paalf press conference.JPG

Maxine Fitzpatrick, a member of PAALF and executive director of PCRI, read a list of PAALF's demands.

Two hours after

for a Northeast Portland store, the group that led the opposition said the grocer had never been the focus of its ire.

Leaders of the Portland African American Leadership Forum said they were pushing back against the city's history of displacing African Americans, not

planned store at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Alberta Street.

“The Majestic deal is the just the latest in this long history,” Former state senator Avel Gordly said in a press conference that attracted a couple dozen attendees.

Community members have been in an uproar since the California-based company Majestic Realty announced plans for an $8 million Trader Joe's development on the long-vacant lot.

PAALF had scheduled a press conference before Trader Joe’s announced it was pulling out, and the speakers mostly avoided commenting on the grocer’s decision. The speakers steered the conversation toward next steps.

“In the past we have settled for far less,” Gordly said. “This is a people’s movement for African Americans and other communities, for self-determination.”

PAALF members reiterated previous demands to include an affordable housing component on the two-acre lot and issued several demands.

PAALF leaders said the development commission should publish a comprehensive accounting of the tax increment financing and spending in the Interstate corridor urban renewal area and compose a legally binding community benefits agreement to ensure the employment of African Americans in the construction of PDC sites.

The group also asked for the development commission to create a small business assistance fund for the shops and restaurants in Vanport Plaza. The people who opened Old Town Brewing, Horn of Africa and Elevated Coffee invested their savings in the community, said Maxine Fitzpatrick, executive director of the nonprofit

.

“The PDC has taken too long to fulfill the promise to many of us,” Fitzpatrick said

. “And they should actively undertake restorative policies in order to make right on those promises.”

Neighbors attending the conference worried the PDC might never be able to fulfill that promise now that Trader Joe’s has pulled out.

“All of my neighbors were excited to have Trader Joe’s come here and replace a lot that has always been empty,” said Nghi Tran, who has lived a block away from 15 years. “It’s good quality for poor men.”

Tran said he didn’t think PAALF had the right to represent the neighborhood. “They don’t come to the neighborhood cleanups,” he said. “They don’t live here anymore.”

Fitzpatrick said at the press conference that PAALF is working to “create pathways for those who were forcibly removed to come back.”

That could include affordable housing, Fitzpatrick said. If Majestic or the PDC had pledged to bring affordable housing with the Trader Joe’s construction, the deal might not have been met with such controversy, the group said.

PAALF said it will hold a community visioning process later this month, bringing displaced people back to the neighborhood to talk about what they want to see on this and other PDC-owned lots.

The development commission announced last week it would create its own economic prosperity working group to ensure it makes well-considered investments in the historic African-American community.

PAALF member Steven Gilliam said his group isn’t waiting on the city -- or any “back door deals” -- anymore.

“We’re not interested in participating in another advisory group,” Gilliam said. “They have a history of handpicking individuals from the community they'd like to deal with. We’re trying to attack the structure of the PDC.”

Cyreena Boston Ashby, PAALF's director, said she hadn’t heard from the PDC on Monday.

“There is really no need to hear from them,” she told the crowd. “They need to hear from the community.”

-- Casey Parks

Andrew Theen contributed to this report.