SE Uplift staff took our bi-weekly Big-time Lunch Tour to the Creston-Kenilworth Neighborhood on December 3rd, 2009. We started with lunch at the Chaos Café, a vegetarian restaurant located at SE 26th and Powell. The food was hearty and satisfying all around. We were joined by neighborhood association members J. Free and Jack Hodges who filled us in on issues within CKNA and their impressions of the neighborhood as a new resident and a long-time working community member.

December 3rd was one of the first really cold winter days this year so we kept our tour short, but it was very interesting. Our first stop was Kateri Park, located just south of Powell on 28th Avenue. Kateri Park is an affordable housing development completed in 2005 built by Catholic Charities.  Kateri  

Park serves a significant Somali immigrant population and also offers affordable home ownership options along with apartments. It is a great example of positive attractive affordable home development. Catholic Charities is currently building a new building on the corner of 28th and Powell as well.

We continued our tour with a stop at the Community Music Center, located at 3350 SE Francis Street. The CMC is a partnership with Portland Parks and Recreation. It has been a popular place for music lessons and concerts in Portland since 1955, and is now one of over 20 PP&R sites offering music instruction. It is also part of the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts. The CMC is located in a beautiful historic firehouse in the heart of Creston-Kenilworth and is definitely worth dropping by if you are in the neighborhood.

Our final stops were two parks, Creston Park and Kenilworth Park. Creston-Kenilworth is lucky to have two well-appointed parks, offering play courts, ball fields, picnic areas, beautiful landscaping and an outdoor pool operated in the summertime in Creston Park. We also stopped by Creston School, one of the elementary schools within the neighborhood and located right next to Creston Park.

Yet again, we had another entertaining informative tour of one of the 20 SE Uplift Coalition neighborhoods and a chance to talk to neighbors in a more relaxed setting. We are looking forward to our next tour in East Moreland on December 17th, 2009. Please look for more information on our next lunch in the coming week.

You can read about our Buckman BLT here.