CHANGING LANES

THE I-5 ROSE QUARTER PROJECT

BY MICHELE DARR ARTWORK JAMAAL HALE

Few projects have impacted the landscape of Portland, Oregon as deeply and divisively as the construction of Interstate 5, especially in the North and Northeast segments of the City. Installed in 1964-65, the urban freeway decimated, devalued and ultimately depopulated areas that were directly in its path, with homes and businesses demolished and nearby neighborhoods flooded with traffic. Predictably, the racially segregated and most densely concentrated population of African-Americans in the state bore the brunt of the wreckage. When the Oregon State Highway Department demolished 300 homes which it also did not replace, the resulting floodgates of cars overwhelmed the area, leading to the collapse of local neighborhoods and setting the stage for yet another wave of displacement, especially amongst people of color.

Nearly six decades later, North and Northeast Portland are once again in the crosshairs of another storm… the I-5 Rose Quarter improvement and expansion project (I-5 RQ). Determined to learn hard, sobering lessons from the past, ODOT and the City of Portland have prioritized community involvement, bringing aboard longtime community leaders and business owners to bridge and facilitate the process of public engagement and opportunity.

I-5 RQ strategic advisor, Dr. Steven Holt, knows all too well the devastating impact of generational displacement. His family put down roots in Portland during the 1940’s and worked in the shipyards during the World War. Experiencing displacement from

Vanport, they moved into what is now known as the Industrial District, where they were displaced again and again, first with the building of the Coliseum, then with the building of the first I-5 freeway and Emanuel Hospital. “You can’t understand where you are unless you understand where you have been,” Dr. Holt said. “Oregon’s racist history cannot be ignored. Simply google ‘white utopia’ to catch a glimpse into how the state of Oregon was virtually created to be a place where people of any color, black, indigenous and so on, were not welcome. Systems, structures and policies were all created to benefit a small, privileged segment of the population and even now, home and business ownership by Black folks continue to lag behind at the levels present during the first construction of I-5 in 1965.”

Dr. Holt acknowledges that while the original I-5 construction project was initiated under the pall of racist systems and ideologies and resulted in widespread multi-generational destruction and trauma, the current I-5 RQ project has been proactive in engaging in practices of restorative justice. “When the I-5 was put in, there was no engagement, concern, evaluation, no interaction whatsoever with the people who lived in the neighborhoods,” he remembers. “It was intentionally placed in an area that wiped out a whole community. It wiped out houses and businesses and it wiped out a thriving opportunity for people identified as Black. And now, it’s the first time in the history of ODOT and Oregon where there has been an acknowledgement by a Government agency that states a commitment to being better and more responsive, leveraging the possibilities in finance, economy and opportunity and doing something to benefit the community by hiring people, representatives and descendents most negatively impacted. We can’t overlook that.”

Despite the strides being made towards equity and inclusion in the project, many roadblocks to earning public trust still exist and transcending the barriers to moving forward involve substantial mediation by trusted community leaders. “Is it messy? Absolutely,” acknowledged Holt. “Is it awkward? Absolutely. Is it difficult? Absolutely. But why wouldn’t it be? You are talking about an institution that has been around for hundreds of years that has never done this and when they attempt to right the wrongs of the past, people who look like me are quick to say, ‘it’s not enough’, it’s not significant, it’s not real. I assure you, it IS real, it IS happening. Raimore is on the scene, my company is on the scene, and there are several other black-owned companies on the scene that are engaged in a process of bringing people who look like us into the opportunity. There has also been the establishment of a COAC (Community Oversight Action Committee) that was specifically put together to look for opportunities for Black and Brown people to be working on the project and the historic Albina Advisory Board is helping to oversee and speak into how the project is done and the way that it is designed through the artistry and the look.”

In addition to meaningful engagement efforts through trusted community leaders, ODOT and the state are committed to fundamentally readdressing how large scale projects are contracted out. “ODOT is changing the way it does business by setting goals to achieve values-based outcomes on how the project will contract with disadvantaged business enterprises (DBEs) and engage with the community in its request for proposals,” ODOT said in a statement. ODOT included a provision that the proposers meet a goal of 18 to 22 percent use of DBEs, a 20 percent goal for apprenticeships, 25 percent minority male and 14 percent female workers.“The project’s values include a focus on restorative justice for communities harmed by previous government actions and using community input to shape the project and the outcomes for the community,” ODOT said. “Having the construction management/general contractor on board early in the design process is a key step toward those commitments.”

Determined to make good on that commitment, Portland DBE firm, Raimore Construction, was awarded one of the largest contracts signed by a minority firm ever in the state of Oregon. Chief of staff at Raimore and the Community Involvement Coordinator for Public Engagement efforts for the project, DeAngelo Moaning is a 3rd generation Portlander whose family settled in the area in the 1890’s, worked in the shipyards and surmounted soaring obstacles, including displacement.

“In the past, when we have been given an opportunity, it has been an opportunity with conditional caveats and parameters from people who don’t look like us. We now have an opportunity to engage with a workforce that looks just like us with a contractor who also looks just like us with a storied history of working for and by Black people. So it’s not just saying, ‘Hey come join construction which has traditionally been a good ol’ boy system, it’s saying, ‘Hey come earn a living wage with people who look like you and build skills with people who look like you. These skills are also transcendental beyond this project to include upcoming work on the Interstate bridge, I-405, and more. It’s really about where you want to go and a leveraging point to entrepreneurship and sustainability. That’s the goal here.”

For people of color and others who are enticed to get involved, the opportunities are still vast and lucrative. “We are about 30% complete which means we have 70% to go,” Holt shared. “Ground hasn’t been broken yet, no concrete laid, nothing really torn or ripped up, so there are still plenty of opportunities to get employed, to respond and engage and plenty of opportunity to find out what specifically is going on. You can go to ODOT’s website and look at the I-5 Rose Quarter and you can reach out to Raimore Construction and get connected that way. If you are a business owner and you have specific skills and talents that connect to construction, you have a direct opportunity, a direct pipeline to employability.”

The pipelines created by Raimore are numerous and one need not wait until 2025 to get involved. “We have a workforce advocate to give people a pipeline into the trades,” Moaning revealed. “Even if this project is not going now and doesn’t start until 2025, we have other job sites that we can put people on right now. The whole point is to get people into that pipeline and give them skills to hit the ground running on this project.”

The finished product is projected to be a significant game changer for people previously underrepresented in the construction industry. “What we are hoping for is to create a whole host of people with new skills, living wages, better lifestyles,” remarked Holt. “The result of it will be the restoration, per se, of the community, or the opportunity.”

Moaning concludes that the opportunities presented in the I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project represent just a sliver of the scope of opportunity that opens up for people who choose to engage in the trades. “We have to understand our historical importance and significance of the trades, especially as it pertains to us,” he stated with fervor. “We need to make sure we are using this opportunity as a real engine to move people forward because it’s not just about the skills, it’s not just about this project. This project is a trampoline, a leveraging point. There are going to be other projects like this across the country. There are going to be other projects like this around the world. My hope is that we are restoring people and that they build a place they cannot be compromised from.”