91ÊÓƵ

African-American community stakeholders’ opposition to the proposed Trader Joe’s development in Northeast Portland isn’t about the retailer. It’s about a reckoning — for the city of Portland and the Portland Development Commission.

“They need to have a reckoning, and they really need to tell the truth about themselves, and they need to own up to the fact that they have not done business correctly,” said Cyreena Boston Ashby, director of the Portland African American Leadership Forum. “There needs to be a conversation about how they do business moving forward … This is not about Trader Joe’s. It’s not about a food desert. It’s about not lying (and) not doing secret, clandestine deals with a developer in California around the corner, and letting it be disclosed by the media last minute. That’s unacceptable.”

City-sponsored development in the Boise and Eliot neighborhoods – once the heart of Portland’s black community – has forced out countless residents, according to PAALF. The organization’s opposition to the Trader Joe’s project is rooted in a message it wants to deliver to future developers in the area: It won’t stand for it anymore.

A look into the past

The subject came to a head in November, when the PDC announced that it would subsidize the sale of a 1.79-acre parcel of vacant land on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The buyer was California-based Majestic Realty, which was planning a development featuring an unspecified grocer. Minutes before voting to approve the sale, PDC commissioners revealed that the tenant was Trader Joe’s – a detail the agency could not disclose beforehand due to a confidentiality agreement.

PAALF considered the announcement a slap in the face. Just one month before, the group invited PDC Executive Director Patrick Quinton, Portland Mayor Charlie Hales and other senior staffers to a bus tour of Northeast Portland. It was a ghost tour of sorts, in which the bus visited sites where once-important community landmarks were lost to gentrification.

Quinton said the tour offered compelling insight into the community.

“It’s really powerful to hear the stories of some of the longtime residents, of how things used to be and the sense of loss,” he said. “… There was a time when the agency viewed any outside investment in an under-invested neighborhood as a positive thing, without regard for what the use was of that investment or who would benefit from it.”

Part of the PAALF’s objective for the tour was to help city officials visualize the community’s story. But it was also about getting gentrification objections on the record.

“Our definition going forward is: ‘the forced removal and population replacement from land of one group by another,’ ” said Avel Gordly, a community activist and former state senator. “Gentrification is a process, not just an event. It is intentional and planned with specific policies, programs and development decisions used to accomplish the objective of moving one group of people out, and another group of people in. Specifically in Portland, it’s resulted in the forced removal of African-Americans to the outskirts of the city while middle- and upper-income whites moved in.”

According to data compiled by Portland State University, while the Eliot neighborhood’s black population declined roughly 15 percent from 2000 to 2010, its white population grew more than 17 percent. The Boise neighborhood’s black population shrank 21 percent over the same period, as the white population nearly doubled to 63.8 percent of the total.

Those neighborhoods developed in part as a result of the real estate community’s refusal during the first half of the 20th century to sell property to African-Americans anywhere else in the city. Gordly’s parents were able to purchase their home on North Williams Avenue (a home they still own today) only with the help of a Jewish friend who posed as the buyer.

Under the banner of urban renewal, hundreds of black families were displaced in the 1950s and 1960s to make way for numerous construction projects. The first rerouted Interstate 5 through residential neighborhoods in east Portland; the second created Memorial Coliseum; the third was a planned Emanuel Hospital expansion that never happened.

Eager for a remedy

Fast-forward to 2013, and PAALF isn’t merely seeking a solution. It wants restitution.

“We’re in a place where we really can’t move forward unless we remedy the past,” said Rachel Gilmer, director of the African American Leadership Academy, a PAALF training program.

Following the PDC’s approval of the Trader Joe’s deal, PAALF sent a to the city demanding immediate suspension of that project as well as all development in the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area (ICURA), until it is allowed to weigh in with more sustainable development models. The organization is researching several options, including creation of new community land trusts, limited-equity housing cooperatives and housing trust funds. Ultimately, PAALF’s hope is to create opportunities for displaced neighborhood residents to return.

Late last week, the PDC responded to PAALF with a letter signed by Quinton and Hales, acknowledging that its role in North and Northeast Portland had “contributed to the destructive impact of gentrification and displacement on the African-American community.”

Quinton, however, said that times have changed. Rather than stop all work in the area, he’s hoping to blaze a new trail.

“I don’t think that it’s reasonable to put a halt to all the work we’re doing in North and Northeast Portland, including the Trader Joe’s development,” he said. “What I do think we take away from the letter that’s constructive is there is a strong need for folks from PAALF and other community leaders to come together around a conversation about what we can do more to promote economic development for longtime residents in Northeast Portland, and the African-American community.”

The PDC’s letter cites numerous ongoing initiatives to assist minority-owned businesses and low-income residents in the neighborhood. For example, the PDC is committed to investing 30 percent of tax increment financing in affordable housing – a policy that has put approximately $36.9 million into play since 2001, according to the agency. The letter also refers to a 2008 “Gem List” that identifies a series of community development objectives in the ICURA.

The last straw

Specifically, PAALF’s beef with the Trader Joe’s development comes down to three issues: the central employment (EX) zoned property won’t include any housing; it lacks a community benefits agreement; and the PDC is granting a sizable subsidy (approximately $2.37 million) to a wealthy, out-of-state company rather than one based in the community.

Quinton responded that the PDC has pitched the property to developers for 10 years with little interest, much to the dismay of business owners at adjacent Vanport Square. The Trader Joe’s project will be the third phase of that development, which created shop space for 16 businesses with a promise to follow up with an anchor business. The PDC is now fulfilling that promise.

Meanwhile, PAALF questions the city’s commitment to the black community in North and Northeast Portland, and is calling for systemic change.

“Going forward, everything we do has to be about the intentional making right – making policies that are fair, just and equitable,” Gordly said. “And having people in place that have those principles embedded in their DNA – and if they don’t, they don’t get to work in this arena.”