A vision for a community space is currently on hold due to costly review process
The future backyard of Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church looks more like its neighboring Khunamokwst Park than its current application as an unused parking lot, but a city process stands as a bureaucratic barrier to the church realizing its vision.
Completed blueprints detail a vision for a vibrant community space, teeming with greenery and space for kids to play. On the western side of the lot, the historically Black church will create a greenspace for children with a sandbox, play structures and picnic tables in the shade of trees planted by local nonprofit Friends of Trees. To the east, picnic tables and benches will line rocky pathways, and a mini farm will grow in ADA-accessible raised garden beds.
The project would provide a definitive upgrade for children from Pequeñitos Childcare, who currently play on the concrete lot between the church building and the park, partially painted green to look like grass. Pequeñitos, a Spanish language immersion daycare, shares the church building with Morning Star.
In collaboration with local nonprofit Depave, which removes concrete and asphalt in favor of community greenspaces empowering disenfranchised communities to overcome social and environmental injustices, the church embarked on a project to convert the unused parking lot into a community hub.
A conditional use review, a process required by the Bureau of Development Services, or BDS, stands in the way. Portland zoning code outlines requirements for certain uses of land that may impact the area surrounding the land, and the Morning Star project falls within those parameters, according to BDS.
Ted Labbe, Depave interim executive director, said he believes BDS could allow the project to move forward without a conditional use review but said its narrow reading of Portland’s zoning code requires Depave to follow the review process and pay upwards of $7,500 in fees.
Depave broke ground on the Morning Star project in July, breaking up concrete on half of the lot, but Labbe expects the BDS conditional use review to delay the project for three to six months and squander critical staff time.
“My interpretation is that they could read the code in a way that would let this move forward without a conditional use,” Labbe said.
The parking lot Morning Star hopes to remove isn’t the church’s main lot, and a closed gate blocks cars from entering the area. Since moving into the building in 2011, the church has never used the lot for parking. In fact, the city never even approved the lot, which was added for supplementary parking in 1968.
The proposed Morning Star project aligns with countless publicly stated city goals related to climate resiliency, environmental justice, racial equity and other community-based solutions to the challenges Portlanders face.
Jean Norwood, a member of the church, said due to climate change, the city even pays people to transform their spaces into greenspaces, alluding to programs like the Portland Clean Energy fund, or PCEF, and other grants that often support larger local organizations. That makes the city-created barriers all the more cynical to those involved in the Morning Star project.
“The possibilities are endless,” Norwood said. “You got so many people just eager and interested to want to do something.”
Norwood attends Morning Star and volunteers on various projects around the church. She was born and raised in Portland and has lived in her home near the church since 1997. As the aging congregation diminishes and the church building goes unused for much of the week, Norwood envisions the building as a multi-use community hub built to address the Cully neighborhood’s many challenges.
“Let's have our social services here, even if it's just one day a week,” Norwood said. “There's nothing in this community that supports everybody.”
Norwood said many people of color in the community are not comfortable utilizing available social services due to their experiences with racism during prior visits. Morning Star wants to make a space where everyone feels comfortable while receiving the help they need, according to Norwood.
Those at Morning Star believe shifting uses of the space would be best served by removing the auxiliary lot to make way for more usable community space. On Saturdays, the Oromo Seventh-day Adventist church meets in the sanctuary, and the building hosts funerals from time to time. Otherwise, the church has an abundance of time and space to invite community in, operating as a resiliency hub for the neighborhood at large.
The church hopes to convert the roof into a solar array, generating enough energy to power the building through weather events exacerbated by climate change. The solar array could offer an educational opportunity for young people interested in ushering in the transition to renewable energy, Norwood said.
History of permitting issues
Morning Star occupies its current building, the former World of Life Community Church, partially because of the city’s permitting process.
Morning Star moved into the building in 2011, four years after a fire destroyed its previous building in Northeast Portland. After the fire, the church invested some $150,000, including city permitting fees, to rebuild within city code at the same location, according to Norwood.
Ultimately, the church gave up and moved to a new location after it came to believe the permitting process would never end.
“The original pastor, he just got fed up,” Norwood said. “He's like, ‘Look, we keep giving (the city) money, and it doesn't seem like they're anywhere close to saying yes to anything we have submitted to them.’”
The building Morning Star now calls home, on the corner of Northeast 55th Avenue and Alberta Street, was built in 1960. At that time, the Multnomah County Planning Commission approved the proposal to build the church with 65 total parking spaces. Two spaces were dedicated to the adjacent parsonage, leaving 63 spaces for the congregation — the same number left in Depave’s current plan for the lot.
Previous occupants paved the 18,000-square-foot space in 1968, adding 31 new parking spaces to the lot on the south side of the church. The project did not require any zoning review at that time, according to city records.
Morning Star now wants to convert those 31 additional parking spaces into greenspace.
Depave argues its proposed project will not alter any of the existing uses the county first approved in 1960 and should not be subject to a lengthy and costly review.
Depave feels there’s substance to its argument, as Portland city code cites a number of instances in which development proposals can forgo a conditional use review, including scenarios in which less than 25% of the existing floor area — the total area of all floors in a building — is to be demolished or when a project does not increase the floor area by more than 2,000 square feet. Parking is an important piece of determining whether or not a review is required, and Labbe argues the number of available parking spots will remain unaltered; thus, the project should not trigger a conditional use review.
BDS maintains the current zoning code requires a review based on when the Cully neighborhood was annexed into the city of Portland in the 1980s rather than referencing the 1960 code when the church was first built. Jill Grenda, supervising planner at BDS, said BDS does not interpret the zoning code or have the discretion to apply other rules than those currently in place; it simply applies the code.
