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Despite city efforts to bring more full-service groceries to east Portland neighborhoods, residents in under-served areas on the city's edge still lack the same easy access to healthy, fresh food and must rely on a broader collection of alernatives -- including convenience stores -- to complete their grocery lists.

(Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian)

The

speech is an annual chance for Portland's mayor to lay out his priorities and dreams. Two years ago, Sam Adams put bringing more grocery stores to the city's poorest neighborhoods on his to-do list.

Between calls to create a new downtown urban-renewal district and take over river policing from Multnomah County, Adams told a who's-who-in-Portland-politics crowd that he was going to make tackling food deserts a priority.

The mayor didn't name east Portland specifically, but activists beyond 82nd Avenue knew he was talking about their backyards: Statistics from the

show 25 severely under-served census tracts in the region. Ten sit in east Portland.

"This is one of those issues that everyone who actually lives out here knows is a problem," said

, a resident of the

neighborhood. "I was happy when Mayor Adams made that pitch. It was one of those 'this may not come to anything, but at least the people in power are aware' moments."

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It hasn't come to much yet. The specific policy program created after Adams' speech died with no official farewell or concrete results. City officials say they still hope to attract more full-service markets to east Portland, but in the interim have scaled back their ambitions.

The reasons for that failure, and for east Portland's continuing lack of ample food access, reveal as much about the grocery industry as the city's most neglected and needy neck of the woods.

The food hinterlands

Technically speaking, the Portland area has few food deserts.

We're not

, Detroit or

where vast pockets of poor, predominately black or Latino neighborhoods have no full-service markets and little access to fresh, healthy food. The closest thing to a statistically true food desert in Portland may exist in the ultra-affluent West Hills.

Yet not all food access is equal.

The city's long-term plans call for all of Portland -- not just the inner-city neighborhoods that serve as

sets -- to become a community of

, where every basic service sits within an easy bike ride or walk. The underlying idea is to get people out of their cars, in the process fighting pollution and obesity while promoting civic engagement.

People affluent enough to afford older, close-in neighborhoods already live that way. East of 82nd Avenue, and particularly I-205, the vision has been

. Neighborhoods annexed within the past 25 years, among the poorest and most diverse in Portland, also suffer from the spottiest public services; many still lack sidewalks, streetlights and a coherent street grid.

They also lack the same complement of grocery stores. In an ongoing

of east Portland residents, dozens echoed Mill Park homeowner Barbara Green's response when asked whether she enjoys easy access to healthy and fresh food:

"I will," Green wrote, "as long as I can drive."

Neighborhood activists in east Portland celebrated the opening of a Grocery Outlet store at SE 122nd Avenue and Division Street earlier this year. Yet even with a bevy of options for bargain shoppers, many east Portlanders lack a centrally located neighborhood market that sits within an easy walk or bike ride and can satisfy all their grocery needs.

Bargain shoppers with the time to drive to multiple stores enjoy a bounty of options, including

and

. As east Portland evolves, however, there's a growing call for more upscale options.

"I'd like to see a New Seasons or a QFC," said Addie Meyers, who has lived near Mount Scott for 32 years. She shops at the Fred Meyer at Johnson Creek Road and Southeast 82nd Avenue, but sometimes drives as far as the QFC in Sellwood, almost 5 miles away, for meat and seafood. Kroger owns both QFC and Fred Meyer, but Meyers said the shopping experience in Sellwood feels very different.

"It's worth the drive. The seafood looks fresher, and there's a butcher right there that I can talk to," she said. "It just always looks like we get second-best out here."

"Start a conversation"

Adams' speech led to the Grocery Store Initiative, a joint effort by the Portland Development Commission and the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.

City staff convened a committee to study the issue of food access, and in March 2012 issued a "

"

asking grocers whether they were interested in investing in under-served areas and what incentives might help.

"We just wanted to start a conversation," said Steve Cohen, who manages food policy for the planning bureau. "We wanted to see who was out there."

They got

, ranging from underwhelming to undercooked to utterly implausible. A development team hoping to bring Trader Joe's to the increasingly affluent Alberta district suggested city help could speed such a project along. A

headlined by actress Eva Longoria nodded toward east and north Portland but focused on "Slabtown," industrial territory near the Pearl District. Whole Foods and New Seasons both sent one-page letters that indicated little interest in the areas city leaders hoped to target:

"We could potentially be interested in real estate in all areas of Portland," Whole Foods executives wrote. "Selected sites must model profitably for us since we cannot fulfill our company's overall mission without the profits our stores provide."

At least they responded. Safeway, Fred Meyer, QFC and Trader Joe's didn't bother.

reached out to a few larger market chains, the kind that build 50,000-square-foot supermarkets, only to learn that those companies consider Portland oversaturated and don't mind that shoppers must drive a few miles to shop at their stores. The level of enthusiasm from mainstream grocers was low enough for some city staffers to suggest the unthinkable: Maybe

is the best option for underserved working-class neighborhoods.

The Wal-Mart at Eastport Plaza is one grocery option for east Portlanders, and the retail giant was one of 12 companies or developers who responded when the city asked grocers whether they'd be interested in opening new stores in under-served neighborhoods.

"What we learned was that the city on its own wasn't going to change the way chain grocery stores look at some of these markets," said Patrick Quinton, the PDC's executive director. "The companies we keep hearing people say they want have these business models, and they stick to them."

