Category Archives: Concordia News

By Cathy McCarthy

Hi, Concordia!

Last month, we were delighted to host District 2 Councilor Dan Ryan at our September monthly meeting. He shared his perspective and answered questions on a wide range of topics—from services for unhoused neighbors, to small business support, to building stronger connections with neighborhood associations. It was an open, informative conversation, and we look forward to continuing the dialogue.

I wanted to share with you that over the coming months, neighbors will have two more opportunities to connect directly with our District 2 leaders. In October, we will welcome Council President Elana Pirtle-Guiney, and in January 2026, Councilor Sameer Kanal.

Having access to your representatives means being able to ask questions, raise concerns, and share ideas with the people empowered to act on them. These conversations are also a chance to meet fellow neighbors, discover shared priorities, and show our leaders what matters most to the Concordia community. You don’t need to be an expert—just bring your perspective and your voice.

Speaking of civic engagement, don’t miss the November CNA Board meeting when we will hold board elections and vote on our updated bylaws. All Concordia neighbors are invited to attend, and your participation is vital.

Half of the board seats are up for election this year, including Chair; East 1; Northwest 1; Southwest 1; and At-Large positions 1, 3, and 5. Even if current board members run again, any qualified neighbor is welcome to put their name forward. Membership is open to all residents, property owners, and business licensees, 14 years of age or older, as well as governmental agencies, educational institutions, and nonprofit organizations, located within the district boundaries as defined in the map below. All details are available in the bylaws.

The updated bylaws are available for review at tinyurl.com/CNABylaws.

If you have questions about the election or upcoming meetings, please reach out to chair@concordiapdx.org or to me at AL4@concordiapdx.org.

Key Dates 

Wednesday, October 8, 6 – 8 pm
Community and Board Meeting with Council President Elana Pirtle-Guiney

Wednesday, November 12, 6 – 8 pm
CNA Board Elections and voting on updated bylaws

Wednesday, January 14, 6 – 8:00 pm
Community and Board meeting with D2 Councilor Sameer Kanal

By Keith K. Daellenbach | Contributing Writer

Have you ever wondered where wastewater goes when you flush the toilet? If that toilet is in Portland, it very likely ends up at the Columbia Boulevard Wastewater Treatment Plant on North Columbia Boulevard. This facility, operated by the City of Portland Bureau of Environmental Services (BES), continuously serves a population of 650,000 people.

Before 1952, raw sewage went directly into the Willamette River and Columbia Slough. Today, through nearly 75 years of incremental investment, the treatment plant processes an average of approximately 70 million gallons of wastewater per day. During periods of wet weather, the plant can process up to 450 million gallons per day. The big pipe system, a $1.4 billion investment (ca. 2011) that nearly eliminated combined sewer overflows, can hold 119 million gallons of sewage – sewage that would otherwise overflow into the Willamette River.

Large screens at the incoming Headworks Facility (built in 1996) filter out sticks, rocks, and litter, which are then trucked to a landfill. Next, the wastewater flows into an array of primary clarifiers, which are rectangular, concrete-lined pools, causing solids to settle as the wastewater movement slows. A bottomscraping mechanism removes sludge. Then, the liquid flows into aeration basins, where air is supplied. Trillions of microorganisms break down the organic material in an aerobic reaction, which creates byproducts of water and carbon dioxide. The wastewater then moves to the secondary clarifiers.

Circular clarifiers are the final step in separating fluids from solids. Alongside the eight existing secondary clarifiers, two new secondary clarifiers (each of which is 28-feet deep by 150-feet in diameter) were recently added to the plant and substantially increased its capacity. Wastewater from the aeration basins enters from the bottom center of these large clarifi ers and slows to a carefully designed fl uid speed, allowing remaining solids to separate for collection. These new clarifiers, located at the north end of the plant adjacent to the Columbia Slough, are part of a $515 million, seven-year upgrade aimed at increasing treatment capacity and reliability. The entire project is scheduled for completion in early 2027.

