Oregon Community Foundation (OCF) is seeking proposals to identify the new owner of Portland’s Albina Arts Center. The center’s new owner will be chosen through a Request for Proposals issued by OCF on May 9, 2023, following a year-long community visioning process to develop a future vision for the Albina Arts Center.
The Albina Arts center was once a significant cultural hub for Black communities in North and Northeast Portland. But the building had fallen into disrepair and various plans have been proposed to reinvent and revitalize it. Darrell Grant, a musician and professor of Jazz Studies at Portland State University, began holding cultural events at the space last year, and partnered with writer and artist Renee Mitchell to create the Soul Restoration Center this year.
In 2016, after decades of the building falling into disrepair, the Oregon Community Foundation accepted temporary ownership of the one-story structure, at the request of the state of Oregon. Now, OCF is in the process of figuring out how to gift the building back to a Black-led non-profit that is willing to center arts, healing and intergenerational community-building within the space, in perpetuity.