that had been experiencing lagging commercial investments, a higher than citywide poverty rate, and a greater concentration of minority-owned or neighborhood-serving businesses. Each NPI network is an independent, community-led, economic development program. As such, Our 42nd Avenue is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit, with a board of directors made up of community members—residents, business owners, employees, and community leaders. Executive Director Michael DeMarco explains that the NPI mission is to facilitate community-driven initiatives—in effect, encouraging a self-help approach supported by grants, training, and local staffing.
Thus, while Our 42nd Avenue is driving the revitalization of the 42nd Avenue business district, it is doing so in service of the overriding goal of “driving the benefits of economic development equitably to the residents of this neighborhood.” The economic development DeMarco and his team foster is a mixture of business development and life-stabilizing employment via living wage jobs and land development. “Land development refers to what gets built or redeveloped in the neighborhood, providing access to economic development here,” he said. Development on 42nd Ave. is primarily adaptive-reuse, although there is new development underway with the mixed-use residential and commercial Makers’ Row building under construction on 42nd and Alberta, due to be completed in 2017.
As opposed to the rules and regulations approach to planning, Our 42nd Avenue does it up close and personal: embedded in the neighborhood, and well-integrated with property and business owners, community leaders, and the people who work in the neighborhood, collaborative relationships are established by district managers and their boards to implement specific projects that drive growth. Funded by the city and the county, but primarily PDC, the NPI is “a devolution of the city’s economic powers to the community,” according to DeMarco. Specifically, as part of NPI, Our 42nd Avenue utilizes tax increment revenue—which is to say that a small amount of the tax revenue from this neighborhood stays here to fund the initiative. The amount of revenue is very small, about $120,000 per year, he said, and so they have to leverage it shrewdly across a number of projects to promote their objectives, which include maintaining business diversity and entrepreneurial access. Our 42nd Avenue will facilitate the purchase of properties by community members by helping the buyer get tenants or by paying their legal fees. In cases where a building is being constructed or re-purposed, it will sometimes help to jump-start new businesses by paying part of their rent for a few years until they get on their feet, helping in this way to ensure that neighborhood stakeholders are not priced out of their neighborhood, even as the improvements to commercial properties enhance the value of the business district.
As with similar transitional neighborhoods with a sizable long-term population of lower-income residents and the businesses that serve them, the community that Our 42nd Avenue serves wants the economic development in the neighborhood to meet their needs and to provide opportunities for them. They don’t want to see the business district populated with the kind of chain stores and restaurants—even local chains—that dominate other rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods around Portland, but rather a district reflective of themselves. It’s economic development with an eye towards maximizing the benefit to the neighborhood, as opposed to maximizing the total return. Asked about his vision for Our 42nd Avenue, DeMarco responded that he wants the 42nd Avenue business district “to be the kind of place that helps stabilize people and establish relations across generations and cultural boundaries—a place where people from all walks of life would see this neighborhood as a connecting place.” That’s an aspiration all of us could share for our own neighborhood.
Additional information can be accessed via website (www.42ave.org) and Facebook.