Given that the plant is in a low-lying area just above the water table on unstable soil, the potential for liquefaction during a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake is very high. Sophisticated construction methods were employed to construct a grid of concrete grout columns within the soil, extending nearly 70 feet down to provide a foundation designed to allow the new clarifi ers to remain operational following a signifi cant earthquake.

As the wastewater leaves the plant, it is treated with sodium hypochlorite to kill microorganisms. This disinfected effl uent is conveyed 2.3 miles north in a pipe to the Columbia River at river mile 105.5, where it is dechlorinated before entering the main stem of the Columbia River in approximately 43 feet of water off the north side of Hayden Island.

Waste also departs the plant as a biosolid. It is collected from the clarifiers, and, unlike the liquid effluent, is broken down in an anaerobic process that is largely free of oxygen. In ten large, above-ground, 90-foot to 120-foot diameter tanks called “digesters”, the sludge is heated to 95 degrees Fahrenheit, where microorganisms reduce the biomass content with methane and carbon dioxide byproducts. The solid, digested material is dewatered via fi lter presses and centrifuges, and then trucked 200 miles east, where it is applied to agricultural land in Eastern Oregon as a nutrientrich source of fertilizer to grow crops for animal feed. Nearly 100 percent of the renewable methane biogas byproduct is captured and added to NW Natural’s gas distribution network to serve as truck fuel eliminating the need for 1.3 million gallons of diesel valued at $3 million annually.

Investing in wastewater treatment plants replaces aging infrastructure, accommodates population growth with additional capacity, and responds to new regulations requiring enhanced treatment. Portland is famous for its pristine Bull Run drinking water supply near Mount Hood. At the other end of the water-use cycle, we are fortunate to have the Columbia Boulevard Wastewater Treatment Plant in North Portland. Through continual investment and upgrades, BES protects Portland’s public health and the environment.

By Kyle Stuart

CNA and Concordia News mourn the loss of our longtime contributor and friend, Marsha Sandman, who passed away on August 2nd from chronic lymphocytic leukemia at the age of 76. Her son Kyle would like to share her story.

Marsha was born November 24th, 1948 in the back bay of Boston to second-generation Jewish immigrants. Her uncles were the first bagel bakers in Boston and started the Boston Bagel Company. Marsha had an older sister named Ronda.

Always the black sheep of the family, Marsha got married in her early twenties and moved as far away as she could to Los Angeles, where she began pursuing her education in art. Marsha initially studied ceramics, but one day wandered over to the metal-smithing classroom and never looked back.

She was a free spirit and after she finished school, left L.A. without her husband and headed north to Washington, settling in Duvall. There she continued to explore her creative expression and jewelry making, and generally refused to conform to the norms of society at the time. Some called Marsha a hippie, a title she wore proudly.

Her wanderlust soon took hold and she headed north once again to Fairbanks, Alaska, where her creative talents – and business – blossomed. She launched MJ Sandman Jewelry and by the early ’80s her fi ne silver and gold jewelry, inspired by the raw Alaskan landscape, was carried in galleries across the country. Fairbanks is where she met her second husband, Bill, and they had me. During her time in Alaska, Marsha worked on the Alaska pipeline and in real estate.

In 1989, Marsha left Alaska (without her husband again) and settled in Gleneden Beach, Oregon, to begin her most audacious adventure; raising me on her own. Imagine a 39-year-old single mother, loading up an ‘85 Toyota Tercel wagon with an 8-year old, camping gear and a dog, and driving the 1,700-mile gravel Alcan Highway from Fairbanks to a yet-to-be determined destination on the West Coast to start fresh. We settled on the Oregon Coast. I’m still in awe of how she managed, but manage she did.

We found a supportive community there and Marsha continued to build her jewelry business. To provide more steady income, Marsha pursued a career as a residential appraiser. She worked for the county assessor’s offi ce in Newport for a few years, then started Pride Appraisals – where she built a sterling reputation and a solid book of business.

Marsha loved to travel – frequently visiting friends in Hawaii, Mexico and adventuring off to the Dominican Republic, Argentina and South Korea. She was curious about people and culture, and was fearless in her pursuit of understanding.

In 2005, Marsha was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. She enjoyed many years without the need for intervention, and in 2013, underwent her first round of cancer treatment. In 2014 she retired from appraising and moved in with me and my family in the Concordia neighborhood.

