Interview: APANO’s Duncan Hwang and Colin Crader talk about building community power in the Jade District

To fund development of APANO’s new offices and event space, APANO Associate Director Duncan Hwang (left) and Development Manager Colin Crader helped lead a capital campaign that drew contributions from area residents and from some of Oregon’s biggest funders—creatively recognized with a flourish of foliage on the event space’s living wall.

The pieces of the Orchards of 82nd began to coalesce, in 2013, when grassroots advocacy group Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) invited residents of the Jade District to envision the future of their built environment. The busy commercial stretch of Southeast 82nd Avenue, between Division Street and Powell Boulevard, overlaps three of Portland’s lower-income and more racially and ethnically diverse census tracts. It became a target for community-driven real estate and infrastructure investments when, in 2011, the City of Portland and Multnomah County designated it a Neighborhood Prosperity Network zone. At the APANO-led visioning sessions—conducted in Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian, Spanish, and English—residents voiced concerns about looming displacement risks and named access to parks and community gathering space among top neighborhood development priorities. With APANO’s community organizing efforts leading the way, the Orchards of 82nd emerged as a direct response.

Sponsored by ROSE Community Development, designed by SERA, and built by O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders on land donated by Metro, the Orchards of 82nd brings a trio of resident-prioritized amenities to the Jade District: affordable rental housing, a public courtyard and plaza, and event space. The new mixed-used development at the corner of Southeast 82nd and Division started welcoming residents in February. Since then, 48 families have moved in to the apartments, and neighbors have packed the ground-floor event space at gatherings ranging from public town halls to APANO’s Eat Up series, where Asian and Pacific Islander food entrepreneurs shared stories about their learnings, challenges, and successes.

From the perspective of APANO Associate Director Duncan Hwang, one of the project’s organizers, the Orchards of 82nd offers Jade District residents opportunities to build community and put down roots as the surrounding environment changes. These residents include APANO, which recently expanded its operations from a rented office in a former mahjong hall (complete with “burnt carpets, a ceiling stained with cigarette smoke, and a stage,” recalls Hwang) into a bright, clean office that it owns and operates, along with the event space, on the new building’s ground floor.

HDC Finance Project Manager Anita Punja and Construction Project Manager Lynn Lindgren-Schreuder worked with APANO and ROSE to develop Orchards of 82nd. That process involved forming a commercial condo, which enables APANO and ROSE to share building ownership, and making improvements to APANO’s space, designed by Resolve Architecture. Anita, Lynn, and HDC Communications Coordinator Camela Raymond sat down with Hwang and APANO Development Manager Colin Crader to discuss the development process, including APANO’s creative plan to finance the build-out of its ground-floor space.

APANO’s new ground-floor offices and event space at the Orchards of 82nd boost the organization’s accessibility and street presence. The building’s upper floors contain 48 affordable apartments, owned and operated by ROSE Community Development.

CAMELA
You’ve talked about how Orchards of 82nd grew out of a community visioning process. Practically speaking, how did the development begin to take shape?

DUNCAN
Everyone, across all the communities that participated in the visioning process, really wanted something to be done at the corner of 82nd and Division, because that's the heart of the Jade District. There was an abandoned furniture store here for quite a while, and it was an eyesore. Everyone was, like, “You should really do something with that furniture store.” A bunch of our decision-makers and electeds observed the visioning process. Then Metro had an opportunity to purchase the furniture store for its transit-oriented development program. This was in preparation for the Division transit project, a new transit line running up and down Division from Gresham to Portland. 

Metro heard from residents about the displacement impacts, so they made it mandatory for development proposals to include affordable housing, which they don’t always do. While Metro worked on its RFP [request for proposals], APANO ran the empty furniture store for about two years as an impromptu community space. It got a lot of activation: 20,000 people, roughly, came each year to different kinds of events. So, we knew there was a lot of need for event space and community space—as well as for affordable housing, of course. 

CAMELA
What types of events took place in the furniture store?

