Portland works to reinvigorate historical Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center

Portland city officials are working with community members and artists to bring regular exhibits and events back to the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center. The historic center features a 99-seat black box theater, a rehearsal studio and an art gallery. Portland Parks & Recreation has collaborated with a community advisory committee to reactivate the center and create an artist residency program. Kwik Jones is a playwright and a program resident, Donovan Scribes is a writer, artist and member of the advisory committee and Soo Pak manages arts, culture and special events for PP&R. They join us to share their vision for the future of the center.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. We turn now to plans and hopes for Portland’s Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center. The former firehouse was turned into a community space and a focus point for Black culture 40 years ago. It features a 99-seat black box theater, a rehearsal studio and an art gallery. Over the years it’s gone through various iterations and periods of inactivity. Now city officials are working with community members and artists to reactivate this space, to bring regular exhibits and events to the historic center and to figure out what a sustainable future could look like. Kwik Jones is a playwright and an artist-in-residence at the center right now. Donovan Scribes is a writer, artist, speaker, and producer, and a member of the advisory committee that’s working with the city. Soo Pak manages arts, culture and special events for Portland Parks and Recreation. They all join me now. It’s great to have all three of you on the show.

Kwik Jones: Thank you.

Donovan Scribes: Thank you for having us.

Soo Pak: Great to be here.

Miller: Kwik Jones, first. You are doing one of the first residencies right now as an established artist. But my understanding is that your connections to this center go way back. What did this center mean for you when you were growing up?

Jones: It was everything. It was the place that I’d seen my first full length play.

Miller: What was the play?

Jones: Oh gosh, I was in third grade. I couldn’t even tell you.

Miller: But it was there.

Jones: It was here. Yeah. I remember I was just in awe of being in the theater and being that close to actors. It was a place where my daughter took African dance, and it was a place where I produced and directed and wrote plays for.

Miller: Is that one of the reasons you became a theater artist? What you saw and what you experienced at this center years and years ago?

Jones: Yeah, it hooked me. I mean, just being in that environment – it really hooked me. From there, I started writing scripts for television. And that was the third grade. I’ve been doing it ever since.

Miller: So, given that personal history, what did it mean for you when you found out that you were going to be one of the first recipients of a grant and residency in a sort of new incarnation of the center?

Jones: It meant the world to me. I mean, you want a lot as an artist, but I wanted this so bad that it was in me. I really wanted to be in this residency because of what this building means to me and what I really want to see this building be.

Miller: Soo Pak, can you give us the brief history of this site? How did an old firehouse come to be a cultural center with a specific focus for Black Portlanders?

Pak: Yeah. The structure was originally a firehouse that was built in 1910. In 1982, it was founded as an art center by Charles Jordan, who is Portland’s first Black commissioner and Parks director. Since its inception it has served as the cultural home for the Black community in Portland. It was, from the beginning, operated by a nonprofit called IFCC Inc. Although it’s a city building, it was operated by this nonprofit, which folded in 2010. Then another nonprofit took over the space and then turned it back over to Parks in 2014. Since then the building has not been funded, or there wasn’t specific budget for the building, so it was used intermittently and definitely could have been more fully activated. At the request of members of the community who asked for greater activation of the space, the city under Commissioner Fritz appointed a Black-led Community Advisory Committee to help us to think about how to reactivate the space and also help us to develop a sustainable operating model. That’s where we are now, working with the Community Advisory Committee to develop a long-term vision and a long-term, permanent facility.

Miller: Donovan Scribes, you are one of the members of that committee. I have to say – and this is based on a lot of conversations we’ve had over the years – that often advisory committees, that can have different names, can be treated more like a box that bureaucrats have to check or as a kind of window dressing, as opposed to a meaningful way for members of the public or members of specific communities to engage in important decisions. Do you feel like you and other members of this committee have had real voices in shaping the future of this cultural center?