Marsha quickly embraced her new Portland community, embedding herself in the Creative Metal Arts Guild, the Concordia News staff , and the neighborhood at large. She continued to make jewelry and had showings at the annual Gathering of the Guilds and craft fairs around the metro area. She adored the Beatles and made it a tradition to see the NowHere band cover the White Album at the Alberta Rose Theatre. She loved a good story and attended The Moth and Seven Deadly Sins – always recounting the bravery, skill and vulnerability of the storytellers.

She loved interviewing neighbors for Concordia News. She genuinely wanted to know your story. She listened with intent and empathy and if you stuck around, she’d tell you her adventures, like the time she hitchhiked a ride on a helicopter in the Alaska bush. Or the summer she lived in a teepee with a trumpet under her bed to ward off bears. Or how she earned the nickname Fireball working the Alaska pipeline catching her boots on fire.

My mom and I were a two-person team who always looked after one another. As she got older, I did more of the looking after. My family is grateful to have shared our Concordia home with her over the past decade. Thank you for being part of her story.

Marsha was a creative, curious and vibrant woman. She leaves behind her granddaughter, Ari, her daughter-in-law, Patience, her sister Ronda, and many close friends she collected in Farmingham, Fairbanks, the Oregon Coast, and Portland. She left all her loved ones with many memories of a life well lived.

By Megan Cecil-Gobble and Patrick Cecil | Contributing Writers

Taking a walk through our bountiful neighborhood and through unique semi-rural alleyways, you will find naturalized plants bearing edible fruits or herbs. But some, like the Himalayan Blackberry (Rubus armeniacus), are both sustenance and nuisance. How can they be tamed to make room for both walking paths and berry picking?

We, Patrick and Megan, have been growing berries ever since we relocated to Portland in 1995. In our first year, we planted marionberries, raspberries, and gooseberries. We also tamed a Hima- layan blackberry that had rooted in our backyard. With these yummy plants, we learned the “cycles” of the berry plants.

Blackberries are a biannual berry producer. The first year, a primocane grows, reaching 10 to 20 feet long by the end of the summer / early fall. It has no branches growing from it, although it can bifurcate (split). The second year, floricanes grow from the primocane leaf junctions. These grow about one to three feet long, and end with fl owers and fi nally berries (after the local bees visit) from mid July to September. During the second winter, the cane dies. If it reaches the ground before dying, it can grow another plant at the terminus and spreads into big patches.

To clear blackberries from your yard or alley, you can hire a herd of goats (look online). Or you can cut out the new primo- canes to reduce the number of canes the following year. Patrick has been doing this in our alley for many years now, and the patches are small enough for cars and people to pass through. You may have to take time to remove older dead growth, but eventually you will see light through the bramble patch. Concordia alleys are part of our public access, and helping to keep them open is a public service. We walkers thank you.

If you want to tame berries, string up the primocanes against a fence or wall as they grow. By the middle of autumn you will have 10-20 feet of cane at shoulder to above-head height. These will retain their leaves through the winter. Cut out the dying second year primocanes to keep the patch from spreading out. When spring comes, you will have a profusion of flowers at waist and head height, perfect for picking in the late summer.

If you have a choice, plant thornless blackberries. We have several Triple- Crowns trained in our small backyard, and pick quarts of berries each week from Mid-July through August. They are phenomenal and like Curad bandages, ouch-less.

Megan and Patrick Cecil-Gobble have lived in Portland for 30 years. They continue to hike, bike, and survive happily with grandkids nearby to keep them on their toes.

By Joshua Lickteig | Contributing Writer

All that is lush and nourishing in nature

Sacred recitatives in the evening’s chorales,

Attention in a journey of life.

The ordinary speech of some memory offers in its

Patterns different choices, careful where order itself

Is an entanglement. May we really guess

How its rhythm is being expected?

