Flip 15--Concordia University

 

8/16/2010  Monday  1:30 PM

Location:  Concordia University

A Lutheran school specializing in teaching, nursing and divinity, Concordia University occupies a few square blocks in Northeast Portland in the neighborhood that shares its name.

It's growing.  Formerly known as Concordia College, the school added a graduate program and now looks to expand both academically and geographically.  

I sit in the lobby of the brand new library, its air conditioning providing relief from the ninety-plus temps outside.  The polished cement floor gleams, but already sports a major crack.   

It's the middle of summer, so there are very few students around.  Many of those who are on campus are Muslim.  

There's a bit of survey work going on.

A prospective student and her parents look around campus, led by a professor.  

The library is so new the sod hasn't been laid in front of it yet.

 

Behind the new library, a cyclone fence encircles a construction project.  On the fence hangs an artist's rendition of a future athletic facility.  Beyond it sit two square blocks of boarded-up houses, jacked up off their foundations, WWII-era bungalows.  

 

On the exposed interior wall of one house, bare clothes hangers hang from hooks.  Through a doorway, I can see a yellow chest of drawers, with clothing still inside.  The partially-demolished structure has a post-Katrina quality to it.

Near the edge of the construction site lies an old stereo receiver, its top removed.  

They are eerie reminders that this was once an inhabited neighborhood.  Looking later at an aerial photograph of the site, I count twenty-two individual homes.  Were the residents evicted?  Bought out?  However they left, it appears that the transaction happened very quickly.  Where have they gone?

Thanks to Dana at Concordia University, I now have the answer: the university has owned the homes for 20 years, and had been using them for student housing.  Now, rather than being demolished to make way for expansion, the structures will be moved and renovated into low income housing through the Homes Worth Keeping project.  For more information, see the article on Page 16 of this magazine: http://www.cu-portland.edu/alumni/news/documents/CU_Connection_Summer08_FINAL_080731lowres.pdf