Wow! I am still buzzing from last night’s amazing Candidate Meet & Greet, where 34 candidates for Portland City Council shared their visions for climate justice in Portland with a packed room. It was an amazing event and one that will reverberate through the entire election season.
Many things made last night possible — 350PDX’s hardworking staff and volunteers, all the City Council candidates sharing their visions for a better Portland, so many of you showing up to listen and engage — but these all depended on one important thing, a thing we’re in danger of losing: a wide open, wonderful, multi-purpose space.
Yes, that big back room we’ve shared with the Rebuilding Center is at a crossroads. We could either be securing the space as a long-lasting 350PDX community resource, or we could lose access to it altogether.
Here’s the backstory: 350PDX leases office space from the Rebuilding Center and our agreement allows us to use that big back room whenever the Rebuilding Center is not using it. Aside from a whole lot of residual sawdust, this arrangement worked great for the last few years. Now, the Rebuilding Center has built a lovely new workshop and wants to lease the old shop to a new tenant — which could end our access.
We love the space! The Arts Team has amazing art builds in it; the Forest Defense Team holds our quarterly Shade Equity Socials there; we’re able to do trainings there such as our January Organizing 101, and we support our community allies like Sunrise PDX, and others in holding meetings and events there. We do not want to lose it.
So, we created a plan that would keep the shop in the family: 350PDX and two other organizations agreed to take over the lease and split the monthly rent three ways. What a great idea! But, we just learned that one of those groups can no longer share the space, leaving us with a short amount of time to cover the additional costs while we look for another tenant or find a different way to make this financially viable.
This is where you come in! Can you help us cover this gap in funding and buy time to ensure we can keep this important community resource? Please make a special one-time gift today!
Thanks for all you do to support 350PDX — we couldn’t do it without you!
In community,
Brenna, for the 350PDX crew