northeast-mlk-empty-lot.jpg

Proposed development on this empty lot at MLK Boulevard and Alberta Street has stirred controversy as some people cry gentrification and others beg for construction.

(Casey Parks/The Oregonian)

When

announced Monday

in Northeast Portland, neither neighbors nor the leading voices against the grocery store were celebrating.

People who live near Northeast Martin Luther King Boulevard and Alberta Street say the grocer would have brought life to a lot that’s been vacant for 20 years.

The activists who called for the city to stop the development in what was once the heart of Portland’s African-American community,

.

Both sides feel they’re back at square one.

“There are no winners today,” said Adam Milne, owner of Old Town Brewing Co., which is just north of the proposed Trader Joe’s property. “Only missed tax revenue, lost jobs, less foot traffic, an empty lot and a boulevard still struggling to support its local small businesses.”

Neighbors and business owners first discussed bringing Trader Joe’s to the lot in 1999 as part of plans to revitalize Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard’s northern stretch.

For most of its life, MLK had been a commercial hub of shops and restaurants. The Walnut Park Theater showed first-run movies on the block at MLK and Alberta.

But by the 1990s, the corridor suffered from rising crime, dropping property values and the highest storefront vacancy rates in town. The Walnut became an adult theater, then was demolished.

Fifteen years ago, the

put together a panel of neighbors and business owners to create a plan for the corridor.

The best way to bring MLK back to life, the panel decided, was to build several blocks of retail. Small, locally owned businesses should buy most of the space, they said. But the project also needed a large anchor tenant. A grocery store would pull in traffic, they said.

Half a dozen people bought parcels in Vanport Plaza’s first phase in 2005. They turned an old Chevrolet dealership into a pizzeria, an African restaurant, a comedy club and a clothing shop. But the other half of the project -- that lot that once held the movie theater -- remained empty.

The King neighborhood was already

. Nearly three-fourths of the community was African-American in 1990, according to U.S. Census figures. By 2010, only a quarter of the area’s residents were African-American.

But a number of residents who participated in those early discussions still live nearby and say they never gave up hope that the PDC would develop the lot.

When the city confirmed in November that Majestic Realty Co., a California-based developer, wanted to bring the popular grocer Trader Joe’s to Northeast Portland, the small business owners who bought into the first phase were thrilled. Neighbors were, too.

Their excitement didn’t attract the attention the opposition did.

People who opposed the project had plenty of arguments against the deal. Some decried the Portland Development Commission’s decision to sell the lot to Majestic, owned by billionaire Edward Roski Jr., at a price $2.4 million less than the land's assessed value.

Others criticized the commission’s rationalization that the property lies in a food desert. The area may have needed groceries a decade ago, but half a dozen large and small-scale grocers now sit within a few miles of the site. A New Seasons opened a mile away on North Williams Avenue last year.

The loudest complaints came from PAALF, the Portland African American Leadership Forum. The group

to city leaders in December, demanding a stop to the process and calling it "fraught with injustice.”

In an unprecedented move, PDC officials in January acknowledged the urban renewal agency's past role in contributing to gentrification and displacement in historically black neighborhoods. But the PDC stood behind the project and brushed aside PAALF's request to include affordable housing, saying the two-acre lot wasn't the right place for it.

A month later, the NAACP wrote an editorial on The Huffington Post calling the city’s deal a “case study in gentrification.”

The controversy was too much for Trader Joe’s.

“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 an emailed statement to The Oregonian.

Residents rushed to correct the record: the neighborhood does want Trader Joe’s, they said.

“Was there a vote? This should be reevaluated,” said Kymberly Jeka, an artist who lives a few blocks away. “This is not what the neighborhood people want. This is terrible.”

Grayson Dempsey, an 11-year King resident who can see the vacant lot from her window, said she tried offering her support at neighborhood association meetings, but her voice was drowned out by the opposition.

“I moved here when there were gunshots out the window,” Dempsey said. “I appreciate that (PAALF) is trying to talk about the origins of gentrification. That’s really essential, but they can’t stand up and say, ‘As residents of the King neighborhood, this is what we want.’ The residents of the King neighborhood want this to happen.”

Two hours after Trader Joe’s said it wouldn’t build near Dempsey’s home, PAALF held a press conference on the empty lot. But the group wasn’t celebrating.

Yes, the development was at a stand-still. That didn’t erase the decades of displacement or bring affordable housing to the neighborhood.

The activists said they will continue working on a plan to bring African Americans and other low-income people who had been “forcibly removed” back to the inner city. Their group still wants the development commission, the city’s economic-development arm, to build affordable housing on the property.

It doesn’t matter that the neighborhood has changed, PAALF members said, or that a gluten free bakery and specialty gym overlook the empty lot.

PAALF leaders said they will hold a community visioning process later this month. They want to bring displaced people back to the neighborhood to talk about their hopes for this and other PDC-owned lots.

The PDC and Mayor Charlie Hales' office said in a joint release that it’s too soon to know what comes next for the site.

"Moving forward, we will be communicating with the various stakeholders: Including those who wanted this development and who were excited about it, and those who didn’t want it to happen,” they said.

Dempsey said she hopes those next steps do include discussions about gentrification. But shutting down development won’t bring the African-American community back, she said.

“We shouldn’t leave lots empty in the name of preserving the neighborhood,” she said. “Are we preserving the vacant lot history or do we want to bring it back to a vibrant neighborhood where people know their neighbors and feel safe walking around?”

-- Casey Parks

Andrew Theen contributed to this report