A man came to the

meeting last spring with a warning.

North Mississippi Avenue, the neighborhood's main drag, might soon lose its last black-owned building. City leaders had fined the Masonic Lodge more than $40,000 in code violation fees. They had placed a lien on the property.

The fines were racist, the man said, a targeted attempt to rid the hip neighborhood of one of its oldest community groups.

African Americans once owned much of the property on and around North Mississippi Avenue. Each loss had its own complicated backstory. Each was a tale of fines or bad business decisions, of systemic or deliberate discrimination.

Usually, the neighborhood's white, liberal residents felt powerless to help. The neighborhood, board member Stephen Gomez decided, could not lose another black business.

"This," he said "is fixable."

***

John Bryant, Grand Master of Masonic Temple at North Fremont and Mississippi streets, said the neighborhood has stepped up to help bring the Lodge into compliance with city code.

A group of African-American Masons bought the 3,850-square-foot Lodge in 1954 -- two years after the Portland Realty Board rescinded its policy forbidding members to sell to blacks.



The neighborhood soon became a bustling, vibrant black community. African Americans owned all but one store -- Leonard's, run by an Italian -- and more than 200 joined the Masonic Lodge. They did charity work, said Lodge grand master John Bryant, donating food and school supplies to the less fortunate.



Over time, the neighborhood languished. Banks refused to loan money to African Americans wanting to improve their homes, and property values dropped.



White developers began buying up the cheap land, leveraging urban renewal dollars to build condos, restaurants and boutiques. Rents went up. Black residents moved to the city's outskirts. New residents complained about noise and aging buildings.



"The city came down on things they had always overlooked," Bryant said.



By 2011, the Masons were one of the last black groups left in the Boise neighborhood. And they were struggling. As African Americans moved to East Portland, Lodge membership dwindled to 20 men and women. Their $10-a-month dues didn't add up to much. The group tried to stay afloat by hosting fish dinners and car washes.



Then Bryant had an idea. Other Mississippi Avenue landlords had started to earn extra money by renting their parking lots to food trucks.



The Masons owned an empty field, enough land to hold two carts. Bryant covered the field with gravel, installed some picnic tables and a steel canopy, then rented out the space.



A few months later, someone complained.



Portland's Bureau of Development Services fields about 8,000 code complaints a year, said enforcement program manager Mike Liefeld. The year an anonymous person reported Bryant, Liefeld said his office received "a number of complaints" about other North Mississippi Avenue carts. Investigators found that the complaint had merit: Lodge members had put the trucks on a field and not an established parking lot, violating city code. They began fining him.



Bryant said Lodge members spent thousands of dollars working to bring the field up to code. Inspectors told him the property needed trees, so he planted five. City code required more. They told him to plant shrubs, so he bought some. He planted the wrong kind, he said. They asked him to build a garbage shed. The door was too short.



"It wasn't good enough," Bryant said. "They made it so difficult, I had to hire an architect."



Eventually, a city inspector did approve a permit for food carts. But that was an error, Liefeld said. The inspector should never have approved the permit.



By the spring of 2015, when Lodge supporters asked the neighborhood association for help, the fines totaled about $42,000. Bryant had tried raising money, but the fish dinners and donation requests had brought in only $500.



More than 2,300 people signed a petition on Change.org, alleging that the city was targeting the Lodge.



"Is it racism?" Boise Neighborhood board member Sarah Cantine said they wondered. "Should we be addressing it as a community group? Are we supposed to get our pitchforks in hand and stand up to this?"



The neighborhood had certainly seen its fair share of racism and racially motivated decisions. City leaders had kicked black residents out and razed their homes for highways and a planned, but ultimately shelved, expansion of Legacy Emanuel Hospital. And in 2012, someone had spraypainted swastikas, threats, depictions of lynchings and racist epithets on the Masonic Lodge and the food carts.



But gentrification isn't always a blatant, overtly racist act. Even as city leaders tried to craft plans to keep black-owned businesses in the inner city, Boise and Eliot continued to lose them throughout the 1990s and 2000s. The facts of those losses, Bryant said, often looked a lot like what was happening at the Lodge.



The Cleo-Lillian Social Club, a North Williams Avenue members-only gathering spot, closed in 2001 after new neighbors complained about noise, prompting the Oregon Liquor Control Commission to fine the club. LV's Twelve-22, a North Vancouver Avenue bar and restaurant, shuttered in 2012 because it couldn't pay $10,000 in OLCC fines. State regulators said customers repeatedly bought drugs in the bar. Owner Lavon Van said he installed 16 cameras, built a fence and hired a security firm to keep drug users out. He couldn't afford to appeal because most of his customers had been priced out of the neighborhood.



"I can't say they were targeting us, but I've seen it happen so many times," Bryant said. "A lot of people lost their business because they weren't up to code. Their hope is if they fine us enough, we give up."





Architects created a rendering of what the Lodge property will look like.

Gomez and Cantine started making calls. Gomez, a former Nike worker who raises money for nonprofits, donated $1,000 and started calling nearby restaurants. Por Que No? and Mississippi Pizza owners agreed to chip in a few thousand bucks, as did the Rebuilding Center and the developers behind two upcoming apartment projects.



A group of black comedians raised $1,300 through a "Black Laughs Matter" comedy event.



Leaders at the city's development commission, too, saw a "great chance" to improve the neighborhood without losing another black organization, said Tory Campbell.



"They want to stay there and stay connected with their service," Campbell said. "This was one of those great moments where we could help out in a way that's practical and collaborative."



The commission gave the Lodge a $40,000 grant for the project.



Cantine worked to create a plan for fixing the lot. To make the Lodge compliant, crews will have to excavate, grade and pave the land. They will have to plant more trees, build bioswales and fix that garbage shed door.



Lloyd Development, a construction company helmed by Boise resident Garner Moody, will break ground on the project today. Liefeld said when the work is done, his office will consider reducing the fines.



The lot will look better, Bryant said. But more importantly, he has found something in the Boise neighborhood that he thought he had lost during its gentrification.



A community.



-- Casey Parks

503-221-8271

cparks@oregonian.com; @caseyparks

Neighbors are trying to raise more money to pay for sidewalk and lighting improvements. You can contribute at a GoFundMe site.