OSU plans to build student housing at CMLC location

As Oregon State University comes forward with a land development plan, the future of a Corvallis nonprofit organization is uncertain.

The Corvallis Multicultural Literacy Center, located at 128 SW Ninth St., has been providing a space for culture and learning to the community for 11 years — while leasing the property from OSU for a dollar per year. Once the CMLC’s current lease expires in March 2018, OSU plans to use the lot as housing for upper-division students.

According to Steve Clark, OSU’s vice president for university relations and marketing, the university has been receiving encouragement from the Corvallis community and the city of Corvallis to build more housing on campus. In response, OSU has been conducting research on what housing would be the most beneficial to the community.

“The most recent student housing-needs analysis shows that Oregon State presently is adequately meeting the residential housing needs for first-year students and will be able to do so for the foreseeable future,” Clark said in an email. “But the market analysis also identified there is growing demand for on-campus housing for sophomores, transfer and upper division students, as well as graduate students and students with families.”

The Corvallis City Council approved the location for student housing as part of the university’s campus master plan 12 years ago, according to Clark.

“We consider this new housing complex will be a very special living community that will invigorate the east side of the OSU campus and be a strong and complementary asset to the nearby Corvallis neighborhoods,” Clark said via email.

The university has been holding meetings and communicating with CMLC staff, according to Clark, and has also offered to lease the former Asian and Pacific Cultural Center on Jackson Street at the same dollar-per-year rate.

“Over the past year, CMLC leaders have stressed they would prefer a center location that is similar to operating within a building that is like a home and not an office building,” Clark said in an email. “We offered the former cultural center because we feel it meets the location attributes that benefit the CMLC and is in close proximity to the OSU campus and student services. The building is well-maintained and is an accessible facility to transit, parking and community services and neighborhoods.”

According to Dee Curwen, center coordinator for the CMLC, when compared to the center’s current space of over 3,000 square feet, the 1,100-square-foot Jackson Street location would place some new restrictions on the center.

“It would have to be a restructuring of the activities and that kind of thing in order to be able to accommodate (the smaller space),” Curwen said.

The current building is ideal for what the center does and the CMLC has no intention of moving at this time, according to Curwen.

“The location, the structure of the building, the fact that there’s a kitchen, the fact that there’s a space for children, all of those things worked to allow us to grow to be what we hope is a good resource to the community,” Curwen said.

The CMLC was envisioned as a “living room for learning,” according to Curwen. It provides spaces for people of different cultures to have conversations and practice languages together. The center also offers free services to help community members learn about citizenship.

“We do citizenship tutoring, and that has grown immensely,” Curwen said. “We’ve gotten 34 people from the beginning to the end of the citizenship process. We work with volunteers, we don’t give legal advice or do any work they need a lawyer for, but we can explain the process, we can help people review the forms and then prepare for the interview.”

According to Emerald Berry-Cabiao, a volunteer at the CMLC, the center brings people of different backgrounds together.

“It’s a place of unity and adding to the diversification of Corvallis and the Corvallis community,” Berry-Cabiao said. “It takes people who are from different cultures and don’t speak English as their first language, and it’s connecting them and forging relationships.”

Valori George is a frequent visitor at the center and was involved in forming a group called “Save the CMLC.” The group’s objective is to convince OSU and the Corvallis City Council to allow the center to stay where it is.

According to George, the group was formed in the beginning of March 2017 by Corvallis community members who came from different backgrounds but were united by a love for the CMLC.

“Most of us are activists in all different directions,” George said. “Some people work with immigrant rights, some people work anti-war, environmental, racial justice. It’s kind of all over the spectrum of activism, but that’s kind of what brought us all together, because all of us had used the center for lots of years.”

One of the reasons the CMLC should stay is that it helps set Corvallis apart as a uniquely welcoming city, according to George.

“When Iranian students, before they arrive in Corvallis, they already know about this place because other Iranian students already here have told them about it,” George said.

According to George, the group members had worked together before, organizing events and fundraisers at the center.

“Most of us already had experience at the center like that and then when we found out it was in danger, we just naturally came together and have been working together ever since,” George said.

OSU has offered different potential courses of action to the CMLC which have yet to be finalized, according to Clark.

“In discussions this past year, OSU staff have shared a number of options with the CMLC,” Clark said in an email. “These included how the building might be purchased and moved to another location by the CMLC.”

According to Curwen, if the CMLC plans to purchase and move the building in 2018, funds need to be ready and presented to OSU by this September. For more information on the future of the building as options are considered, go to the CMLC Facebook page. center does, according to Curwen.

“The location, the structure of the building, the fact that there’s a kitchen, the fact that there’s a space for children, all of those things worked to allow us to grow to be what we hope is a good resource to the community,” Curwen said.

The CMLC was envisioned as a ‘living room for learning’, according to Curwen. It provides spaces for people of different cultures to have conversations and practice languages together. The center also offers free services to help community members learn about citizenship.

The CMLC’s current lease with OSU ends in March 2018. According to Curwen, if the CMLC plans to purchase and move the building, funds need to be ready and presented to OSU by this September. For more information on the future of the building as options are considered, go to the CMLC Facebook page.