The red breasted finch quizzes an aphid:

On a plinth this tenor sings each day mythic glory,

Arrives as if opening the twelve minute tune to Sunny

Rollins’ “What’s New?” – And mid

Any passion’s ghost reconstructing yesterday

With spirit plumb, also this day examines in glimpses

The neighborhood newspaper’s flaps in breezy gusts

From the open doors south and west in the garage,

On a found trapezium that will become a table, or desk.

Our narrator whose responsibility may also be as audient,

Before planning an additional central chorus for later in the day

Recalls last night in another part of town a harpsichord’s string,

Just before the concert, snapped with an edgeless twang.

Of sudden blur many purple lupines beside the road, mullein reaching skyward

And transport to a rumination weeks earlier on Mount Rainier

Adjacent the trail to Panorama Point over a glacial stream. By its waterfall

Quite windy. Marmots scurrying, collecting, and grazing.

There are painted paper cylinder lampshades inside the old park lodge below

Of 64 alpine flowers. A steeply pitched roof with exposed Alaska cedar

Log framing red huckleberry and salal above the fifty foot fireplace of

The building’s west. From avalanche lily to marsh marigold,

Shrubby cinquefoil, trillium, mountain ash . . .

Resuming the aria, flute and oboes seem to join the finch

Just as Bach might have borrowed

In gospel settings from other composers. Nearby

Mending of clothespins mid-wire in the gleam

Of August, a handkerchief flies away, finds respite

Draped over jade. Our attention selects what kind of light

In the undulations of the mind?

At times it commends pathways with

Fullness to harmony and balance

As if all at once seen

On a slow morning, opening timeworn books.

Some slide like a juniper wood barn door

And bow to the heat.

By Greg Bishop | Contributing Writer

Greetings neighbor! Allow me to introduce myself, I am one of the squirrels from the park across the street. Don’t worry about which one–I know you can’t tell us apart anyway. 

But for the record, I’m an eastern fox squirrel, with the scientific name, Sciurus niger. It’s funny to me because it sounds like “scurry-us”, and we are always scurrying–you have to scurry if you want to survive in the wild! 

That’s right, even though to you I’m just an adorable rodent in your peaceful local greenspace, I’m actually out here every day fighting for survival! 

I’ve got no complaints–how could I? This is the only life I know, and squirrels aren’t much for deep contemplation about alternative universes anyway. But I will say this, I don’t much care for your dog. Boy, I wish this park had stricter leash laws. Like, you’d have to clean up dog poop for a month if you get caught! Surviving in the wild is slightly harder with an obnoxious breedadoodle constantly chasing you up a tree!

Not that dogs are serious predators–they rarely catch one of us. But still! Every time some doofus corgi (that’d get its butt kicked by a raccoon) runs after me, it interrupts my foraging time! 

And foraging time, although it’s my favorite activity in all of squirreldom, is a lot of hard work!

But yeah, I guess other than foraging and avoiding real predators (like Cooper’s hawks), the rest of our time is spent… well—you know there’s only so many things we wild animals do with our time. 

Ahem– 

In regards to squirrel reproduction, we aren’t necessarily a species to admire. At least the males, who don’t really do jack squat for the kids. Squirrel moms do their best, but growing up in the wild can be dangerous!

It sounds kinda funny to think of your local park as the wild, doesn’t it? 

Well—all that word means is the place where animals live. Technically, this is both your neighborhood and your habitat. But it’s not just yours, or just mine either. In fact, there’s all sorts of different organisms that live here: birds, beetles, worms, ants, and slugs. Plus all the plant and fungal and protozoal and bacterial (+/- viral) life that you can’t even see! 

Believe it or not, I’m actually on the larger size for animals in this park. It wasn’t always that way, but a population of bears just isn’t sustainable in most suburbs. Most of the animals here are tiny and inconspicuous. I have to admit it, I’m guilty of ignoring the little guys and tend to just focus on the animals that are most obvious during the day, when I’m active. 

Which pretty much means crows.

We’ve got a collegial relationship, us squirrels and crows. Sure, if a squirrel gets run over (it’s so hard to decide which way to go!), crows’ll help themselves to our flattened carcass. But we rarely fight, even though we use a lot of the same resources. 

And that’s just fine with me. 