Scribes: Yeah, 100 percent. I think you’re 100 percent right, too, that a lot of these advisory committees, as people say, have no teeth. I think what we ended up doing as a CAC was saying, ‘We will have teeth in this.’ Because, when we originally convened four years ago, we were supposed to only have four meetings to figure out what the new mission was gonna be, figure out the business plan for it and move along. What we quickly decided is that four meetings wasn’t gonna be enough to really make the IFCC what it should be in the future. Having Soo at the table and various people from the city, we were ultimately able to move past those four meetings and turn this into a longer process that really got at the heart of things. Now here we are, four years later, and we have a residency program which is activating the building more long term. And we’re even looking at expanding the building, which is a very major part of the work that we’ve been able to do – and wouldn’t have been able to do – if we just were in four meetings because that work was really saying, let’s slow down. Let’s even see if this building is sustainable if it’s activated as-is right now, and we found out that wasn’t the case…

Miller: Meaning that there needs to be capital improvements to the building itself in order for it to function the way you’d like it to function?

Scribes: Right. I mean, there were already problems with the building coming into the IFCC CAC four years ago, so we knew that. We knew like the noise bleed from the dance studio down to the main theater part were something that were gonna need millions of dollars of fixes. But what we ended up seeing was, even when you make those fixes, that once you pen out all the numbers that it’s still actually not a building that’s built to sustain under a normal operating model. So an expansion, we found, was necessary. That’s where we’re at now, is looking at what it would look like to expand the building to expand the possibility around it.

Miller: Kwik Jones, what has your residency been like? I mean, you said that artists want a lot, you want everything, but this in particular, it was really exciting to be in this place that’s meant so much to you. What have you actually been doing in your time there?

Jones: I did a ‘Intro to Playwriting’ class because you get a lot of people who want to write, and they just don’t know where to start. So I did an ‘Intro to Playwriting’ class. But what the residency really is, it’s giving an artist a place to go to be a artist. So, for me, it was getting here early in the morning and writing. Not having to worry about being in the house and writing or going to a coffee shop. It was having a place to go every day, sitting down and being able to write in peace. That meant so much to me.

Miller: Can I ask what did it mean to you, as a Black Portlander, to be in this space that was created as a kind of convening cultural space for Black Portland?

Jones: You’re carrying on Black excellence. That’s important for me. To be a part of Black Portland and the artistry that we’ve had before me. To be in a place where great artists were here and to be a part of that. I mean, it means a lot. It really means a lot to me. And I don’t take it for granted, not one day.

Miller: Donovan Scribes, how do you think about the particular place of this center? I ask this thinking about gentrification; over the decades, so many Black Portlanders can no longer afford to live in inner North and Northeast Portland and are more likely now to live, say, in St. Johns or East Portland or Gresham. Has that affected where you think a center like this could have the most meaningful life?

Scribes: Well, it definitely has been a part of our conversation this whole time – the spread of people. But, in that IFCC is one of those staples that just is a home to the community… So many of these different staples throughout North and Northeast, people are still traveling to come to those things. This has just been a matter of the building not being in full operation. Because I’ve been there for different times when this has been intermittently used. Like, I’ve been on a panel there, I’ve seen a movie screening there. And people come for these things. So I think it’s just a matter of, when we get to that point, people will show up. I think that’s what’s so great about the residency itself is you’ve got people who are more established, like Kwik, and more interconnected with the building and the neighborhood, that are part of this cohort. You’ve got people like Intisar Abioto who, even though she’s not from Portland, has been documenting Black Portland and been a part of the general life of the art scene out here. Then you have people who are not from here that are also part of this. I think what that does is it creates a lineage and it allows the baton of the IFCC to be passed to more people. So I think, just through the residency program alone, you’ll have more people who are gonna put their eyes towards the IFCC – no matter where in the city they might be living – and look at it as a place that they can come to. I will say, I know SEI, they just had a housing development that is really close to the building, so that’s a good thing just in terms of knowing part of the community will be in closer proximity. But, yeah, I think long term the hope is, and belief is, that people will continue to come to the IFCC once it’s back fully online.

Miller: Donovan Scribes, Kwik Jones and Soo Pak, thanks very much for joining us.

Scribes: Thank you.

Jones: Thanks for having us.

Pak: Thank you.

Miller: Donovan Scribes is a writer and producer and artist and public speaker based in Portland. He is a member of the Community Advisory Committee that has been set up to figure out the future of the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center. Soo Pak is arts culture and special events manager for Portland Parks and Recreation. That is the city bureau that has managed this center for decades now. And Kwik Jones is a playwright and television writer and director and producer, an inaugural Grant and Residency recipient at the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center.

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