I have relatives who are avid golfers loooking to buy retirement property in that area. Would be funny if they bought his course!
The most concerning issue is the sold for far under assessed value issue. That supports the ‘this is really corporate welfare’ narrative.
Is there any independent source for this assessed value, other than the letter from community activists making a case?
It’s entirely “business as usual” for cities to underwrite costs for new business establishments, whether through cheap land, tax breaks, allocation of hiring program dollars, etc. Yeah, it’s not a real clean way to do business, but it’s often needed to get a company to make an investment in a particular locale, especially a depressed one.
I’ll maintain the position that it’s okay for the city to do so here… but they need to make it more of a service to the existing/struggling community and not as a gentrification keystone that will make the surrounding land owners/developers rich. Not that such things ever happen, of course.
This may well be true, but I’m not yet convinced that the selling “under assessed value” in this instance is a case of this.
Assessed values for land that has been vacant for some time - well, that’s not exactly like money in the bank: much depends on who is doing the assessing, and for what purpose.
I once had some dealings with a dispute over the amount a municipality had to pay for land that was obtained by expropriation. The municipality and the owner both obtained expert opinions - the owner’s expert assessment was four times the amount proposed by the municipality’s expert. The case is still in litigation …
Hence, the question as to where that asessed value came from.
Go to the Portland GIS pages.
Enter “MLK and Alberta”
The resulting map shows the contested property on the Northwest corner.
the two properties are Lot 321 on the corner and Lot 5029 just North of the corner.
CLICKing on the + arrow to the right drills down one level, showing the lot numbers.
CLICKing on either one places a red dot on the property.
CLICKing on the “Property Detail” hyperlink brings up assessment information. (Scroll down.)
Lot 321 has a reported value of $388,840.00 for 2011, 2012, and 2013 with a value of $243,000.00 for 2008, 2009, and 2010, which is quite a jump from the $138,410.00 reported for 2007. It was last sold in 1999 for $625,000.00.
Lot 5029 has a reported value of $216,450.00 for 2011, 2012, and 2013. However, that was a huge jump from the $47,180.00 reported for 2008, 2009, and 2010. The last sold price was in 2001 for $285,000.00
The lot between 321 and 5029 has a reported value of $215,670.00 with a last sold from from 2001 of $250,000.00.
The lot North of 5029 has a reported value of $1,176,000.00 with a last sold price from 1998 of $795,000.00.
There are also three vacant lots on the next street West, (NE Garfield), that are adjacent to the lots in question and may or may not be part of the attempted deal. I have not examined their numbers.
I learned a lot in this thread and I want to thank those who responded directly to my post.
Basically, the group is opposed to the city giving a major national chain a big discount on the land, after being promised stuff like that wouldn’t happen. Furthermore, they were giving it to Trader Joes, which while not a Whole Foods, is probably not the kind of place that is likely to be very popular with poor black folks.
On top of all that, the community in question is not all that bad off, it’s not a shithole littered with crackhouses and whatnot. I live and have lived in places like that during my time in Houston, so I didn’t question it, but now I see that’s not the case.
And finally, these community leaders are NOT saying “never improve our neighborhood!” but they are saying “if our neighborhood is going to be improved, make sure that it’s a fair improvement that our residents want and need and are likely to use.”
Doesn’t seem so unfair and outrageous as I had once believed.
Thanks for that - it’s a fun tool to use!
Do we know how big the proposed development was intended to be? You only get to $2.9 million (actually closer to $3 million) - the figure cited in the letter - if you assume that the store fills all of the vacant lots available on that block.
In any event, these are presumably assessments for tax purposes, which are very different from actual land value for selling purposes. For some reason, the tax assessment values have increased dramatically recently, but that may not be an indication of their actual sale value.