DUNCAN
The Jade District visioning work is grounded in building community power, improving health outcomes, and preventing involuntary displacement. Those are the three overarching goals. So we shared the space with a bunch of nonprofits; it was like a community hub. A lion dance team practiced here. The Slants practiced here. Unit Souzo, the taiko and Japanese folk dance performance group, performed here. We rented out space to Passion Impact, a youth volunteerism organization. We did a lot of collaborations with artists to have exhibits. It was really busy. For APANO, having the space was great for forming new relationships and supporting mission-aligned groups, organizations, and artists.

CAMELA
So, you ran the furniture-store space for two years, and then Metro released the RFP to develop the site?

DUNCAN
Yes. We went in with ROSE on the proposal for the Orchards at 82nd, and we won the bid and went to work building the building.

ANITA
How would you describe the process of developing a commercial real-estate project to someone who has never done one?

DUNCAN
It was pretty straightforward. You all made it super easy. We couldn’t have done it without Resolve or HDC.

In addition to the Orchards at 82nd development, the Jade District community visioning process led to outcomes such as the Jade International Night Market, an annual summer event that “provides a space to celebrate and recognize the diversity and culture of the communities who live and work in the Jade District and sheds light on the issues impacting a neighborhood in transition.”

ANITA
That's good to hear. But you all did the heavy lifting, bringing the money to the table with your capital campaign.

DUNCAN
The fundraising part was hard. But the general arc of the project was ideal for the type of fundraising campaign we did. The event space, when it was in the furniture store, was so well supported by the community. We knew there was real demand. We had a crowd raiser and raised about $40,000—not a ton of money, but it was from 300 or 400 people; it showed the community support. That snowballed into the capital campaign. 

If you have money, anything is possible! I’m half-joking when I say that, but it’s an important point. You have to entrust the community. The community knows what they want. We did the visioning, and people said they wanted these things. That's a lesson for urban renewal, or tax increment districts. Those finance models have traditionally not been kind to communities of color, because they were used to fund private development or transportation projects. But if you're able to take that model and entrust community groups to make the decision about how those resources are spent, you get better outcomes—like this building, which cost one-twentieth of what a transportation line would cost, but it might be more impactful to those already living in the neighborhood.

ANITA 
There are so few projects that have this kind of inception story, where the community is at the root of how a multimillion dollar project came to be.

COLIN
Exactly. If you talk with fundraisers who take on capital projects, a lot of them would say, “You don't have enough support, you don’t have enough major donors at this particular giving level.” This project wasn't about that. It was about driving the vision. And it was about driving the support that’s shared not only with community, but with all the other stakeholders.

Shared analysis is a huge part of why this project is so successful. It was a ripple effect of the advocacy that APANO and other organizations like us have done for years leading up to the project. To have that shared analysis, when the RFP happens, and then to have an outcome that's a transit-oriented development, with a community space and affordable housing—all the pieces really magically aligned.

There are people who are reaching out to us, saying, how did you do it? I'm like, well, you start ten years ago with these scrappy nonprofits that were just saying, “Please hear us, please listen to this community, we need your help.” It takes that type of organizing support to lead into a project like this. 

ANITA
What do you mean by shared analysis?

COLIN
What's the root cause of social inequities, what is causing the rise in rents, what is causing our communities to be gentrified out further into East Portland, and why is this project supposed to be a bulwark against gentrification? We have to share that with our stakeholders so they can get buy-in and then be able to move their own systems to work in tandem with us. That takes a lot of leadership; that takes a lot of training of folks; that takes a lot of holding each other accountable for the needs of the community. 

ANITA
How is the new space and your partnership with ROSE impacting APANO and the communities you serve?

DUNCAN
Well, this building definitely gives us a more visible presence compared to our previous office. So we get people walking in.

ANITA
What’s an example of a person who knocks on your door?

COLIN
Sometimes it's residents who are looking for affordable housing. Also, there's a growing presence of not only people who want to utilize this space, but also people who want to make the community better. We've been focusing on transportation lately, so we've had outreach from folks like Lime, Car2Go, ShareNow, and Bike Town, saying “we would love to be a part of this.” “This,” meaning the building and our programs and our partnerships. 

When I have a conversation with a stakeholder who wants to use our space, or to empower our programs to do any activity, usually the first question we ask in our discovery meeting is, “How do we bring it to the residents?” Because they're the best sample of the community, the most impacted by the work we do. 

