Good for the NAACP! Always fighting the good fight.

Why would people want decent food in their neighborhood? I hope they hold out for more Korean Liquor stores instead of stuff you can actually eat. That'll be standing up to the man!

P.S. The real story is that it looks like the PDC and the developer were engaged in shenanigans, including some lovely steak dinners. I can see how Aldi would get cold feet when blatant corruption rears its head. I seriously doubt the concerns of the 20,791 person strong Portland black community had anything to do with it.

as someone who lives nearby the proposed site, i was all for the addition of TJs. is it my favorite store? no. but it's worlds better than that godawful safeway which has one of the worst selections in the city and super high prices. i was excited for p's & q's opening but have since been greatly disappointed by their dismal selection and prices that make whole foods look like the dollar store. is it so much to ask to have a grocery store within walking distance that carries something even close to healthy food at reasonable prices? apparently.

Sadly, until we stop passing farm bills that subsidize junk food, yes, it is too much to ask. In *any* neighborhood.

Sigh. Bets on how long it will be vacant now? Everyone make an extra effort to frequent the VanPort Square businesses so they don't go under.

Is this the field on MLK and Alberta that's been sitting empty since forever? Why in the hell would anyone be upset about a Trader Joes going in there? I'm kinda confused.

The problem that some people had with this proposal wasn't with Trader Joe's itself -- most agree that TJ's has decent food for decent prices, and that this store would have employed local residents. And it would have been better than an empty lot. It's just that the city (more specifically, the PDC) gave this developer a really sweet deal for the land and didn't offer the local community much input as to what they actually wanted there. And though I appreciate TJ's, we've already got a few of them in PDX. So if this neighborhood wants something else there (a local business? affordable housing?) hopefully they can come up with a good counterproposal. But since the land is now owned (?) by this developer, who knows.

So now it's "We didn't really have a problem with TJ's going in!"? Too late!

It's the $500,000 price for the $2.5M property that stinks. TJ's should have walked from this from the outset.

The deal for Portland African American Leadership Forum and any other activist groups, really any topic, is you have to deliver the whole community in support of the plan. That creates value.

Instead you delivered just enough complaint to tip it.

Agree mixed use there is better than something like the Hollywood TJ. And TJ does mixed use sometimes. What's the occupancy rate in similar developments on MLK? But let's get real, it is completely impossible to do low income or moderate income housing in new construction without some sort of subsidy. So figure that out.

As community activists, pull a seat up to the table, and own negotiations on all the PDC plots in your domain, delivering the community, a developer and a business plan to the community vision.

Maybe we can add another per capita arts tax to buy the property back since the $20 million dollar budget surplus will probably just be used to service the interest on bonds sold so that other developers can get free land.

So the community doesn't want a Trader Joe's in the neighborhood because the city offered up a piece of property at well below market rate? Instead they want "affordable housing" put in, where the city would offer up the same property at well below market rate. Hmmm.

How about pay what the property is god damn worth, with the understanding that gentrification is going to happen whether the community wants it or not, as log as Portland remains such a desirable city to live in.

We'd LOVE a Trader Joe's in our part of town (Oak Grove - McLoughlin/Hwy 99)!!! Bring it here! The nearest Trader Joe's (39th and 82nd) are both pretty far.

@R Hollywood TJ's is not mixed use, it's more like what was proposed on MLK. You're thinking of Whole Foods. And Whole Foods would most assuredly not locate to MLK at any time in the near future. But hey, after TJ's is done single-handedly gentrifying the neighborhood, maybe the time for Whole Foods will have come?

The idea that "the neighborhood" didn't want TJs is pure BS. I live less than half a mile away, and nobody ever even came round asking for opinions. And the idea that you can somehow stop gentrification, at a location that is halfway between the already-gentrified Alberta area and the already-gentrified Vancouver/Mississippi area, just flies in the face of logical thought.

Whenever I went past and there were protestors there, the opposition seemed like they were being coordinated by the church over the road from the site, so that might be the place to get to the bottom of this.