“Land Use Services did thorough research on the permit history and the codes in effect at the dates of each permit approval, both in the county and then the city,” Grenda said. “We based our direction to the church on that research.”
Then and now
Morning Star’s struggle with Portland’s permitting processes is not the first time zoning codes have disrupted community-led projects.
In 2021, Childswork Learning Center lost its space at St. Stephens Catholic Church in the Sunnyside neighborhood, initially over a parking dispute. BDS told Childswork it needed to convert a Depave playground back into parking or apply for a land use change. When the church and the daycare parted ways, 250 families lost their daycare, and the Depave playground was destroyed, according to Labbe.
“I don't know how one neighbor complaining about parking issues can displace 250 families with their childcare,” Labbe said. “I don't know how that's possible in a city.”
For its part, the city vocally supports resiliency projects, particularly in communities that are disproportionately impacted by climate change. Katya Reyna, program director at Depave, said it is frustrating to hear the city talk about communities of color, but let the same communities down when it comes to taking action.
"We've already talked about it until we're blue in the face," she said. "So, why aren't we like, doing anything about it?"
Voters passed an initiative to create the PCEF in 2018 to provide a long-term funding source to support social, economic and environmental projects for Portlanders. Recognizing low-income people and people of color are more vulnerable to extreme heat, wildfire smoke and other climate impacts, the PCEF was created to prioritize clean energy, environmentally friendly infrastructure and regenerative agriculture projects in vulnerable communities.
While the Morning Star project aligns with many of the city’s stated environmental justice goals, Reyna said old policies and racist zoning codes stand in the way of making positive impacts in the Cully neighborhood and beyond.
“Here we are trying to do this project that quite literally ticks off so many boxes for what the city says they want to do; they're holding up some standard that's from the 1960s,” she said.
A precedent exists for changing the zoning code in the interest of community needs. Portland City Council unanimously passed “Expanding Opportunities for Affordable Housing,” a change intended to streamline the review process for community and faith-based organizations June 17, 2020. The regulatory changes updated the conditional use review threshold to allow the removal of up to 50% of existing parking spaces when making space for a housing development.
“That's kind of evidence that, if you begin to loosen the reins and you let these sites reimagine what's possible, we can begin to meet some of the community's goals,” Labbe said.
While changes do not start directly with her, Commissioner Carmen Rubio is in charge of BDS and the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, or BPS, and potential changes to the zoning code will need her support in the future. Rubio’s office did not respond to Street Roots’ multiple requests for comment.
“Any changes to the zoning code must first begin at the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, be considered by the Planning Commission, and be adopted by the City Council,” Ken Ray, BDS spokesperson, said.
In a recent two-year progress report, the Portland City Auditor’s Office said the city is making progress on five audit recommendations presented in a 2021 report. The report said the city’s fragmented form of government exacerbates permitting issues, causing real impacts on the local community. Rubio is the co-chair of the Permitting Improvement Task Force, which includes representatives from council offices, the permitting bureaus and the development community.
The task force set goals to reduce permitting timelines, improve customer experience and improve performance management. The auditor’s two-year update referenced City Council's unanimous decision, under Rubio’s leadership, to consolidate the city’s permitting bureaus as a critical step toward future improvements.
Labbe maintains Depave wants to partner with the city, including Rubio, on real climate adaptation and mitigation solutions, saying neither the city nor local churches can address the climate crisis on their own. Leveling expensive zoning fees and delays slows climate resilience projects as all parties lose valuable time.
“If this wasn't sort of looming over these churches, like, what could they do?” Labbe said. “It squelches a lot of creativity.”
Grenda said the BDS director’s office has indicated support for reducing its portion of the land use fee, but other city bureaus participate in conditional use reviews and charge for their review, so it is unclear whether Depave will receive a full waiver.
“BDS does not have the ability to waive any fees but BDS fees,” she said.
The Bureau of Environmental Services, Portland Bureau of Transportation, Portland Fire and Rescue, The Urban Forestry division of Portland Parks and Recreation and the Portland Water Bureau are all involved in the conditional use review, according to Ray.
Inside Morning Star, Norwood hopes to build out a kitchen that can serve meals and offer cool air or warmth during extreme weather events, offer office space to other local nonprofits and stock a food pantry to help those in need. The Energy Trust of Oregon recently replaced lightbulbs throughout the church and installed motion-sensing lights to conserve energy. From pew cushions to carpeting, most upgrades are sourced from local businesses — a guiding vision in developing a self-sustaining resiliency hub.
“There are still a lot of people who believe that climate change is coming when, in reality, climate change is here,” Reyna said.
Results from a 2023 Multnomah County Environmental Justice Snapshot report suggest community members of color live in less walkable areas with less tree canopy and live closer to major polluters than predominantly white neighborhoods. The report cited research showing Portlanders of color and low-income Portlanders are exposed to high heat and less air conditioning than white populations.
“Each of these environmental injustices produce individual health burdens which cumulatively may contribute to our finding that BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) in Multnomah County have a significantly lower life expectancy than white, non-Hispanic residents,” the report found.
Reyna said people living in the Cully neighborhood already face the ramifications of climate change. People living under scarce tree canopies, without air conditioning in their homes or long distances from cooling or warming centers in extreme weather conditions already directly experience the effects of climate change. People in the community own businesses and are fighting to maintain their agency and build their own future.
“We talked about it, how many hundreds of times, especially in 2020, that all these things are racist,” Reyna said. “All these regulations, all these rules, all these codes are — they're founded in racism. Why are we still doing that?”
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