I like it here–I’m happy to be alive. I don’t want to fight anybody (except, sometimes during breeding season, I do get unusually angry at most other squirrels I come across). So thank you for leashing up your dog, driving carefully, and sparing us the peanuts (it seems counterintuitive, I know, but it’s actually not the best for us long-term. Seriously, thank you for your kind intentions but please stop!). 

It’s lovely to have you as neighbors, and I appreciate you keeping this nice park here for us to live and die and undertake our greatest purpose in life: being a squirrel 

This wild life is precious.

Greg Bishop is a lifelong animal lover, veterinarian, and part time cartoonist. He works at various veterinary practices in the Portland area, teaches, writes and illustrates things, too. He lives near Wilshire Park with his family, but mostly he stares at the squirrels and wonders what they’re thinking. 

Black Educational Center Building and Murals Demolished to Make Way for New Albina Headstart School 

By Leo Newman | Contributing Writer

The recently abandoned LifeWorks Umoja Center on the corner of NE 17th and Alberta Street, which bore a well-loved mural of Malcolm X was quietly demolished in May during the week of the Civil Rights icon’s 100th birthday. This marks the second time this year that a historic brick building on NE Alberta was demolished for safety concerns, (the first being the Cowley building on 28th Ave., which was demolished in January.) Since the 1970s, LifeWorks Umoja Center has been a nexus point in specialized education and community outreach for Portland’s African American youth. 

 In the 1970’s, the Albina Mural Project produced several murals depicting scenes from African American history across NE Portland. Artist Lewis Harris and students of the Black Educational Center painted two such murals on exterior walls of their school in 1984. The murals depicted Civil Rights leaders; one of Malcolm X and one of Marcus Garvey. Also painted on its walls were murals of Harriet Tubman and images of a few bygone neighborhood institutions like the Cotton Club and the Alberta Streetcar. At the time of its demolition, the piece, officially titled “Black Pride,” was the second-oldest surviving mural in Portland.

The Black Educational Center

The Black Educational Center School (BEC) opened in May of 1970 as a full time summer program under the direction of veteran Portland educator and activist Ron Herndon.

Born in Kansas, Herndon moved to Portland in 1968 to attend Reed College, where he successfully pressured the faculty to create a Black Studies program after organizing 30 others to occupy the college’s financial office shortly before Christmas. 

Shortly after graduating, Herndon set out to design a school tailored to the needs of Black children. Majority Black schools in North Portland, like Jefferson High, suffered low test scores and faced threats of closure. In efforts to desegregate, the district kept a tight cap on the number of Black teachers in majority Black schools and bused a growing percentage of Black students into SW and SE to attend majority white schools. Early education programs and the neighborhood’s only middle school were both desegregated in this way. 

The district pressured parents who volunteered their children for the busing program to sign forms pledging that they wouldn’t return their students to local high schools like Jefferson or Grant. Black students were purposefully scattered across the district. The strict bus schedules to and from school prevented them from getting involved in afterschool programs at their new schools and estranged them from their neighborhood friends.  Former board member Lolenzo Poe says this left them isolated and defenseless against cruel classmates and teachers. 

“The whole notion that somehow you were going to learn more sitting next to White kids than Black kids is almost humorous,” says Poe. “We are still suffering from the tragedy that was busing and integration… it broke up our community.”

Operated out of the historic Vernon Library building on NE 17th (just south of the recently demolished structure), the BEC emphasized academic excellence, self-confidence, and a thorough awareness of Afro-American history and culture. In the Fall of 1973, the BEC welcomed its first class of full-time grade school students. 

“Black parents trusted us enough to work with their children that first summer,” Herndon remembers. “Parents had to pay tuition, because we weren’t getting funding from anybody. It just strikes me, the confidence Black parents had to allow us to work with their kids.”

At the same time, Herndon expanded the BEC’s operations in several directions. The organization obtained the adjacent brick building on the corner of Alberta as well as the building directly west for use as an administrative building. In 1971, the Black Educational Center Bookstore (later the Talking Drum) opened on N Williams Avenue.

