The fight over the Northwest Neighborhood Cultural Center
has reached the third act. Dec. 15 marks the deadline for
people to apply for membership to the center--and have a
shot at controlling the use of the neighborhood landmark
building.
For years the Northwest Neighborhood Cultural Center
(formerly the Northwest Service Center) has served as
a town hall of Northwest Portland, offering meeting rooms
and offices for service organizations such as Loaves and
Fishes. Its stage is also a popular venue for concerts,
lectures and, for the past eight years, some of the best
children's theater in the region.
But in the past 15 months, the center has become the
focal point of a bitter power struggle between the Northwest
Children's Theater and the aligned neighborhood associations
of Northwest Portland. The trouble began on Sept. 29,
1999, when Judy Kafoury, managing director of the Northwest
Children's Theater, invited lawyer Mark McDougal to a
meeting of the center's board, of which Kafoury was treasurer.
McDougal, a law partner of Kafoury's husband, Greg, told
the board that the center's charter seemed defective.
In addition, McDougal noted that although the center was
a membership corporation, no proper definition of membership
had been developed over the center's 22 years.
"That was the first salvo in the struggle," said Roger
Vrilakas, the board's president. Vrilakas believed that
McDougal's mission was not to help the center's board,
but to assure the theater that it could claim ownership
of the building by declaring the center a non-membership
corporation. "The intention of McDougal's visit is public
record," says Vrilakas, "as it was recorded in the minutes
of the board meeting."
But rather than showing McDougal trying to abandon the
idea of membership, the minutes report that he advocated
that a true membership be finally developed. (The minutes
also show that Vrilakas was absent from the meeting.)
But Vrilakas wasn't the only person concerned by McDougal's
visit. Jolene Classen, then the executive director of
Neighbors West Northwest, the umbrella organization for
the seven Northwest neighborhood associations, believed
that the theater had been stacking the board with supporters.
On Oct. 26, 1999, Classen sent a memorandum to the neighborhood
association presidents claiming that the theater was attempting
a coup.
Classen's claim that the center's board tilted heavily
toward the theater was true. Ever since it was purchased
from the Church of Christ-Scientist in 1978, the center
experienced long periods of instability. By 1992, when
the children's theater took up residence, a skeleton board
ran a half-empty and near-bankrupt community center.
The neighborhood representatives all admit that the theater's
arrival was a godsend. Not only did the theater become
the largest tenant, but it also took over management of
the stage, which had weighed on the center like an albatross.
Over the past eight years, the theater has been responsible
for 75 percent of the building's income, keeping the center
in the black.
Kafoury says that the theater's investment in the center
led her to examine the board structure. "You can't run
an organization without a strong board," she says, "and
the board was becoming dangerously thin." The theater
began recruiting prospective board members, assuming the
neighborhood would follow suit. It didn't. Suddenly, theater
supporters constituted a majority, and the neighborhood,
in the words of Vrilakas, "woke up."
Classen's October 1999 letter to neighborhood associations
brought a swift response. Her assistant, center board
member David Allred, rescinded his votes for the new board
members. Then her husband, Allen Classen, publisher of
The Northwest Examiner, began to publish inflammatory
editorials charging the theater with piracy and urging
Northwest residents to rally to save the building.
The rift took a bizarre turn at the packed board meeting
on May 16, 2000. Jeff Boly of the Arlington Heights Neighborhood
Association declared the gathering as an annual meeting
for the purpose of creating a membership, a move that
would allow the anti-theater faction to take control of
the board. Kafoury and other board members walked out
in protest, leaving Vrilakas in the awkward position of
claiming that the board he headed for seven years was
illegitimate. Along with Allred, he designated the June
meeting to hold elections for a new board.
Vrilakas' plans were thwarted when Kafoury filed a lawsuit
to stop the June meeting. The two sides agreed to meet
with a mediator, former U.S. Attorney Sid Lezak, who helped
Vrilakas and McDougal come up with a truce. At the June
20 meeting, Vrilakas spoke in favor of the new agreement,
which nullified the events of the May 16 meeting. Most
of the Northwest residents at the meeting voiced support
for the plan.
But 10 days later, a lawyer representing Boly, Allred
and Vrilakas sent McDougal a letter hinting that Boly
would scuttle the plan if membership definitions formulated
at the illegal May 16 meeting weren't adopted. Negotiations
ceased.
Finally, on Nov. 3, some clarity was reached when Multnomah
County District Court Judge Douglas G. Beckman ruled on
the center's membership. He declared that a member must
live or work 20 hours or more inside the seven Northwest
neighborhoods. In addition, he ruled, any business or
organization operating within that same area may delegate
a member. Those interested in joining the center's membership
have until Dec. 15 to apply. Approved members will then
vote for the center's new board on Jan. 15, 2001.
Both sides have embarked on a massive recruitment effort.
Kafoury has mailed out application cards to patrons, saying
the theater "is now in danger of losing its home." Theater
backers hope those who live or work in Northwest Portland
will become members and vote for Kafoury allies on the
board.
The neighborhood associations, meanwhile, have issued
press releases and placed ads in the Examiner equating
the theater with a renter who takes control of someone's
house.
Each camp is urging its supporters to turn out for next
month's election, guaranteeing that the fourth act of
this drama will have plenty of action.
