Posted on 02/09/2014 8:02:24 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The Trader Joe’s grocery chain has withdrawn plans to build a store in the heart of a predominantly black neighborhood after a black leadership group fought the move.
The Portland Development Commission was set to give the grocer a large discount on property that had been vacant for years, pricing it at just over $500,000, down from an appraised value of $2.9 million, according to The Oregonian.
The Portland African American Leadership Forum sent a scathing letter in December to city leaders, saying the plan would price residents out of the area and the group“remains opposed to any development in North/Northeast Portland that does not primarily benefit the black community.”
Trader Joe’s would increase displacement of low-income residents and “increase the desirability of the neighborhood,” for “non-oppressed populations,” PAALF wrote.
“[This decision] reflects the city’s overall track record of implementing policies that serve to uproot, displace and disempower our most vulnerable community members,” the letter said.
Trader Joe’s bowed out amid the controversy.
“We run neighborhood stores, and our approach is simple: If a neighborhood does not want a Trader Joe’s, we understand, and we won’t open the store in question,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to The Oregonian.
But not everyone is happy about the outcome.
“There are no winners today,” Adam Milne, owner of Old Town Brewing Co., told The Oregonian. “Only missed tax revenue, lost jobs, less foot traffic, an empty lot and a boulevard still struggling to support its local small businesses.”
“Shiny Happy People” “Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey! Pull that bus over to the side of the pretentiousness turnpike, alright!? I want everybody off the bus. I want the shiny people over here, and the happy people over here, ok! I represent angry gun-toting meat-eating f......... people, alright!” Sit down and shut the ..... up Michael!
-Dennis Leary
well I’m sure glad MLK’s message got through to these bigots. /s
“Or Shiny, Happy People.”
Jeeze, it’s hard enough getting them to sing in key...
Maybe they can put a Freddie’s in there instead. (Not sure if anyone will get that reference)
PAALF is requesting a response by Jan. 14. They’re also asking for suspension of development on the Trader Joe’s project until “a sufficient amount of affordable housing” is included, and an independent community-controlled group can negotiate a “community benefits agreement.” Oregonian. Can’t blame them for pulling out of that deal.
I spent several years around DC (living in Arlington). It became obvious that there’s two areas of DC (west and northwest) where changes are allowed to happen if the money is there. East and southeast? Well....those are mostly down-and-out neighborhoods, urban decay.
Grocery stores are almost non-existent in the Anacosta neighborhood (southeast). In this one by one sq mile area, I think there’s one single grocery left. All of the locals complain about this.
So Wal-Mart came to have interest. Not just one store....but seveal. It all made sense. The lots were un-used and the communities were in dire need of stores. Well...the groups and city council got all peppy about this. Certain conditions had to be met. Wal-Mart sat there laughing over the games played.
You had to pay off the various groups to make things right. DC demanded that the employees all had to be DC residents. This went back and forth....this is rule you can’t force. I think they came to some mutual conclusion that a high percentage would be Washington residents.
The gimmick is the community “aggregators” and the political folks who use this whipping up of “blackness” to ensure nothing moves forward or improves. It amazes me that no tries to push them aside and fix the neighborhoods.
“Black residents reject Trader Joe’s because it would attract too many white people”
I thought it was considerate of the locals to care for their neighbors’ safety.
That’s exactly it. They wanted Trader Joes to build low income housing and I can’t recall the other shakedown conditions. Trader Joes said we can build in another, more friendly town.
40 odd years ago I started my career in the real estate “industry” as a house salesman selling hundreds before burning out and moving on to “developing” real estate.
Anyway, one day I had a newly wed couple and showed them a half dozen or so homes in their price range and on the right side of the tracks. Nothing doing. So, in desperation I told them about a house in a beautiful NEW neighborhood with one home I was sure they would love. They immediately said “let’s go look”. I replied “whoa, I feel compelled to tell you that the talk around town is the subdivision is on the wrong side of town and already headed in the wrong direction demographically”. Being young liberals they said “well, we don’t mind living in a neighborhood with a lot of blacks so let’s go look”.
Long story short, they bought the house over my too strenuous warnings. 5 years later the called and said “can you sell this thing?”
I informed them I was no longer in that business but would suggest a friend. He tried and could not get an offer at any price. By that time there were a couple hundred houses in the subdivision. The young couple just moved out and years later I drove by and the whole subdivision had been bulldozed. The whole area was just open pastureland. Not a word in the local press.
My guess is there are thousands of stories out there similar to mine and this Portland story.
PAALF huh? I admit I never heard of them, but they sound like a bunch of racists to me.
Just about any grocery store will be stripped clean by shoplifters in no time flat.
I really think TJ's dodged a bullet here.
No pun intended.
(Probably dodged SEVERAL bullets from armed robbers)
Bull. My former neighborhood got a TJ’s, and the shoppers matched the demographic of the area, 50% black, 50% the other three races. It was a wonderful thing for all. It’s been very popular.
Back in Mother Russia, it was called a "collective", IIRC.
I live in an “ethnic” neighborhood with a nice shiny new Walmart right down the street. Within a day of opening, their loss prevention folks were calling the cops on a regular basis. It went on for about five months until part of the local “property liberators” had been arrested, and the rest of them had figured out the place wasn’t an easy victim, now it’s pretty much stopped... for Walmart. The rest of the local merchants are now fending off shoplifters.
That is just crazy. Black people want their neighborhoods to improve. It must be those helpful activists who did this, not the people themselves.
In South East, they have a Whole Foods but protested a 7-Eleven. Hmmm.
Al Sharpton lives right in a Trader Joe’s building. Well, upstairs in a condo or something.
“the race baiters pulled the race card.”
I wish someone would just say PROVE IT everytime the race card is pulled.
Hey, it fits right in with the current Democrat narrative of “people work too much anyhow” and “stay home and collect checks”.
Satire is dead. How can you write satire when reality is so freaky?
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