Herndon took Public Portland Schools to task for busing and test scores but the Black Educational Center soon outperformed the district. The 70’s and 80’s were an era of worsening economic and social turbulence for Portland’s Black community. Most other community outreach organizations that cropped up around the same time withered away, but the BEC weathered the ensuing decades through the 1990s. 

“The Black Male: An Endangered Species?”

Portland’s violent crime rates peaked in the early 1980s as more of its male youth became entrenched in a growing gang culture. Oregonians generally viewed gang violence as a California problem that creeped up the Willamette valley. Local law enforcement posited that  L.A.-based gangs, particularly the Crips, expanded from Southern California’s saturated drug market into the Pacific Northwest to sell crack cocaine, where they would make double or triple the profit. 

In 1988, state troopers were assigned to ride TriMet buses and trains to “curb gang violence.” The next year, Gov. Neil Goldschmidt sent three dozen National Guard troops to help police “crack down on Portland’s ‘drug-driven’ street gangs.” The Black community was rattled by a series of police killings of Black men. Most prominent among them was the killing of ex-marine and father of five, Tony Stevenson, who was choked to death by a Portland police officer. ‘The Black male: an endangered species’ became a catchphrase among columnists, professors and social outreach workers to describe the deepening crisis of gang violence. 

Inspiration from the East 

In January 1989, educator and advocate Lolenzo Poe attended the Hope For Youth Conference in Downtown Portland, where he saw Philadelphia journalist and activist Falaka Fattah deliver a speech on nonviolence and gang outreach. Fattah had founded a gang outreach program with her husband, David in 1968 after they learned one of their six sons had joined a gang. After working with their son, they worked to rehabilitate the members of his gang. The Fattahs created a safehouse in West Philadelphia called House of Umoja, Swahili for ‘unity,’ where they encouraged rival youth gangs to arbitrate disputes through direct communication. 

The Fattahs aimed to provide “culturally-specific intervention services” for gang-affected youth. Drawing on the values of Kwanzaa, the Fattahs sought to replicate the structure of a tight-knit extended family. Fattah served as its matriarch and was eventually known as the Queen Mother. The Umoja program emphasized family and community principles, self-worth, hard work and education. “We utilized our culture, our African heritage,” Fattah said. “We showed them that they had a greater heritage than the legacy of slavery.” 

The Fattahs did not make their residents give up their gang affiliations, conscious to not deprive local youth of their strongest social bonds. This allowed them to gain the trust of members of several rival street gangs and earned them the credibility needed to arbitrate disputes between them. 

By 1970, House of Umoja was a fully functioning residential treatment program for gang-affected youth, several of whom had nowhere else to go. The Philadelphia courts were soon sentencing boys to at Umoja’s residential center, which paved the way for government funding and expansion. 

In 1974, David Fattah, a veteran Philadelphia educator, authored the fabled Imani Peace Pact, a gang truce signed by over 400 gang members representing 30 different groups. The pact was credited for dropping Philadelphia homicide rate from a record high to a record low in the space of four years.

House of Umoja in Portland

When the Fattahs agreed to help Poe establish the Portland House of Umoja, corporate and city leadership were quick to cosign. In March 1990, Nike, the City of Portland, the Portland Police Bureau Sunshine Division,  and the Oregon State Drug and Alcohol Office pledged a combined $199,000 to support the project. Washington Federal Savings and Loan donated two properties amounting to a similar value. In May, the Fattahs were welcomed back to Portland with a press conference attended by mayor Bud Clark, Ron Herndon and others. 

However, businesses around the neighborhood were not all supportive of the project. “If I had known that 16 former gang members were going to be my next door neighbors,” Jeff Parks, owner of the Royal Esquire Club across the street, said, “I would still be at City Hall today, possibly as a resident.”  

House of Umoja Inc., with Poe as its chairman, obtained the building from the Black Education Center. Like most Streetcar Era buildings along our stretch of Alberta, the two story brick building was built to accommodate commercial spaces on the street level and apartments above them. Poe poised to renovate the space to accommodate eight to ten youth and two live-in staff. 

While a funding shortage delayed the renovation of the Umoja building, Poe sent Portland’s first House of Umoja cohort to stay at the Fattahs’ residential facility in West Philadelphia, where they and their sons also lived. “They came so they could experience it themselves and take it back and be antibodies,” Fattah says. 

