So You Want a New Urban Center?

The Urban Center focus group will be held at KCC on Sunday, June 8 from 2-5pm.  Hanna Karlin is arranging a post-meeting feast.  Please come if you can--

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KCC is in the midst of a strategic planning process, and we're seeking sangha input during four summer focus groups.  In the second of the series, we will discuss the issues involved with finding a new urban center.  This issue has easily been the longest to mature.  As one of the strategic planners, Dora DeCoursey has pointed out, we've been considering it for 17 years.  Over the course of those years, members of the sangha in forms official, quasi-official, and wholly unofficial, have taken tours of buildings all around the city.  (I--Jeff Alworth--remember visiting a very cool site in Multnomah Village in about 1998; West Siders may know it now as the Lucky Lab.)

Even as we've been preparing for this focus group, the interest in an urban center has inspired a new wave of visits to sites in North and Northeast Portland.  If you cock your head just so, every one of them has the potential to be our next center.  Indeed, in some cases you have to tilt your head very little to imagine a tranquil room full of meditators.

But when any two people begin talking about a potential building, they wonder how well it would "work."  Turns out this is a thornier question than it sounds.  What works for one set of assumptions doesn't with another set.  So we decided to step back and consider KCC's needs separate from any particular building.  A number of criteria have been worked up over the years, like a size range for the meditation hall, number of rooms for interviews, classes, office space, and so on, the need for ADA accessibility, parking, and location.  We've compiled those for handy reference.  But there are a range of strategic areas that can't be quantified.  As the strategic planning committee considered this, we started with KCC's vision statement, which has a number of useful hints.  Then we made up a list to try to capture the variables:

1.  Size and Phasing.  What type of building should we be looking for and on what timeline? 

KCC currently has an active sangha of 100 people, and we can squeeze only about half that into our meditation space.  What size building do we need in the short term, the medium term, and the long term?  How do we build flexibility into the building and allow for change in sangha size we know will come over the years and decades?  Should the building be an interim or final destination?

2.  Physical/logistical criteria.  How well does the building serve the needs of the sangha in the full cycle of a week, month, or year?

How will the building handle current activities and future needs?  Will someone staff it during the day?  Will there be residents on-site?  How it will be used when formal practice isn't happening?  Does it it encourages incidental sangha interaction (can sangha members drop in, do practice, and do committee work)?

3. Financial sustainability.  Can we afford to operate the building?  Will the building help pay for itself by drawing people in and supporting our activities?

Buildings cost money, but they also make it possible for money to flow in.  A very small building that doesn't encourage sangha growth and engagement may make worse financial shape than one that brings in and sustains a larger, healthier sangha: what elements do we need to encourage a positive balance?  Is there a way for the building to generate funds or otherwise support KCC?

4. Place of Engagement and Support.  What do we need to consider to create a place where people want to come together and where they feel supported?

What kind of spaces will make this a center where people are drawn to do practice and form a healthy community?  One way to think of this is different cohort groups--young people, families, older people.   Another way is to think of different functions, like a common meeting space (with or without an espresso machine!) or as a place with a dharma focal point (think of how the Kudung Shrine room functions in Bokar Monastery). How could the space inspire? What kind of atmosphere should the building provide?

5. Integration with SCOL.  How does the urban center support the coming and going of sangha on long retreat and serve as a place where that deep practice can benefit the larger community?

Should the building have residential space for retreat transition or space for personal retreats?  What other ways might the building help those preparing for or coming out of longer cloistered retreats?