Four months after Trader Joe’s definitively killed any hopes it might reconsider an abandoned plan to move to NE MLK and Alberta—fallout from controversy over gentrification and claims of miscommunication—Mayor Charlie Hales’ office this morning has just announced a fallback deal reviving the city’s plans for the long-vacant lot.
Natural Grocers, a chain based out of Colorado, has agreed to serve as the anchor tenant in a project run by a Southern California developer and subsidized by the Portland Development Commission, the city’s urban renewal agency. The chain, which has four other stores in Portland already, is known for its health food. But it’s also known, according to the city’s statement, for some community-friendly qualities that distinguish it from Trader Joe’s.
Beyond a place to buy healthy food, the new store brings many additional benefits to the Northeast Portland community, including: an on-site credentialed nutritional health coach, provided at no charge, to answer questions, help with meal planning and provide one-on-one nutrition counseling, along with other free nutrition education options like cooking classes and demonstrations, and lectures on topics of interest to the community.
Hales, back in March, had reached an accord with the community groups who’d criticized both the substance of the Trader Joe’s proposal and the city’s handling of it—airing grievances whose roots run decades deep, into the city’s lamentable history of redlining and neglecting some African American neighborhoods, while dismantling others, only to rebuild and re-invest once they began to gentrify.
Part of that peace deal was a promise to spend $20 million more on affordable housing in the urban renewal area that includes the project site. The zone stretches from the Rose Quarter up MLK and down N Lombard into St. Johns, areas that traditionally have been home to non-white Portlanders. Today’s statement says that money will be used to help complement commercial development on MLK and that the Portland Housing Bureau and Commissioner Dan Saltzman’s office are convening community groups toward the goal of figuring out what’s needed and where that investment might wind up.
Construction, the city says, is expected to start in 2015. The Skanner, which was given early notice of today’s press release along with the Oregonian, says signs with the construction company’s name, Colas Construction, an African American-owned concern, have already gone up on the site.
Click here (pdf) to read the city’s full announcement.
Do they provide affordable, healthy foods?
It’s more expensive than Trader Joes. How is this not going to continue gentrification of this neighborhood? Why is this acceptable to previously concerned parties? What has changed? What race is/was the owner of the company that was going to build Trader Joes? Lots of questions to be answered.
Hopefully there will be additional density on the site, which is zoned to become a center with buildings 5-7 floors tall. The last proposal looked like a strip mall!
@wmlucien, Right, because this one parcel of land is going to determine whether inner NE/N becomes gentrified or not.
You want “affordable” food? How about the city sells to 7-11 and Arby’s? Really go for the Gresham model, there’s lots of affordable food up there.
There is a Natural Grocer in Beaverton. It hasn’t added anything to the neighborhood. It’s expensive and has over-priced vitamins. Y’all would have benefitted way more from a Trader Joes.
Would have been better off with TJ’s.
Fools.
“Four months after Trader Joe’s definitively killed any hopes it might reconsider an abandoned plan to move to NE MLK and Alberta—fallout from CONTROVERSY over gentrification.”
That so-called “controversy” was provoked by the Portland African American Leadership Forum whose desperate need for attention required them, many from outside the Northeast Portland community in question, feared TJs would continue a pattern of gentrification of one of the city’s historically African-American communities. What a crock.
So what is different about the so-called threat of “gentrification” from Natural Grocers? Absolutely NOTHING.
The Portland African American Leadership Forum had NO CREDIBILITY after their self-serving, self-aggrandizing tirade against Trader Joe’s and it has even less now.
The Portland African American Leadership Forum whined and demanded more “affordable housing.” What they meant was more PUBLIC HOUSING.
The Portland African American Leadership Forum has no accurate, complete and timely PUBLIC HOUSING STATISTICAL DATA upon which to “demand” more PUBLIC HOUSING in an Urban Renewal Area that already has among the highest concentrations of PUBLIC HOUSING in Portland, Multnomah County and the state of Oregon.
Mayor Hales continues to DENY access to accurate, complete and timely PUBLIC HOUSING STATISTICAL DATA so that his “promise” – like his promise NOT to raise a street tax – comes with NO FACTS to support any decision he would make, which so far he hasn’t, about who, where and how much PUBLIC HOUSING money he should allow to be extorted from him by the Portland African American Leadership Forum.
Richard Ellmyer
North Portland
Author of more stories on the politics, players and policies of Public/Regulated Affordable/Low-Income/Publicly Subsidized Affordable Housing in Multnomah County over the last thirteen years than all other journalists and elected officials combined.