By mid-1991, the residential program was in full swing. Some of its residents were mandated by the court to stay there, while others came in off the street seeking respite from gang life and a safe place to sleep. 

“The only family they had was the gangs,” former House of Umoja intern Charles Hannah says, “so, we had to change that.” Hannah, who now operates Third Eye Books on SE Division, came to Portland in 1992 after studying law enforcement administration at Western Illinois University. “I did not want to be the police, but I knew I wanted to work with my community,” Hannah said.  

Walking down Alberta one Summer day, Hannah ran into Johnny A. Gage, known as ‘Biggie’, playing basketball with some neighborhood boys. In need of an internship to complete his degree, Gage began working at House of Umoja that Fall. Gage eventually became the Executive Director, lived upstairs and adopted the role of house parent. 

Hannah found that the space gave its residents a family atmosphere that most did not have. According to Hannah, the residents generally moved as a unit, eating home-cooked family meals together and doing most other things as a community. “The space itself was conducive to conversations,” Hannah says. 

Hannah frequently helped supervise Midnight Basketball, an effort between multiple youth outreach programs to keep the youth off of the street on Friday nights. “We get them into the gym, we turn the lights on and we start talking,” Hannah said. “And we talk for 5 to 10 minutes and then we play basketball.” 

One night, Midnight Basketball came to a screeching halt when police cars surrounded the gym and two teenage boys were arrested in connection with a murder that took place the night before. Hannah remembered how the boys seemed quieter than normal as they accompanied him on his errands earlier that day. “That’s the memory I have; two young men who were ready to do good things,” Hannah said, “But earlier that evening, they took a fateful car ride and somebody died.” 

The moral of this story, in his own words is, “everyone needs a place to go.” 

Loss of Funding and Closure 

A declining juvenile delinquency rate in the late 1990s as well as a 1997 county report alleging a high gang-recidivism rate of Umoja’s residents led the organization to cut its residential program and pivot to job training and outreach. Poe was dismayed by the change but hoped the program would return. 

But Umoja faced another logistical problem: even though gang violence was back on the rise by the mid 2000s, especially affecting young Black males, gentrification had significantly pushed its clientele of gang-affected youth out of the burgeoning ‘Alberta Arts District,’ prompting it to expand its focus to east Portland and east Multnomah County. 

 In the early 2000s, the program struggled to maintain programs and funding sources until its administrative functions were taken over by Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare, which collapsed in 2008. In 2009, Umoja merged with LifeWorks NW,  a mental health and addiction services program with several other locations around Portland.

The House of Umoja was forced to close in September 2011 after funding for the program was cut entirely. When Multnomah County moved to direct its new $4.5 million grant towards intervention-based outreach programs, supporters of House of Umoja wondered why they had been passed over. 

“We have gone from prevention to intervention, and there needs to be both,” says Tina Glover, a former program director at House of Umoja. 

New Albina Head Start Center 

In February 2012, LifeWorks purchased the building from Umoja Inc. It operated as the LifeWorks Umoja Center until 2020, when the chapter moved into an office on Alberta and M.L.K., leaving the building vacant. 

In a full circle moment for Herndon, Head Start took ownership of the historic brick building in August 2022, with plans for a facility equipped with classrooms and offices. However, the cost of retrofitting the building’s unreinforced masonry proved costlier than constructing a new building. 

A New Building 

After receiving a grant from Nike CEO Phil Knight-backed 1803 Fund for $25 million in April of this year, Head Start got the greenlight from the city to demolish the building.  “It shows corporate responsibility,” Fattah said about Knight’s contribution.

The new facility, the McKinley Burt Center, honors African American inventor and author McKinley Burt Jr., who once lived in an apartment on the second floor of the now-demolished building. Herndon has stated that Head Start took high-resolution images of both remaining murals and plans to incorporate them into the design of the new center. 

Reflecting on the new center, Hannah says, “hopefully it is going to be something the community can be proud of.”  Fattah feels that Herndon’s new project is excellent. “As Malcom X said, ‘education is the passport to the future.”