For the difference, look at the assessment history for the lot just north of 5029. It goes from $420K for “improvements” and $240K for “land” in 2007, to $700K for “land” alone in 2008, to $1.17K for “land” alone in 2011 (the lasyt time actual property taxes were paid was 2001). It would appear that the assessor, for tax purposes, simply assigned zero value to the “improvements” after 2008, but kept the assessment value more or less the same by assigning the whole value thereafter to “land”. This does not mean the land suddenly increased in a year from being worth $240K to being worth $700K for the market - especially odd for a vacant lot in 2007-8 (though I realize land values are local, that was during a nationwide land value recession).
Now that you have encountered the question, perhaps you will realize that that your analysis was flawed.
Just saying.
Regards,
Shodan
That snappy comeback doesn’t even make any sense. My analysis is that they see a substantive difference between the way Pizza Hut would function in their neighborhood, including the acquisition of land, and how Trader Joe’s would function in their community, including their acquisition of land. How on earth does your question lead to me seeing a flaw in my analysis?
There’s a Safeway nearby, a half-mile north of the proposed TJ location (about MLK and Ainsworth).
The Alberta Co-op is about a half mile to the East, as well, and a New Seasons (local Whole Foods-esque chain) about a mile NW (as the crow flies).
FWIW, here’s an interesting article on how gentrification is changing other ethnic neighborhoods across the country.
Yeah, I gotta wonder how Pizza Hut is a sign of gentrification. I’ve never thought “Hey! There’s a Pizza Hut! This neighborhood is a-changin!” Meanwhile, if a Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods opened up in my neighborhood, that would certainly be a sign to me (which I personally would welcome.)
The whole thing reminds me of a joke I heard on TV many years ago. All in the Family, Richard Pryor, Redd Foxx?
Two black guys are standing in front of their houses in a poor, exclusively black neighborhood. They see a white family moving in down the block. One says to the other, “Uh, oh. Here comes the neighborhood”.
I’d never even heard of the term ‘gentrification’ at the time (I was around 14) a and I don’t know if this was a reference to that or merely a play on the white flight that was going on at the time. In any case, I found it funny then and funny/poignant now.
Yes, there was a proposed expansion of a local hospital, that required that local housing to be demolished, but included the building of new housing. Unfortunately it ran out of funding after the bulldozing but before any of the improvements. Needless to say, those who saw their houses destroyed for no good reason were a bit miffed.
A few months ago there was a interesting show on NPR about the racial and economic divide of Portland, that helps to set the stage for the latest controversy. Basically, it sounds like there is a cultural conflict where on the one side you have well off liberal white Hipsters (as depicted in the show Portlandia) who mean well and support the idea of racial diversity empowerment of the lower classes, but don’t have any experience with actual members of those groups. On the other side you have actual impoverished African Americans who are just trying to get by, and would rather have a place to buy cheap hotdogs and less traffic congestion, than they would an organic vegan-coop and extra bike lanes.
I say this as a confirmed member of the former group (although not quite a hipster) who went to school in Portland for 4 years and had practically no contact with any African Americans aside from a few token students in all the years I was there.
A good article about Portland Gentrification in Portland. The neighborhood where the less affluent could afford to live close to where they worked is now(as stated by another article) the place hip people go to see and be seen.
Forgive me for asking the stupid question, but what kind of economic improvement in the area would not have that effect?
It’s true we do not want to see people driven from their neighborhoods but don’t we also want those neighborhoods to be nicer places to live? How can that be accomplished without new construction, new businesses and new tax revenues?
Putting aside the discussion of the merits of Trader Joe’s (it’s awesome), would not any business that would increase traffic also help other established businesses in the area?
[sub]no snark intended, I just don’t understand[/sub]
As I said previously
Those new boutique shops in the Mississippi district are owned and operated by people that originally did not live in that neighborhood, and if they live there now it is because the previous renters and leasers were priced out. In other words, while that area of town is certainly prospering, the neighborhood that used to be there is pretty much gone.
edited to add: Take another look at that second link in my previous post. That area is no longer the Mississippi district I lived in. The families that lived there have moved farther away from town, and it’s turned into Mississippi District Land.
I’ve heard a lot of complaining in recent years that poor communities don’t have access to healthy food stores that are affordable.
Trader Joe’s fits the bill perfectly, and they said no!??