DUNCAN
Organizationally there’s been a bunch of changes. I mean, we have a new office space, obviously. We have an asset on our balance sheet, which is nice, but we also have this mortgage, which we have to pay off. So I think it requires more sophistication in the organization. We have to have reserves and all the stuff that comes with being building owners. 

Strategically, we've also taken on managing community spaces at affordable housing developments in the area. So we also run Milepost 5’s community space north of 82nd and Glisan. It's a very similar model to what we do here, except we don't own that space. It's like providing resident-services-plus: partnering with affordable housing developers or managers to bring a broader range of events and services to their tenants and also to the community. It’s a replicable model that we might do in Washington County. It's changed how we work on a lot of levels and also the kinds of benefits and services that we can provide to the community and to the partners. 

LYNN
What lessons have you learned about developing and owning real estate in the process of carrying out this project?

COLIN
Make sure you know your warranties, so you can get lights and leaks fixed!

DUNCAN
You want to bring on folks who really know what they're doing. We always have a love-hate relationship with consultants. Because, for a lot of our work, consultants kind of drop in to this neighborhood and ask you some questions and then go write in their fancy report, and then charge $20,000 to a bureau for all the work that we did. In this scenario, it was awesome working with all of you. With specialized expertise—if you don’t know what you’re doing in property development, don't try to do it yourself, obviously, because it probably won’t go well. So, yeah, there are a lot of scenarios where bringing on consultants makes a lot of sense.

(Left to right) APANO Associate Director Duncan Hwang, HDC Construction Project Manager Lynn Lindgren-Schreuder, APANO Development Manager Colin Crader, and HDC Finance Project Manager Anita Punja gather at APANO’s new event space as its final touches, including murals depicting area residents, are completed in September.

I think what was difficult, because I was working mainly on the fundraising end at the outset, was how the costs went up every couple of months. Labor costs, materials costs. So being ready for that—the initial size and scope of the budget and project that you start with will probably not be what you end with. That’s really important for any non-CDC [community development corporation], that is only doing a couple of real estate projects, to know.

COLIN
The cost escalation adds a stressor on the nonprofit side, because we're already strategically asking all our funding partners, who would normally fund programming, to divert resources towards a capital project. Some funders have limitations—like, you can only be funded in one particular portfolio per year, or you can only apply for capital projects, and they can't do the programming side at all. So when there are only so many public and private funders that can give at a certain level for a growing nonprofit, maintaining the cash flow was—how should I say this?—I didn't have as many gray hairs when I first started working here two years ago. But those are the realities of funding a project like this: utilizing the relationships of a nonprofit that is predominantly funded by grants and government contracts.

LYNN
What advice would you give to other nonprofits about being a commercial condo owner, in this case as a partner with ROSE?

DUNCAN
We had a strong partnership with ROSE beforehand. Going into a partnership like the condo association requires a lot of trust. To have that trust already built in is important. ROSE was really generous with its time and energy and collaboration. I think it's easier and more productive to work with a CDC that has the same geography and values as you. It was a real plus that we’ve been working in the same place and with a lot of the same folks for many years. And working in coalition already and having cross-board pollination made everything really smooth, rather than, like, your partner is doing 10 housing projects, and this is just one of them. 

Another thing I would tell other nonprofits is because of the time and energy and expense that goes into it, your nonprofit really needs to be at a certain level of development. You need to front money, you need a certain level of accounting system, your board needs to be on board. Like Colin said, being able to time it right in your financial cycle is critical, because there's not much room for error.

Also, naming and concepts really matter. Roots to Rise is the name of our capital campaign. It’s really about what it means for a community and a nonprofit to buy property and put down roots and make a statement about not being displaced. The name for the building was really impactful for us. The Orchards of 82nd, it recalls the history of this area and families that lost their property here from the Japanese internment when this neighborhood was predominantly farmland. The name and words really matter. Funders latch on to that as well, because it makes it a powerful story.

COLIN
Metaphorically, I would say this project is a beautiful mosaic of different pieces coming together to form a picture of what's possible. Which is not usually the case when it comes to fundraising. It’s pretty dry: what are your outcomes, what are your outputs? What about the cool things, the visionary things?