The building has been a neighborhood owned asset since the late 1970s when it was acquired by a neighborhood based not for profit organization to serve a social service center and later a cultural center. Today, the building faces major challenges including the need for significant re-investment to address its seismic vulnerabilities, obsolete systems and significant deferred maintenance issues.
The NNCC Board has determined that the best way to preserve this historic property for the future and to return significant value to the neighborhoods from which NNCC draws its members will be to find a new, preservation-oriented owner for the property. To achieve this end, the Board retained a real estate broker and the building is for sale. Sale details are here.
At a special membership meeting on April 26, 2022 the NNCC membership present at that meeting voted to approve the sale of the property to Founders Development. The sale is anticipated to close later in 2023 or in early 2024.
To ensure that the sale results in lasting benefits to the neighborhoods, NNCC has entered into an agreement with the Oregon Community Foundation to create the Northwest Neighborhoods Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation (“the Fund”). When the property is sold, net sale proceeds will be delivered to the Fund to provide long term benefits to the neighborhoods from which NNCC draws its members.
More specifically and once endowed with sale proceeds, the Fund will make periodic charitable distributions for the purpose of enriching the community, with an emphasis on:
- Promotion of neighborhood civic engagement;
- Support for cultural, educational and recreational opportunities;
- Support for citizen engagement with neighborhood public health issues, including (but not limited to) air quality and traffic safety; and/or
- Support for the preservation of the immediate natural environment and for fostering the interaction of citizens with that natural environment.
Priority will be given to projects/programs that support members of the community who face physical and/or economic barriers in accessing the above-listed community enrichment opportunities that NNCC seeks to support through the Fund’s charitable distributions.
The Fund’s distributions will have a distinct geographic focus. Accordingly, distributions shall be targeted primarily to benefit residents and communities within the geographic boundaries of the six neighborhoods whose residents are presently entitled to membership in the NNCC with the understanding that grants may also provide secondary or incidental benefit to residents and communities outside those boundaries.
NNCC is using e-mail to keep its members informed of developments relating to any sale and the effort to establish the neighborhood benefiting fund or trust. However we lack e-mail addresses (or currently valid e-mail addresses) for a majority of our members. If you are already a NNCC member, you can share your e-mail address with us by going to the NNCC web site home page – www.nnccpdx.com and scroll down to “Subscribe to the NNCC mailing list..,” and complete the form found there. NNCC’s mailing list is intended for NNCC members only.
If you are not yet a member of NNCC, details of how to become a NNCC member are on the Membership page of our website – www.nnccpdx.com/membership/