

Trader Joe's on MLK: Northeast Alberta Street and MLK boulevard

Nearby businesses are divided as Trader Joe's plans to build a new store in the King neighborhood.

(Casey Parks/The Oregonian)


Sixteen years later, that still hasn't happened.

"We over-promised and under-delivered," said Kimberly Branam, the executive director of the Portland Development Commission, which oversees the city's urban renewal projects. The plan's intended beneficiaries, Branam said, "were, in fact, those who were most harmed."

White developers leveraged that city cash into multimillion-dollar apartment projects, and rising prices pushed African Americans and poor white people out. And now, Branam said, the city has five years and $32 million left in its Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area to make amends.

The money will be spent helping African American businesses and homeowners, adding to millions of dollars already set aside to help those who were displaced. Still, the city's pledge might not be enough.

While Portland's housing and economic development agencies have funneled $159 million into the area since 2000, private investors pulled in by a new TriMet MAX line have spent nearly $1 billion bringing offices, restaurants and high-end housing to what was a neglected and deteriorating place.

"What impact we thought we would have has really been dwarfed by these major market forces," Branam told more than 100 African Americans gathered at a Northeast Portland church in October.

The $32 million might not make a noticeable difference, Branam told the crowd, but city leaders had learned from the past. This time, they would do better, she said.

Audience members shifted in their seats. They'd watched promises crumble before. Would this time be any different? And even if it was, was it too small to matter?


Eliot resident affected by the Emanuel Hospital Urban Renewal Relocation Project, photographed in 1971. Image courtesy of City of Portland Archive.


Urban renewal is a complex tax-collecting tool with a simple premise: City officials redirect property taxes into "blighted" neighborhoods, hoping to kick-start growth and seed long-term revival.

Over time, Portland's African Americans learned to associate urban renewal with a darker truth: When cities pledge to make neighborhood improvements, they often end up pushing existing residents out.

City leaders used urban renewal in the 1960s to build Veterans Memorial Coliseum, evicting thousands of African Americans in the process. They used it in 1970 to kick another 300 North and Northeast Portland homeowners out when Emanuel Hospital leaders proposed an expansion.

That "negative legacy" still lingered, city leaders acknowledged when proposing another round in 2000. But officials had learned their lessons: They wouldn't evict North and Northeast Portlanders. They would help them thrive.

Urban renewal dollars paid for the MAX Yellow Line and improvements at Dawson Park. They helped build condos and affordable housing on North Killingsworth Street and a food cart pod in Kenton.

Some of those projects, including the Vanport Square on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, did benefit ethnic minorities.

Property values soared. But the city's promise to help minorities prosper didn't pan out: Between 2000 and 2013, the median income for African Americans still in the neighborhood decreased 31 percent, to $24,322.

By 2014, more than 10,000 African Americans had left the inner city. The city-funded "better" neighborhood was also unmistakably whiter.

When city leaders offered a $2.4 million discount to developers hoping to build a Trader Joe's on a vacant lot at Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. and Alberta, African Americans said that was the last straw.

The dust-up became national news. Conan O'Brien joked about it in a monologue, and Trader Joe's pulled out.

In the aftermath, Mayor Charlie Hales promised to spend $20 million on new affordable housing or help for existing homeowners. A year later, Hales said the city would spend $67 million more to subsidize affordable housing in the the Pearl District and parts of North and Northeast Portland.

Money for both proposals, Hales said, would come out of the city's urban renewal budgets. That left less money for small business loans and projects such as improving North Lombard Street.

Development officials who had banked on having $60 million to spend in the Interstate corridor now had only $32 million. Before moving forward with the reduced budget, they studied the work they'd done since 2000.

"We found over and over and over again," said Tory Campbell, the interim economic development director, "that the African American community has been by far the most disadvantaged in all of those efforts."


In early 2016, the development commission appointed 11 people - 10 of them African American -- to script a plan for the area's remaining millions.

They tapped Roslyn Hill, who turned a blighted stretch of Northeast Alberta Street into an arts district, and Stephen Green, a venture capitalist working to rebrand the inner city as a "Soul District," along with other business and civic leaders.

The group proposed spending $2 million in grants and $6 million on loans to help property owners fix up homes and businesses. They suggested setting aside nearly $2 million to help people build in-law cottages in their yards and more than $10 million for "vibrant, culturally relevant spaces."

City leaders presented a near-final draft at two meetings in October. Free food lined one wall. Posters depicting the harm urban renewal had dealt African Americans in 1970 stretched along another.

"We have been really upfront about our past," Branam said. "We're not delighted with ourselves and the $32 million. This feels like the work that needs to be done."

The meetings showed how challenging that work could become without more trust. Conversations stalled when city workers used acronyms unfamiliar to the crowd. But what the attendees lacked in wonky know-how, they made up for with lived experiences. 
City officials scrapped one goal - awarding $2.5 million to business owners who commit to hiring minorities - after black attendees suggested it wouldn't work. They'd had bosses who'd hired minorities to fulfill a pledge but then did nothing to help them succeed.
A proposal to use some money on loans instead of grants worried others, Campbell said, because loans require collateral.

Tory Campbell

Tory Campbell

"What happens if it doesn't work?" Campbell, an African American business owner himself, asked a crowd attending the second meeting. "I can do what?"

"Lose my house," many called back.

"Very legitimate concerns," he said. "And it's based on a history, too, right?"

"Mmmhmm," audience members said.

Loans would allow the city do more with the smaller budget, he explained. The $32 million wouldn't go far if they gave it all out in grants.

"If you get a loan then pay it back," Campbell said, "those dollars are reinvested to create more opportunities beyond just yourself."

At the previous meeting, audience members had warned against spending $10 million on big "culturally relevant" projects. They feared the city would build an African American history museum.

"If that's how you feel, we will roll with that," Campbell said. "But I wanted to pause and say what we are talking about is places where there is business, where the property and things there are owned by black folks or folks of color."

With that, he broke the crowd into groups to pore over the plan. In one church classroom, about a dozen people met to evaluate the line items. The crowd was skeptical the money could close the gap between whites and African Americans.

Locally, the group said, they faced repeated discrimination. They talked about racism that persists in construction unions and the struggle felons face finding work. They said the state didn't employ enough African Americans in its civil rights division.

A woman groused about black people who sell their homes to white people. Another said Portland's black population is too spread out now to limit investment to the inner city. If someone has been pushed out to Gresham, why should they commute to North Portland to open a business?

Dana DeKlyen, a program manager for the development commission, explained that urban renewal money is restricted. The $32 million might make a bigger difference in the underdeveloped eastern stretches of the city, but it has to be spent in same area where it's collected.

"Where is the Interstate Corridor?" another woman asked. DeKlyen looked around the room, but there was no map showing the boundaries -- a large, but patchy area that stretches from Northeast Broadway Street to St. Johns.

"It starts at MLK," DeKlyen said.

"MLK and what, though?" the woman asked.

As people packed up to go, Hill, the developer who remade Alberta Street, suggested $8 million might not be enough for anchor projects in what have become some of Portland's hottest neighborhoods. The city spent more to build Vanport Square, the Northeast Portland hub for minority business owners. And that was a decade ago. Land is more expensive now.

"We wouldn't even be able to do one with this cost," Hill said.

"And how many in Vanport are still businesses of color?" a woman asked. "How many sold to white people?"

-- Casey Parks


cparks@oregonian.com; @caseyparks