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City officials plan to sell vacant land at the corner of Northeast Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard and Alberta Street to an unnamed grocery store at a $2.4 million discount.

(AP Photo)

What store would you want for your neighborhood?

If city officials were offering a $2.4 million discount on a parcel of publicly owned land in your community, which grocery store would you want to see move in? Or would you want another type of business instead? Join the discussion in the comments section below.

Inner Northeast Portland residents said they felt left out of the decision.

People in outer Southeast wanted to know why the city wasn’t helping their neighborhoods first.

Regardless of their proximity to the vacant lot on the corner of Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Alberta Street, neighborhood activists in very different parts of Portland shared something in common on Tuesday.

Many were unhappy with the city's plan to sell the land, at a $2.4 million markdown, to a grocer city officials will not name, in a neighborhood that is rapidly gentrifying.

Some outer Southeast activists said if the city could avoid selling at a discount, the $2.4 million could do a lot of good elsewhere. Some in inner Northeast, meanwhile, said they don’t necessarily need a new store.

The deal amounts to “giving away public land in the center of a neighborhood you claim to be redeveloping,” said Alan Silver, the head of the King Neighborhood Association. “Is this what reflects Portland’s values?”

“This is bigger than any one neighborhood association’s concerns,” Silver said. “It’s the sort of thing that the city as a whole needs to consider.”

Cora Potter, who has been involved with urban renewal efforts in Lents for six years, said the city should focus dollars on areas where it’s harder to attract private investment.

"It's frustrating,” she said, “when they do things that are easy."

The neighbors react

The mystery tenant at the corner of MLK and Alberta would anchor a new, $8 million development featuring two buildings, space for retail shops and about 100 surface parking stalls on nearly two acres.

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To make that happen, the Portland Development Commission said it needs to sell the publicly owned property for $502,160, or $2.4 million less than its appraised value.

A vote will come Wednesday.

It’s been more than a decade since the development commission came to MLK, promising to redevelop the neighborhood. In a report on the latest proposal, commission leaders said bringing a grocery to that lot is the neighborhood’s “deep, longstanding desire.”

The development commission also cited an effort by then-Mayor Sam Adams to bring new grocery stores to under served areas.

But “the situation has changed a great deal” since early days of planning for redevelopment in the MLK corridor, Silver said.

Today, the corner of MLK and Alberta Street is one of the last big empty lots in the King neighborhood. A grocery store no longer tops the neighborhood’s wish list, Silver said.

Businesses that catered to African-Americans have given way to upscale restaurants, boutique breakfast spots and specialty gyms. And grocery stores have opened nearby. New Seasons built three stores within two miles of the site. The Alberta Co-Op expanded.

The association was supportive when developers Ray Leary and Jeff Sackett tried to bring a Trader Joe's to the corner in 2008. But many of the residents who sat on a PDC project advisory committee that stopped meeting that year have since moved.

The development commission might know that residents no longer pine for a grocery, Silver said, if they had bothered to talk to nearby residents anytime within the last few years.

Although the corner still qualifies as a food desert under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s definition, it’s more of a technicality than a reflection of community sentiment.

Katherine Jones, who lives two blocks away on Northeast Mallory Street, says she rides her bike to New Seasons and walks to Safeway if she needs something quickly. She sometimes walks to the Alberta Co-Op, too.

She said providing a financial incentive to private developers doesn’t make sense, given the changes that are already taking place.

“Maybe a grocery shouldn’t be there if the people planning it can’t make it work without a large subsidy,” Jones said. “I don’t see what the rush is. The neighborhood is developing. How does it hurt the city to sit on it for another year or two to wait for a better deal?”

It’s not that she or other neighbors mind another grocery store.

But neighbors don’t believe the current developers -- Majestic Realty Company, a California firm that lists about 70 million square feet of office, retail and industrial space in its portfolio -- needs the discount.

Other areas in need

Residents of other under served parts of the city say they have plenty of basic needs that are not being met with public dollars.

Cully residents say they’d like more sidewalks leading to their neighborhood’s only grocery, an Albertsons marooned by busy streets.

In outer Southeast’s Lents neighborhood, residents need a full-service grocery store, said Nick Christensen, and they need it sooner than later.

The Lents neighborhood isn't an obvious food desert, the former Lents Neighborhood Association chair said. There is a Fred Meyer near Southeast 82nd Avenue and Southeast Foster Road, and a Walmart just a few blocks north.

But a lot of residents Chistensen knows buy their groceries at a convenience store instead of fighting the traffic and crowds associated with the box stores on Southeast 82nd Avenue, he said. There aren't bike lanes, he said, and crossing four traffic lanes as a pedestrian can be daunting.

"Eighty-second Avenue is really a physical and psychological barrier to a lot of people," he said.

Potter, a member of the now-disbanded advisory board for urban renewal in Lents, said the PDC has repeatedly told residents that developers are more interested in inner Portland than the outer Southeast. But she said agency officials haven't talked about how to fix the problem.

The PDC has been working to bring a grocery store to the Lents Town Center for six or seven years, she said, but so far to no avail. The agency's staff worked hard for the first few years, she said, but seems to have lost interest.

Learning from negotiations

In the end, said Shawn Uhlman, spokesman for the PDC, the deal in inner Northeast ultimately could benefit outer Southeast.

Developers are interested in Lents, he said, but have suggested the neighborhood is on their long-term radar rather than an immediate interest.

Success with the MLK land sale could establish a road map for bringing a grocer to the Lents Town Center and other areas in East Portland where discussions with developers are ongoing, Uhlman said.

The planned sale proves the PDC is open to negotiation, he said, and he hopes other developers take note.

“The reality of the situation is that these things do take a lot of time,” he said, “but you always learn from negotiations.”

-- Melissa Binder and Casey Parks