What you do here matters.
In 2011 this neighborhood was selected for a unique investment opportunity.
This area has long been recognized for its unique makeup and location. It has been on the forefront of change, and as the city grows it is becoming the new center of town. Residents comprised of a wide range of immigrants and their children representing around 140 languages. Finding common ground and building a shared vision for the future is our challenge. Currently we have many groups that merely coexist. We endeavor to bring those that live, work, and play together through regular engagement, investment, and celebration.
A united community is a powerful one.
The original vision outlined at the initiation of this project still holds true throughout the years.
By 2025, the 82nd International District is a safe business district where a cohesive business community welcomes residents and visitors to experience the rich tapestry of cultural heritages in a must-see destination location. This multi-cultural district is recognized with distinctive color, style and activities, and will be a vibrant economic district supporting the needs of its residents. The district features safe, walk-able areas rich with many different cultural establishments serving food & drink, arts, entertainment and gathering places that foster a sense of ethnic diversity. The neighborhood is identified as a distinct regional cultural district using consistent signage, lighting, calming traffic, physical improvements and signature events focusing on our many different cultures.
Read the original proposal here.
Community Vision Planning
82nd International is a vibrant southeast Portland community-centered along the intersection of SE 82nd Avenue and SE Division Street. Within its .91 square mile boundary is a highly diverse neighborhood of more than 400 businesses with nearly half of the residents being people of color.
The Community Visioning project engaged the diversity of the district directly in planning community-desired improvements through ethnic and racial-specific outreach. Six workshops took place between April and June 2014 resulting in a community-defined vision for the most critical improvements helping leverage the public monies available to the Community Development staff. Read the Visioning Process Report here.
Jade/Midway Placemaking Grants
The Jade Midway District’s creative place keeping efforts are a timely response to economic and cultural opportunities and challenges for our highly diverse population. We are fortunate for the chance to support artists in our neighborhoods to do what they do best--vision, innovate, and create. Community-based or socially engaged artists are a unique breed--they are skilled collaborators, effective at bringing people together to imagine and generate new possibilities for their shared environment.
In other words, the artist’s conceptual and aesthetic skill can contribute to the shape of both the process and product, but the community is crucial to generating content as well as contributing their own knowledge, skill, and experience. Unlike an architect, designer, or planner, an artist is not primarily solution-oriented or exclusively focused on practicalities. Rather, they help open up space for more possibilities (or even impossibilities!) and experiment with ideas that might even fail. An engaging, rewarding, and transformational process often supersedes the end result.
Place-based Arts Programs (Reports)
Greening Project
Through the EPA’s Greening America’s Communities program, Multnomah County’s Office of Sustainability (located in Portland, Oregon) requested assistance to advance sustainable design strategies in the City of Portland’s Jade District. These proposed designs are part of the Office of Sustainability’s ongoing work implementing the 2015 Portland/ Multnomah Climate Action Plan.
To complete this project the EPA coordinated a team of federal and county agency staff and consultants to draft designs, incorporating community input and feedback gathered through workshops and focus groups during the project. The team selected three focus areas within the Jade District—Southeast (SE) 89th Avenue, the Fubonn Shopping Center, and Southeast (SE) Division Street. These focus areas represent similar conditions in other parts of the neighborhood and the design options are versatile enough to be used throughout the district.
Greening the Jade (Reports)
Transportation Development
Reports on Transportation Development
