Street Roots vendors who stop at the office for a cup of coffee and to read the newspaper before they hit the streets will soon be supported by chairs from the Central Library, restored by the Groundscore waste pickers and recyclers.
Because the library system is important to people who are experiencing homelessness — a public space that’s accessible regardless of whether one has money or the trappings of housing — these chairs add powerful symbolism to the building Street Roots is renovating on Burnside. These are sturdy, upright wooden chairs that supported thousands of people who came in to browse books and connect to friends and services online.
Vendors will sit around copper tables donated by Street Roots supporter Hope Beraka from the former Nite Lite Lounge on Southeast Clinton Street. Beraka, who runs Think Real Estate, built the tables with copper tops that she burnished. Each person’s touch changes copper, and Street Roots vendors will add their mark.
The floor? Nearly one-inch thick palettes of beech wood gym flooring served as the gym floor for Cal-State Pomona, the foundation for NCAA championship basketball and volleyball games. Toby McGee of McGee Salvage in Hillsboro tears up and restores gym floors to be repurposed, and he’s prepared this wood for Street Roots to support the wear and tear of wheelchairs, hundreds of feet each day, and bundles of worldly possessions.
As we work to ready Street Roots’ Burnside building to open this spring, we bring in items that add stories through the generosity of the community. Rick Davis, a long-time Street Roots vendor, is hand-building brightly colored benches.
Over the next two months, designer and artist Cole Reed, who runs Openhaus Co-Working Spaces, will work with a crew of Street Roots vendors — the Flight Crew, she has designated them — to prep and restore furniture and create art for the space. They will earn income from Street Roots for this work.
We are adding stories to a building that has a rich history.
Built in 1926, the upstairs served as a dental office in Nihonmachi, or Japantown. I imagine the kids of the neighborhood — kids who likely jumped around lumber on the rough riverfront and rode the street car to school — had their teeth worked on in this building and might be alive today as elders who have been through so much. Many of these kids would have lived in motels their families managed, finding a way to both house their families and earn income in a society that forbid them from owning property.
Old Town has always been a neighborhood where people struggled to survive and where people were cast out. The federal government forcibly imprisoned the entire neighborhood in the spring of 1942, first at the Portland Assembly Center — now the Portland Expo Center — and then at Heart Mountain, Wyoming; Minidoka, Idaho; Tule Lake, California, and elsewhere. I wonder what happened in this dental office, what stories we have yet to learn.
For most of its history, the first floor served as United grbdfzClothing, owned by Frohman Wax. For a brief while it was an anarchist info shop. I’ll dig into these stories in future columns.
Thank you to the hard work and expertise of O'Neill Construction Group, Holst Architecture and Shiels Obletz Johnsen. We are coming in for the stretch run — both in terms of construction and fundraising. Our grand opening will be this spring.
Watch for the Street Roots sign, designed by Security Signs in the historic neon style of the neighborhood, to turn on in coming weeks. There’s still plenty of work to do, and I’ll keep you all posted.
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