A rough business

Big-name chains stick to their business models for a reason: The grocery business is exceedingly difficult. Overhead costs are high and constant. Profit margins are thin and based on volume.

The

, a lobbying and research group that represents some 40,000 U.S. grocery stores and pharmacies, reports that food retailers earn less than two cents on each dollar that they sell.

The view from east Portland

"From my perspective, not scientific, Parkrose is a food swamp. While it's important to increase access to healthy foods, decreasing access to unhealthy foods should also be part of the conversation."

— Kim W. La Croix

See more

So when grocers consider new stores, they're seeking areas awash in customers able and eager to stock up on their most profitable goods.

"You're not going to get a well-established chain to throw their business model out the door just because somebody told them a good story," Quinton said.

Each big grocer has their own complicated formula, depending on market niche, that they use to decide where to invest. The single biggest factor more upscale markets use isn't, as you might think, income. Instead, it's education level.

"If I had a choice of a place that had a lower income but higher education or the reverse, I'd always take a poorer population with more degrees," said

, a professor of food marketing at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. "You're building a store that is going to last for 20 years. If the education is there, the income and the amount they have to spend will eventually rise."

That helps explain why New Seasons keeps

in the suburbs and

where the chain will soon have four stores all within five miles of each other.

"The problem we have is that retailers refuse to look at the demographics with any kind of nuance," said Cora Potter, a neighborhood activist in

. "The city's attitude seems to be, 'Well, if it doesn't look and act exactly like inner northeast Portland, then the market just isn't there.' They need to find ways to show New Seasons and Trader Joe's and the other stores that they can attract the same people who shop at

."

Alternative answers

The unpleasant reality is that the tools city economic developers routinely use to revitalize neighborhoods closer to the central city -- the ones that have formed the bedrock of Portland's economic-development strategies for decades now -- aren't much help when it comes to recruiting groceries.

The Food Marketing Institute estimates that the typical big-box grocery store takes at least five years to show a return on investment. The short-term subsidies that work with other businesses aren't that appealing to mainstream grocers. Government cannot subsidize a large grocery store into sustained success simply by easing permit requirements for a new store or offering a few years' worth of tax breaks.

"I was surprised hearing from grocery stores about things they'd been offered in other areas, the sort of incentives that sounded mind-boggling to me, weren't enough to make it pencil out for them," Cohen said. "Their margins are just so thin, and their start-up costs are so high. This one-size-fits-all solution of plopping down a big-box retailer won't work everywhere."

Instead, when it comes to east Portland, city leaders say they're focusing on a patchwork quilt of alternatives.

has given grants to convenience stores that sell fresh produce. The PDC is working with a community development corporation to open a

at Southeast 72nd Avenue and Foster Road. City staff say they're also exploring ways to help bring

and more bodegas to east Portland, and to support

and

.

Laura Bouma coordinates a food-buying club in Lents. It's a grocery option for residents who want to eat healthy, support local food providers and save money by joining with other people to buy in bulk.

The

has almost 300 people on its email list. They bulk order from some 20 vendors. The selection tends toward natural and organic food.

"You could buy most of your food through a food-buying club and never set foot in a grocery store if you tailored your eating habits that way," said Laura Bouma, the club coordinator. "The main problem is what you do if you don't have a computer, if you don't speak English, if you're using food stamps. So it's not going to work for a certain percentage of people in east Portland."

Bouma and other club members hope to use the group as a stepping stone toward establishing a cooperative grocery in Lents, much the way northeast Portland residents used bulk buying to pave the way for the

.

But that transition will require a substantial amount of capital, something that becomes harder to find the further you go from downtown Portland. The Alberta co-op cost $70,000 to open, and that was almost 15 years ago.

A land-use dilemma

Government's emphasis on alternative food sources for east Portland fails to solve two big problems: First, buying clubs, farmers markets and pop-up grocers don't really help the harried parent who must buy all their groceries on the way home from work.

"When you talk food access, that's something you can do after work and all year round," said Potter, the Lents activist. "Farmers markets and buying clubs are great, but they can't completely fill the gap."

Second, none of those alternative solutions addresses a larger land-use reality: Grocery stores aren't just places to buy food. Done right, they're a vital part of a vibrant, walkable, interactive community.

Bring in a big-name grocery store such as the Trader Joe's or New Seasons many people beyond 82nd Avenue covet and odds rise that a neighborhood strip mall or corner development can support other, smaller businesses that many east Portlanders also want. That list includes coffee shops, bookstores, brew pubs and other businesses that promote civic life, the kinds of establishments that can help turn a collection of streets into a place that feels like a true neighborhood.

A grocery store can be the first domino to fall in broader change.

Jeremy O'Leary grows fruits and vegetables in his Centennial backyard and belongs to both a buying club and a co-op grocery. He also shops at groceries closer to the central city on his way home from work. "I'm lucky, because I can do all that," he said. "What about people who can't?"

"The city keeps trying to increase density out here as a way to reduce emissions, to help us all live greener. But there's good density, and there's bad density," said O'Leary, the Centennial resident, who grows fruits and vegetables in his backyard and is a member of a buying club and a cooperative grocery. "A lot of the density so far has come with rising poverty and no new jobs, no sense of this being a place you'd want to raise a family or invest your money.

"We don't even have grocery stores you can walk to. That's not a recipe for success."

- Anna Griffin