What is this Place?

I envisioned the Emerson Street House during the second year of the Bainbridge Graduate School MBA in Sustainable Systems. That year, BGI introduced Certificate Programs - Agriculture, Green Building and Green Energy. We were all required to sign up for one, and encouraged to learn about the other two by attending presentations and talking to folks during meals at Islandwood, a nature preserve where our monthly intensives were held. I signed up for Agriculture because it was the area I knew the least about.

After graduation, I met a goat farmer who had a property for sale in the Alberta Arts District of Northeast Portland. I purchased the property and began planning a Passive Net Zero House that would become the Emerson Street House.

The Certificate of Occupancy for the Emerson Street House was issued in May 2016. We immediately started planning on how to introduce the Emerson Street House to the Portland Community. Erica Thomas, Works Progress Agency, signed us up for Design Week Portland 2017.

We convened a group of Emerson Street Neighbors to design our presentation. Emerson Street was in the Northeast Quadrant, a low income historically black neighborhood, an area with no other homes on the Design Week Portland 2017 Tour.

What could we do to entice folks to go out of their way to visit the Emerson Street House? We decided to go with... What Is This Place?

Erica helped us produce a small blue book called What Is This Place?, which we would give to folks who ventured up to Emerson Street. We expected a small group, but they would be the adventurous types - "our people."

The Emerson Street House was built to honor Nicole Sandoval, aka Nikki Brown Clown. Nikki lived down the end of Emerson Street in low income housing. Nikki is passionate about teaching black and brown children to read and making sure they have culturally appropriate books at school and at home. Nikki cashed out her retirement from Multnomah County, bought a yellow Volkswagen Bug and started storytimes for children.

Joanne Suell Greene introduced me to Nikki at Elevated Coffee where Emerson Street House neighbors met for coffee. I had been privileged to see one of Nikki's story times at Happy Cup, another local coffee shop. We were talking about a library at the Emerson Street House so why not name it the Nikki Brown Clown library? We all agreed. We finished our coffee and marched down to the Emerson Street House, which was still under construction to decide what that the Nikki Brown Clown Library would look like.

Nikki was marrying Guillermo Sandoval and they were moving to Chico, California. All the more reason to honor Nikki, who had done so much to provide culturally specific books to black and brown children, not just in Portland but all over the United States and around the world.

I have moved back to Florida, richer for my experience with Nikki and the Emerson Street Neighbors. The Emerson Street House will be transitioning again soon.

Stay tuned for an announcement!