The nonprofit Dream Big City aims to create safe, drug- and alcohol-free community events across Portland. Over the last six years, the organization has put on more than 170 events featuring live music, art, free meals and mentorship opportunities for youth. Its latest project is to turn a blighted street in Portland’s Central Eastside into a community plaza with skateboard ramps, basketball hoops and more.
Alex Murrell is the founder and executive director of Dream Big City. He joins us to talk more about the nonprofit’s work.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The nonprofit Dream Big City aims to create safe, drug- and alcohol-free community events across Portland. Over the last six years, the organization has put on more than 170 events featuring live music, art, free meals and mentorship opportunities for young people. Its latest project is to turn a once blighted street in Portland’s Central Eastside into a community plaza with skateboard ramps, basketball hoops and more.
Alex Murrell is the founder and executive director of Dream Big City. He joins us now to talk more about the non-profit’s work. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.
Alex Murrell: Thank you for having me.
Miller: How do you describe Dream Big City? I mean, what kind of work is at the heart of what you do?
Murrell: Our whole goal at Dream Big City is to create a safe, alcohol- and drug-free space for youth.
Miller: Why?
Murrell: It’s because I didn’t have that as a kid. We were out in the streets in Portland skating, and we were surrounded by violence, by alcohol, by just things that kids shouldn’t be around. So my whole goal was to create a safe place for the youth and adults to come and be creative physically and through creative outlets.
Miller: How do you think your life was affected by not having the kind of place that you’re now trying to create for young people today?
Murrell: I think I learned the hard way. I had to go swim in the deep end for a while in alcohol, drugs, and I had to get into recovery. I’ve been in recovery for 26 years. Part of that is how can I be of service, how I can give away what I have. And that’s serenity. That’s a way where I’m able to find myself, through physical and creative outlets. So that was the key to starting Dream Big City. Just hey, we’ve all been through … A lot of the people who started it with me and who volunteer have been through tough times and they just want to make it easier for the youth.
Miller: One of the programs that you’ve been doing for a while now, you call “FamJams.” What’s a “FamJam?”
Murrell: FamJam is so fun because it is a safe block party. So I had a restaurant van. It started with a ramp, a rail and five people at a parking lot off Hawthorne. We just pulled up. It’s when I had a 5-year-old kid, and I just wanted to flip the script and just have this safe skate park. So we pulled up. Five people. We had so much fun. People drove by. They saw what we were doing. It was the beginning of COVID and they saw this group smiling, so people pulled up. It turned into 10 people, 20 people, 50 people, 100, 200. We’ve done up to 1,100 people at a FamJam. It’s everything free: skating, basketball, music, art, free food for all.
Miller: And was it just organic? You set this up and then people, like in “Field of Dreams,” if you build it they will come? Or was it more official and thought out than that?
Murrell: No, I really like doing the next right thing, and to just let go of goals and just do the next right thing. Because if we have goals like that and try to create something so unique, then it will limit what the possibilities can turn out to be. That’s been the beauty of Dream Big is we do the next right thing and we’re getting these things that are happening that are bigger than any of our dreams.
Miller: Do you do have to get permission though from the city, from, from PBOT, or buy-in from local business owners or local residents?
Murrell: I had a relationship with PBOT because I had Stickers Asian Cafe for 28 years, a restaurant. I did outdoor dining with them. Then they reached out to me to start a plaza with Central Eastside Industrial Council [CEIC]. And CEIC was a bridge that connected me with PBOT. PBOT was talking about me doing a plaza in a different area. I was in a building, a creative space, JaJa PDX. I looked out the window and there was violence. People would move to Portland and they would say, “Hey, walk around that street on 9th and Taylor. Don’t go through it.”
I was going to go, the next day, to do a tour of this other block, and I woke up at four in the morning and said, “Hey, we want to do the plaza right outside the window.” I told my wife that. She was like, “Go to bed, you’re crazy.” And I talked PBOT into coming. It was a tough talk because there were no businesses on 9th and Taylor, and usually the plazas are around businesses. I had the PBOT team come. I pitched it for 20 minutes. We never went to the other place to look at it. They believed in it. I believed in it.
