The “Albina Vision” would develop the 30-acre Rose Quarter with housing and businesses that respects history and embraces the future. Rukaiyah Adams explained “What we envision is … putting bikes and walkers first and not just having them be unsafe crossing giant highways and streets.” She shared that her great-grandmother moved to the Rose Quarter after fleeing the violence of the Jim Crow south. “It was a lot like Ladds’ neighborhood today,” she said. “Imagine bulldozing Ladds’ Addition to build a soccer stadium.” She wants to, “rebuild a community, not just the physical spaces” of a neighborhood that she refers to as “ground zero for the discussion about equity and history in Portland.”
The “Albina Vision wouldn’t seek to demolish the Coliseum. Rather,” Adams says, “Portland must be honest about the destruction of this neighborhood, not back away from that history.
The way we see it,” she continued, “the homes of black veterans were bulldozed to build a monument mostly to white veterans — so this is our Robert E. Lee monument. We look at it and can appreciate the beauty and wanting to protect the architecture; but also feel like there’s a story about what we’re monumenting here-- that has to be told if it will be preserved.”