North Williams Avenue construction.JPG

A pedestrian crosses North Williams Avenue amid construction. The North Portland corridor was a big topic at an Oregon State Bar forum on gentrification.

Update: See below for a link to watch the forum online.

Cities across the country -- from San Francisco to Brooklyn -- have struggled with gentrification. As those cities have grown, poorer and minority populations have been priced out.



Portland could be different, said Rukaiyah Adams, the chief investment officer for Meyer Memorial Trust, one of the state's largest charitable foundations.



Yes, the number of African Americans living in the inner city has dwindled. Yes, the North Williams Avenue record shops and other black-owned businesses have been replaced with upscale restaurants and nitrogen-spun ice cream.





Rukaiyah Adams, in a still from "Future: Portland"

But it's not too late to preserve a diverse community in Portland.



"We don't have the intractable size issues of New York City or the cost issues of San Francisco or the political machine of Chicago," Adams said Wednesday during "Squeezed Out," a panel discussion sponsored by the Oregon State Bar's Civil Rights Section. "We could actually do this."



Adams spoke along with Portland Housing Bureau investment manager Karl Dinkelspiel and Jefferson High School senior and filmmaker Llondyn Elliott. The Urban League of Portland president Nkenge Harmon Johnson moderated.



Bar members expected a few dozen people to attend the forum on gentrification. But 1,400 people RSVPd to discuss one of Portland's tensest topics.



The event tipped over capacity at McMenamin's Kennedy School with a few hundred attendees. Those who were turned away can watch the panel discussion on the bar's website later this week.



After screening two films about the displacement of African Americans here, the panel spoke rapidfire for an hour and a half, brainstorming solutions. They looked back occasionally, but the night was dedicated to talking about the future. What kind of city will Portland become? How can its residents preserve multicultural neighborhoods?



Gentrification -- "really, the demolition of a community," -- is personal, Adams said.



"Everyone here personally benefited or was personally hurt by (gentrification)," she said. "It ain't nobody else. We did it."



Change isn't inherently bad, Harmon Johnson said. What frustrates her is that people think that North and Northeast Portland are better than they once were -- rather than just different. The prevailing narrative is that those neighborhoods were poor and crime-ridden before developers and white hipsters swooped in, creating a bustling community where none had been.



Harmon Johnson remembers it differently.



Twenty years ago, a black middle class existed, she said. Black people owned businesses and watched out for each other. They barbecued together, babysat each other's kids.



Redlining may have drawn the boundaries of certain neighborhoods, but African Americans intentionally created the tight knit bonds and business enterprises within them, Adams said.



Regaining that will require the same intentionality, Adams said. Though fewer African Americans live in inner neighborhoods, Portland's black population has actually grown slightly over the past decade to 37,000, about 7 percent of the city's population.



Reclaiming the community will require African Americans "huddling together for cultural warmth," Adams said, maybe "taking over a zip code and overfunding schools." It requires people -- both white and black -- to use "an equitable process" when they sell homes in those neighborhoods.



Dinkelspiel urged attendees to elect a more diverse group of city commissioners -- only two people of color have ever served on the Portland City Council -- and to push current city development leaders to spend urban renewal dollars curbing displacement.



After years of working on housing in Northeast Portland, Dinkelspiel said, "My eyes have been opened."



The Portland Development Commission has played a key role in shaping North and Northeast Portland. With more city-owned land left to be developed, the agency will continue to do so.



"I have some trepidation about where we're going," Dinkelspiel said. "There are a lot of people getting left out of it."



Portland Mayor Charlie Hales has promised to spend $20 million on affordable housing. Future urban renewal dollars also could go to retaining or returning people who spent decades in those neighborhoods. But land around North Williams now goes for $100 a square foot, Dinkelspiel said. The $20 million won't go far.



Portlanders can't wait on city dollars to bring the displaced back, Adams said.



"This is just us deciding the way it's going to go," Adams said. Maybe it takes a reframing of the conversation, Adams said, appealing to the city's forward-thinking, conservation-minded residents. People gather together to preserve birds and greenspace, she said, why not to preserve a culture?



"There is no other place this will all go down," she said. "This is our lunch counter moment."

Want to watch the forum? The Oregon State Bar has uploaded a video of the event.



-- Casey Parks

503-221-7281

cparks@oregonian.com; @caseyparks