And we were able to do what’s called a “never been done.” It’s something in skateboarding where you film and it’s a trick that’s never been done. There’s never been a plaza from PBOT given to Dream Big City. We’re the steward of the street. And we turned an outdoor community center right where it was an avoided street. So it was a dream.
Miller: Can you describe more fully what it was like before you transformed it?
Murrell: So it was a dark street. There was fentanyl, there was meth, there was violence. Houseless community wouldn’t even want to come in that street. It was a street that was pretty much banned to walk through.
Miller: How did you then change that? I mean, you got buy-in from PBOT, but did you walk through there one day and say, “Hey folks, please use meth, please sell fentanyl somewhere else because we wanna skateboard here with kids?”
Murrell: I think life is about respect, so I led with respect and just said, “Hey, my name’s Alex. I’m in recovery 26 years. No judgment, but I’m gonna bring kids here. And you can’t do that here.” Usually people, no matter how deep in the addiction, when you mention kids, they don’t want to influence kids in a bad way. I just really believe in bringing love to darkness. You bring light.
I was used to hanging out in the dark places. That’s where I used to hide. So I knew that if you bring love and bring light, that will flip the whole street. But also, what I didn’t realize … Because we’re out in the streets and we did bring love, I’ve created relationships with the houseless community, with a lot of people where we build trust because of what we’ve done, that impact we’ve made. It’s been a pathway to get people to get the help they need.
Miller: If I understand the timing right, this all happened more than a year ago, and now you’re working on what you call Dream Plaza 2.0. What’s changing?
Murrell: PBOT was amazing. They said yes. I was like, let’s call it a pilot project. I insured the street. I put around $80,000 worth of ramps, basketball hoops in the street. We did the biggest skateboard mural in America, 126 feet by Matt French, a famous skateboard artist.
Miller: It looks like a skateboard from up above. If you are in a drone and you look down, you’d see a huge skateboard spanning basically the entire block, right?
Murrell: Yeah, that goes out even into the intersection. So every car drives over skateboard trucks.
On this kind of stuff, it’s challenging. So you have to have fun. We had a blast, and I somehow won the Central Eastside Industrial Council award. It was a privilege. I had to Google what it was. I didn’t know. But around 1,250 or 1,300 businesses voted Dream Big to win a Catalyst Award. It shined a light on what we had. Bora Architecture and Anderson Construction, Creative Neighborhoods, Pickathon and KPFF Structural Engineers, KNL Paving, all joined, and we’re redesigning the plaza and putting up to $400,000 for the people.
Miller: What are you excited to work on next? You don’t seem like the kind of person who says, “OK, that was good. Now I’m going to put my feet up.”
Murrell: Through all this, I was able to move into the Propel Building at PSU. It’s an entrepreneurship building, and I really believe in the building. I looked out the window and there was an abandoned green space that had foil, needles. I led a whole cleanup with Oregon Metro. We took out 1,450 pounds of trash with 40 volunteers. Now we just got a five-year stewardship agreement to possibly – I’m working right now – turn it into a community garden and space. I just really believe in cleaning what we can see. So, make an impact on what we can touch, what we can see, and dream big, start small.
Miller: What’s your advice for other people who want to do even a small version of what you’re doing?
Murrell: I think just grab a grabber and a bucket.
Miller: Literally, OK. Pick up trash?
Murrell: Go pick up trash. If you have a vision, believe in it. And if you hear someone say, “we’ve never done that,” that’s green light, go full speed ahead for me. If something hasn’t been done, that’s my love, that’s what I love, that pocket. I think just dream big, listen to your gut, follow your dreams and just get in action. Build a team of people. A lot of people wanna do good things in Portland. We haven’t given up on it.
Miller: Alex, thanks very much. Alex Murrell is founder and executive director of the non-profit Dream Big City.
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