Albina Vision Trust and Lewis & Clark College Partner to Enshrine Community, Education in Lower Albina

As Albina Vision Trust works to realize the community vision of a reinvigorated lower Albina, the nonprofit unveiled ambitious plans to establish permanent educational facilities in the community.

This week, Albina Vision Trust (AVT) and Lewis & Clark College announced their partnership to create an education and economic empowerment hub to be permanently housed in Albina. Both the nonprofit and the college described this partnership as mutually beneficial.

“When you think about the overall goals of AVT, it’s really about autonomy, economic development and the ability for folks within that zipcode to really manage their own destiny,” Lewis & Clark President Robin H. Holmes-Sullivan told The Skanner. “This is not something we’ve done before, to be honest with you. Especially at the undergraduate level.

But we’re going to come to the residents. We can help them achieve educationally so that they can go onto the next step – maybe they want to become a counselor, or they want to become a lawyer. We’re going to figure out how to bring our educational product to the residents once we know more about what they need.”

Increasingly, concepts of restorative justice and climate justice are being woven into urban planning. AVT’s acquisition of prime real estate in historically Black and now gentrified Albina, and the organization’s commitment to develop affordable housing with priority given to displaced residents and their kin, is an example of planning within an equity framework. 

“The Albina Vision Trust cannot build a world-class district without a world-class commitment to education,” Winta Yohannes, AVT executive director, said. “Education is the backbone of economic mobility, community-led development and all visionary acts of hope and healing. We are proud to approach this partnership with Lewis & Clark as both builders and learners.”

An Ideal Match

Holmes-Sullivan, the first woman and the first BIPOC individual to serve as president of Lewis & Clark College, was impressed by a presentation Yohannes gave about AVT alongside 1803 Fund president Rukaiyah Adams.

“I asked, ‘Who are you partnering with in the educational sector for the overall Albina Vision Trust approach?’” Holmes-Sullivan said. “I was just struck, one, by how much of an opportunity it would be for any educational institution to be supporting and part of the work of AVT, and I think how important it would be for AVT, because education is such a pivotal part of economic growth and development – you can’t really have one without the other…I wanted to make sure that they knew that I felt we had some components that uniquely positioned us well to be the type of educational partner that it seemed would most benefit them.”

Those components include a passionate cohort not only of faculty but also of student teachers, counselors and legal workers.

“The students that come to Lewis & Clark for undergraduate degrees are very motivated about taking care of this world, making a difference, social change,” Holmes-Sullivan said. “And we want to make sure that they have opportunities to learn how to do that from the beginning all the way to the end.

So maybe some of our students will become residents of Albina, to be able to see how you understand what a community needs, how to listen really, really well, not just come in and tell them what they want and what they need.

“And then how do you help bring about change together with the community? That’s going to be an incredible educational opportunity for our students, who will have internships and placements in the district, which is why we want to have a physical hub so we’re actually physically there in Albina.”

Creating A Model

The partnership is the latest in an impressive series of achievements for AVT.

In August 2023, AVT broke ground on Albina One, a 94-unit development of affordable housing and community space to bring displaced Black residents into a heavily gentrified, but historically Black, neighborhood. The $63.5 million project is sited at North Flint Avenue. 

In the fall of 2023, AVT acquired a 4,400-square-foot office building on North Williams Avenue to serve as its permanent headquarters, an events venue and gallery space for local Black artists. 

In February of last year, AVT acquired the 10.5-acre former Portland Public Schools headquarters campus for an ambitious development project: 1,000 affordable units expected to house 3,000 Portland residents, as well as an education resource hub for marginalized students and community green spaces. All the units will fall under the city housing bureau's N/NE Preference Policy, which gives priority to applicants who have historic ties to the neighborhood and are looking to return after displacement. 

At the time of acquisition, AVT noted that centralizing so many families in the historically Black neighborhood would also serve to stabilize enrollment in three historically Black schools: Jefferson High, Tubman Middle School and Boise-Eliot Elementary.

In March of last year, the new U.S. Department of Transportation’s Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods Grant Program awarded $450 million to fund AVT’s plan for the construction of buildable freeway covers that will reconnect lower Albina over I-5.

Alongside this announcement came the news that AVT had also entered into a work agreement deal with the Oregon Department of Transportation, one with great historic significance: When ODOT expanded Interstate 5 in the sixties, it demolished 300 homes in what was then the state’s largest Black community. With the new expansion of I-5, AVT has become a prominent voice for the community that was disregarded decades ago, and the work agreement made official AVT’s collaboration with ODOT to explore highway cover governance and future ownership of surplus lands associated with the project. 

“What AVT’s doing is not making people dependent on a government entity,” Holmes-Sullivan said. “It’s giving people the tools that they need to do what they need to do. They’re buying the land. They’re saying, we're going to figure out what you need in order to be self-sufficient so you can have generational wealth that you can pass on. They’re doing it from the ground up in a way that you can’t find happening anywhere else in America.” 

Opportunity & Empowerment

Lewis & Clark’s physical presence in the community will also provide residents with opportunities to earn college credits and work toward certifications, specifically in the areas of counseling, law and education. Small business owners and entrepreneurs will have access to legal advice as well. 

“We have a small business legal clinic that works with entrepreneurs and other people who have dreams and aspirations about owning their own business,” Holmes-Sullivan said. “There’s a lot of legal work that goes into it. We already have been doing that work in the community with constituents of all types, but especially those folks who are underrepresented – we want to make sure they have those economic opportunities too. So our law students and law faculty have been working in the community for a long time very successfully, helping those entrepreneurs launch businesses.

“That’s one of the things that of course we want to have happen in the district – we want people to create businesses in the Albina area to be able to generate revenue for the people so they can sustain themselves.”

Holmes-Sullivan sees the potential of truly immersive educational experiences for Lewis & Clark students. 

“We have a graduate school where we (train) counselors and teachers. Many of those (Albina) residents are going to have children, and they’re going to be in the Portland Public Schools system most likely. We are in the PPS system, and we know a lot about education and inclusive pedagogy and how you want to make sure that young people have the opportunities to be educated in a way that's going to lead to their success. We do research. We understand how education should happen. We can bring that knowledge directly to the residents.

“We want to make sure that those educational opportunities are in place and available for those students, so when our student teachers are in the various schools, we’ll know who the Albina residents are. We could be doing things in Albina that could supplement the learning that they’re having in their schools.”

Holmes-Sullivan praised AVT’s formula for not only restoring a vibrant Black community, but for its holistic approach to what neighborhood and community can provide for its residents. 

“AVT is, I think, creating a model that can be admired and replicated around the country,” Holmes-Sullivan said. “Because there’s an Albina in every city where they have displaced Black people or others. But not every city has an Albina Vision that has actually amassed some wealth, is going to buy the land, make it affordable for people, give preferential housing placements – and which now has an academic partner, as well as other partnerships, that’s going to really lead to success. This is a really unique approach that I predict in the next 10 years people will be trying to replicate in other parts of the United States.”

Lewis & Clark President Robin Homes-Sullivan (Photo provided by Lewis & Clark College)