Last month, Sentinel reporter William Crawford covered a N/NE Urban Renewal Area Town Hall hosted by the Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods. This Thursday, March 11 is your last opportunity to take part in a community education/Q&A session about proposed changes to Urban Renewal Area boundaries and investment. Here's all the info you need, courtesy of NECN:

The final Urban Renewal Community Forum for the Interstate Corridor Urban
Renewal Area is next Thursday, March 11, 2010 from 6:30 - 8:30pm at the Billy
Webb Elks Lodge, 6 North Tillamook St.
This is the final meeting in a series which has focused on educating and
engaging community members about upcoming Urban Renewal Area investment
changes and decisions that will change the built environment of inner
North/Northeast Portland.
Notes from the first three meetings are available at the NECN site:
http://portland.necoalition.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&i...

If you are a resident, business owner, or other type of stakeholder in this
area your presence is sincerely requested and we ask that you also take a
moment to give us your valuable opinion in this survey:
www.surveymonkey.com/s/PXD6V35

Where is the Grant Warehouse you ask? Nowhere. The building formerly known as the Grant Warehouse was demolished over 5 years ago, but once sat on NE MLK just south of NE Freemont. The site is now tentatively slated for development as mixed income housing (see below). The warehouse went through a number of uses in it's day. Before it was condemed it was said to have housed a illegal gold extraction operation. The EPA and City spent considerable time and money cleaning up the site.  But the property has sat vacant and un-redeveloped for years.

Good news this morning from Craig Fondren of the venerable Sabin Community Development Corporation: he and other CDC staffers will be opening a second Digital Learning Lab at the Gladys McCoy Village Apartments at 4430 NE MLK Jr. Blvd. The grand opening celebration of the 18-station, open-to-the-public computer lab and community classroom takes place at the McCoy Apartments next Thursday, Feb. 25 from 5-7 p.m.

We covered the launch of Sabin CDC's first Digital Learning Lab at Reflections Coffeehouse back in December '08. At the time, Fondren said of the lab, "“It’s more than teaching a person how to use the computer, it’s teaching them how to have a career in the digital movement.” Free classes are offered, ranging from the basics - "Step 1: push the Power/On button" - to more involved subjects such as web design and audio streaming.

Here's more from Fondren and Sabin CDC from the official press release:

Just saw this in the Oregonian (source for our slide show photo): The Piedmont post office on Northeast Killingsworth Street will be renamed for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a ceremony this Wednesday. The article details the years-long lobbying by local letter carriers that led to tomorrow's name change in honor of the legendary Civil Rights leader. While Portland has seen its fair share of renaming in recent years, those efforts were fueled by controversy. This renaming, in contrast, appears to have been embraced by all.

 Northeast Portland nonprofit The Pangaea Project, a leadership development and international service-learning program for local low-income youth, is throwing a party to celebrate 2009's achievements and start 2010 with a bang. (See our story about Pangaea's unique partnership with Alberta Street businesses.) 

From press release:

The Pangaea Project rings in 2010 with all-are-welcome party at Zaytoon Bar

The Pangaea Project, a leadership development and international service-learning program for Portland at-risk youth, is starting 2010 in style with an all-are-welcome party at Zaytoon Bar on January 21 from 5-7:30 p.m.

The evening’s festivities will include free samples of Middle Eastern fusion cuisine, Latin music, door prizes, and an opportunity to win a free roundtrip plane ticket.

The Pangaea Project has much to celebrate this year. Another group of high school students, all of whom come from low-income families, graduated last November from Pangaea’s unique program, which took them into the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest and the rice paddies of Thailand to engage in service learning projects and learn about grassroots social change.

Persistence has paid off for a group of African American women from North and Northeast Portland.

It has been a longtime dream of the Portland Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority to transform a derelict former gas station site near Peninsula Park into a green, “living building” that would benefit the entire neighborhood.  The planned community center will be on a site wholly owned by the sorority, which at press time had its fingers crossed for a Jan. 4 construction start date. 

“We got the permits finally, so we’ll be starting construction,” says Chris Poole-Jones, Delta Sigma Theta’s project coordinator and spokeswoman.

Northeast Portland residents can enjoy low-cost purchase and installation of solar panels, says David Sweet, board member of the Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods. Their tried and true ingredient: collective purchasing.

“I’m an evangelist for photovoltaic cells!” says Sweet, who hopes, along with the NECN, that the project called Solarize/Weatherize NE will bring cheap green energy solutions to the neighborhoods of Northeast.

Modeled after the enormously successful Solarize Portland project in Southeast, the idea revolves around reducing the cost of individual home solar energy systems through bulk purchasing by a group of residents.

The Cannabis Cafe on Northeast Dekum Street opened on Friday, Nov. 13 amid a flurry of anticipation and controversy.

As this paper went to press,  just over a week into the cafe’s operation, it appears the worst fears of neighbors have not come to pass. One business owner on Dekum, who originally worried his store might be burglarized, commented that his business has not been affected by the presence of the cafe. “Everything seems to be cool, as far as I can tell,”
he said.

On opening day, another neighbor complained that the cafe’s location was inappropriate given its proximity to an elementary school. She also worried about the noise, an issue that had come up frequently in the past with events hosted upstairs in the Village Ballroom. A week later, her spirits were noticeably higher. In an interview she was relieved to say that there was “no activity to report,” and that “[the cafe] has been really quiet over there.”

Change is finally getting ready to come to the Rose Quarter, one silo at a time.

“If you know anyone that can help us get rid of a grain elevator, that would be great,” joked Portland Trail Blazers Team President Larry Miller, who is helping spearhead a proposal to develop the Rose Quarter and re-invigorate Memorial Coliseum.

On Nov. 1, Miller and the Blazers were the first major players to ante up with their JumpTown vision — an intersection of sports, music and Portland culture — in hopes of renewing the Rose Quarter as a “vibrant 365-days-a-year district.” Since the launch date to accept public proposals, Mayor Sam Adams and his 32-member Rose Quarter Development Stakeholder Advisory Committee (SAC) have received vast submissions from the general public ranging from turning the Coliseum into a casino and convention center, a concert hall, a Seattle-like Pike Place, and even a few requests to simply bulldoze the “Glass Palace” sprinkled in.

If you call the Community Youth Hotline these days to ask about the presence of Hmong gangs in North and Northeast Portland, you’ll get an unflinching, cool-headed response. Not what you might expect from the person who’s only been answering 503-823-GANG since Sept. 15.

In the short time that Imani Muhammad has held the hotline responsibility at the Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods, she has revolutionized the position. Muhammad prefers to call herself the youth coordinator to shift the focus from gang prevention to life enrichment of young people. With every caller to the hotline, her goal has been to enroll each into an after-school program, whether in sports, a study hall or a chess club. She thinks that our city has too long targeted certain groups, such as foster homes, for special treatment.

A first-ever event for the 'Lower Albina' section of the Eliot Neighborhood (aka Widmer Brewing, the White Eagle Saloon, and the commerical clusters along Interstate Avenue under the Fremont Bridge). From email:

It's almost time!
Next Saturday, December 5, from 12:00-8:00 pm, Icon Tattoo presents the first ever Russell Street Holiday Festival!
Come make merry for a good cause! There will be no better place this season to find presents or festive fun!

-Handmade bazaar featuring dozens of local artisans. Jewelry, designer clothes, small label records, letterpress cards, hula hoops, jams, chocolates, prints, and so much more!
-benefit for p:ear with loads of ways to benefit p:ear--cakewalk sponsored by Grand Central and Chef Boysarwee pies; pictures with Santa; silent auction for p:ear (preview it here)