Five years after Portland Public Schools voters first approved spending up to $60 million on a first-of-its-kind center designed to be an educational and social haven for the district’s Black students , the project has found its home.

School board members voted 7-0 last night to spend $16 million to purchase the 72,000-square-foot, wood-framed One North development in North Portland to serve as the home for the planned Center for Black Student Excellence.

District staff have said they expect to spend another $20 million to $25 million in bond funding to upgrade the mixed-use property, which sits in the heart of the Albina neighborhood, the historic heart of the city’s Black community. It was hollowed out by generations of government projects and a wash of gentrification, pushing its

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