Joe Rossi bringing Immigrant Statue to Parkrose Gateway

Joe Rossi

From the April 22nd edition of The Commerce Journal

Not all of the first Portlanders were pioneers. According to Joe Rossi, whose Italian ancestors first settled in Portland in 1888, a majority of Portland’s early residents were immigrants from Europe and elsewhere.

This was particularly true in Portland’s Parkrose neighborhood, where Rossi’s forefathers and other immigrants worked on farms. Rossi to this day runs his family’s farm near Parkrose, but there are few who do likewise. Today, farms have been replaced by shopping centers, and Rossi says the area is suffering from a lack of identity.

But Rossi and the Parkrose Business Association have a new project in the works to create a visual gateway to Parkrose on a small traffic island owned by the Oregon Department of Transportation.

“Parkrose used to have a town barber, a banker and its own stores,” Rossi said. “But after it was annexed into the city of Portland in the 1920s, our little historic identity fell away. Now people know us as Northeast Portland. We don’t have anything letting people know they are entering or leaving us. You don’t know you’re in Parkrose until you hit the hardware store.”

The Portland Immigrant Statue project formed in Rossi’s mind two years ago when the Parkrose Business Association took on a project to improve a weeded traffic island at Northeast 98th Avenue and Sandy Boulevard. The community considers the spot to be the boundary between Northeast Portland and Parkrose, so some Parkrose Business Association members said a statue commemorating Parkrose’s history should be located there.

Now, Rossi has taken the lead on the project. The plan is for artist and Parkrose resident James Gion to create a bronze relief of an immigrant that will be installed at the traffic island. Accompanying signage will inform visitors they are entering the Parkrose neighborhood.

“The amazing thing about the immigration story in Parkrose is it’s unchanging,” Rossi said. “Before it was the Italians and Germans who came here to farm. Now I see Hispanic workers in Parkrose newly arrived from small towns in Mexico coming here to work. This statue will say to these people as well as visitors, ‘Thank you. We want you to be here.’ ”

The bronze statue to be installed in Parkrose was designed by Portland artist James Gion, who also designed the bronze columns he created at the Japanese-American Historical Plaza at Governor Tom McCall Waterfront Park. (Photo by Dan Carter/DJC)

But a statue may not be simply plunked down on a piece of public right-of-way. Rossi first had to engage ODOT, which receives many requests from communities seeking more prominent entrances along their roads, according to Shelli Romero, public policy and community affairs coordinator with ODOT. Most of these projects fit into ODOT’s Adopt-a-Landscape program, which requires an official partner to sign the building permit application and commit to maintaining the area.

“Sometimes it’s possible to accommodate these projects and sometimes it’s not,” Romero said. “In this case, we brought together a team to work with the issues and see how we could work with the Parkrose Business Association around the maintenance.”

Romero’s main concerns for the project were that the site not be distracting to motorists, and that the statue be set back far enough to be secure if a motor vehicle were to crash into the median strip.

“We worked with the artist to come up with a plan to position the statue and other elements of the project,” Romero said. “There are many creative uses of right-of-way out there if folks can work with us to make them happen. It’s kind of exciting. It’s going to give the community a historical context.”

Gion has created dozens of bronze sculptures around the city over the years, but he is best known for bronze columns he created at the Japanese-American Historical Plaza at Governor Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Gion first will make a clay mold of Parkrose’s immigrant statue. Then Burning Palace Bronze in Boring will set the piece in bronze.

“The challenge for me was to make a piece that everyone can relate to,” Gion said. “It doesn’t represent one ethnic group. It portrays a man who is on the edge, but there’s a sense of adventure about him. He’s a little dicey, a little outside the country.”

Now, only a financial hurdle remains, Rossi said. The Parkrose Business Association has donated $5,000 to build a platform for the statue, but Rossi expects the total project to cost $80,000. He hopes to employ one or more local contractors for construction so that the project becomes a true community effort.

“As they came here, immigrants built Portland’s streets and continue to do so today,” Rossi said. “There shouldn’t be fear because we have these new waves of immigration. We have continued to be better as a city because of these people. Pioneers are only 10 percent of the story. Immigrants are 90 percent.”