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Craig Opperman Multnomah County Children’s Receiving Center Director .

MID-COUNTY MEMO PHOTO BY TIM CURRAN
Children’s Receiving Center opens in Mid-County

City, County, Community Leaders honor new social service center in Gateway at the recent opening

LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO

They say success has a thousand fathers (and perhaps as many mothers), and they all seemed to be at the opening of the Multnomah County’s Children’s Receiving Center last month.

The center, a new structure on East Burnside Street at 102nd Avenue, will provide shelter for up to three days for children, age three to 12, who have been removed from unfit or abusive households by the police or courts. It has 16 beds, a kitchen, and a library equipped with computers.

It is part of a 3.5-acre Gateway Children’s Center campus. The adjacent Child Assessment Building provides offices to a variety of public and private social service agencies. A third building is being renovated as home for the Multi-Disciplinary Team, consisting of members of the Portland Police Bureau, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office and the state Child Abuse Hotline. Together, these services will assess the children and determine the best medium to long-term placement for them. The Christie School will contract with the county to run the center. Director of the new Children’s Receiving Center is Craig Opperman, currently Christie School Director of Community Programs.

Child welfare advocates have sought a facility such as the receiving center for decades. They relayed horror stories of children already traumatized spending hours in police cars being shuttled from one office to another while social workers sought a place to put them.

Longtime advocates present for the celebration included former County Commissioners Pauline Anderson and Sharron Kelley, as well as current County Chair Diane Linn and Commissioner Lisa Naito, City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, and District Attorney Michael Schrunk. The Portland Youth Philharmonic Quartet and the Christie School Choir provided entertainment.

A rude beginning
Hazelwood Neighborhood Association chair Arlene Kimura (left) with board member Linda Robinson at the opening.

MID-COUNTY MEMO PHOTO BY TIM CURRAN
The Hazelwood Neighborhood Association and Opportunity Gateway programs were initially somewhat involuntary partners to the development. The neighborhood was nonplussed when the county selected what many saw as a prime commercial site for a social service agency. They were dismayed when Saltzman, a former Multnomah County Commissioner dedicated to the project, designated more than $2 million in scarce urban renewal funds to the project. In a compromise, Opportunity Gateway Chair Dick Cooley bargained the price down to about $900,000, with some of this paying for landscaping and the transfer of the northwest corner of the site to the city. It is now for sale by the Portland Development Commission. The receiving center ultimately cost about $4 million of the total campus’s $12 million cost.

Most of the Hazelwood board was on hand at the grand opening. Chair Arlene Kimura said of the building, “They did a nice job. It’s very child-friendly, not institutional.”

Saltzman, Naito and Opperman acknowledged the neighborhood leaders. Naito said that Cooley and Kimura “welcomed us with open arms.”

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