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 Tuesday 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 former residents east, north and across the Willamette River.

When it opens after two to three years of planned renovations, the new center is expected to offer enrichment programming for students, from after-school tutoring to summer camps, provided by nonprofit organizations who will occupy space in the building.

It is part of a series of projects underway in the Albina neighborhood that nonprofits and the school district alike hope will transform the area and draw back generations of former residents to live, work and play where their ancestors once did. Portland Public Schools is also investing $466 million in modernizing the nearby Jefferson High School, and has agreed to eventually sell its central office building to Albina Vision Trust, which wants to redevelop the 10 acre site with affordable and middle income housing.

Tuesday’s meeting drew emotional testimony from Black community leaders who celebrated the moment while pointedly noting how long it had been in coming.

“We have an opportunity to pioneer the first entity of its kind on a national level, (to open) a center that says resolutely and resoundingly to … the next generation of children that they matter in the most robust way possible,” said JT Flowers, the director of government affairs for Albina Vision Trust, who is himself a graduate of Portland Public Schools.

In his testimony, former school board member Herman Greene openly acknowledged his frustrations after a “due diligence” period of the past several months, during which some school board members asked probing questions about the district’s ongoing fiscal responsibilities for the property, including property taxes, maintenance and any programming expenses.

“We’ve delayed it, we’ve questioned it, we picked it apart,” Greene said. “Meanwhile our Black students continue to face the same gaps that come from generations of underfunded and broken promises. … Every time this project gets slowed down, doubted or debated, more harshly than any other investment, white supremacy is at work, the subtle kind, the kind that hides behind questions and concern and process, the kind that shows up in back room meetings.”

Board member Stephanie Engelsman said she felt the financial questions raised about the property’s purchase had been fair and prudent, and that the answers she’d received from district staff had satisfied her concerns.

She’d learned, she said, that any property taxes and operational costs over the next few years, before the building opens, can be paid for by bond funding, and once the building is open, the district will seek to cover costs via its commercial tenants, by partnership agreements and by grants and donations, before tapping into the district’s stretched-thin operating budget.

Engelsman and board member Virginia La Forte have also raised questions about how students from around the city will access the center, given that there is limited on-site parking and little room for school buses to maneuver.

Nichole Watson, the district’s senior director of family and community engagement, said she understood the questions, including over how much of the two buildings will eventually be usable by students, given the safety code concerns raised by a centerpiece feature, a soaring atrium that spans several stories.

“While I know there is a bit of angst and a bit of uncertainty, what I deeply appreciate is the fact that you trust the community that is sitting before you to tell you what they need, and I guarantee you that as a staff, we will not let this fail,” Watson said.