Where There Is No Vision
With the closure of the Fred Meyer retail location in the Gateway District, local new sources have re-ignited the debate as to why this outer region of Portland advances or declines in slow painful increments. Pundits were quick to look to the historical roots and point to the flawed planning and under-resourced execution of development efforts in the Gateway District in the late 1950s. Other public officials and media outlets led their coverage using Prosper Portland as the whipping boy, and still others zero in on the endemic of social ills: substance abuse, homelessness, crime (both real and imagined) that have deep roots in the sprawling geography known as Gateway. All of the reporting is important to understanding the complexity and tells part of the story of how we got to another boarded up big box retail space (1).
But, let’s be crystal clear from the outset. The decision to close the Gateway Fred Meyer store was the decision of the Kroger Corporation based in Cincinnati, Ohio. They own the Fred Meyer chain, and Kroger is a publicly traded company. Kroger announced closing 60 underperforming stores to focus on more affluent geographies and the company also reports that it has a positive full-year earnings outlook. In short the store was closed so a national corporation can make even more money elsewhere. It may be easy for us to see that the detrimental impact of consolidating retail power at the national level but it is important to zoom into the hyperlocal context to see how the Fred Meyer business model eviscerated the neighborhood’s ability to compete or prepare for store closure.
The Fred Meyer website proudly boasts that, in 1922, when Frederick Grubmeyer founded the chain, his vision was to “give customers more reasons to shop in his store than in any other.” We are told that before Grubmeyer opened his new store that “customers went to separate shops for meat, produce, cheese and other goods.” Grubmeyer placed all of the disparate products under one roof and, over time, health & beauty care, clothes, home products, electronics enabled the community to get more shopping done in one-stop than at any other store. Did this one-stop shopping offer convenience? Yes. Did it consolidate spending in one retail location. Yes. Did the store disrupt the local business community over time? Absolutely. Fred Meyer weakened the local community, and over the years, as the district continued to struggle, businesses have become so fragmented that the neighborhood business association disbanded as the pandemic ended.
The context is this: Fred Meyer was not just a grocery store but was also a pharmacy, clothing retailer, shoe store, jewelry store, hardware store, furniture and home goods store, a bakery and deli, electronics store, and even a sporting goods store —not to mention an in-store coffee shop and banking branch. The concentration of retail commerce, with the added convenience of being under one roof, undermined the entrepreneurialism in the district by consolidating ten plus different retail models in one store.
The community impact? Small entrepreneurs could not compete with the corporate advantages of scale, purchasing power and marketing dominance of the Fred Meyer corporation. And, to add insult to injury, for every $100 that was spent at Fred Meyer only $43 circulated in the local community. Contrast that with purchases made at a locally owned small businesses where $68 of every $100 spent, stays in the local community. In other words, Fred Meyer literally sucked an excess 25% of capital out of the community (2).
Unfortunately, some local policy makers have reduced the discussion to the loss of a grocery store. The closure of Fred Meyer is not the story of creating a food desert. At best, with a competing chain grocery store directly across the street from the closed location, consumer grocery choice has been narrowed but not eliminated. However, the reality is that the ten or more retail locations, embedded in the store model, were also sucked out of the Gateway community, it created a “retail desert.”
But rather than focus on the “retail desert” as a crisis , we need to create a vision built around the opportunity at hand. This is the moment when entrepreneurial and political leadership could step up to reinvent the main east-west Halsey/Weidler and north-south 102nd Avenue business corridors.
Admittedly, casting a vision will not be easy. With no business association leadership, limited financial resources from the Portland Office of Small Business, and city councilors preoccupied with the kabuki theater of the ICE protests, we are left with another boarded up building but no vision forward.
So imagine with me for a moment. What would happen if our city leaders cared as much about the outer business districts as they did about the sexy idea of building a baseball stadium or subsidizing the Moda Center renovation on behalf of the predatory lender who now owns the Trailblazers. What if we had political advocates willing to convene small business leaders in the disenfranchised business districts, like Gateway, and facilitate a strategic vision and planning process. Imagine if the city invested resources similar to those invested downtown —like increased Portland Street Response presence, community policing, investing in storefront improvement, beautification, hardscaping problem areas, and walkability. Imagine if there was more access to small business financial capital to offset the store closure. Imagine if we had a vision for economic and social equity and the political will to carry it out.
The old mistaken etymology that the Chinese word "crisis" is composed of two characters, one representing danger and the other, opportunity may not reflect an accurate understanding of the term, the word does suggest “an inflection point.” Gateway, as a community, is clearly at an inflection point. Let’s imagine together and find the political will to make that imagination and reality.
~ Mark
Disclaimer: I live just outside of Gateway and prior to COVID, I lead an organization on Halsey in Gateway and saw first hand the economic and social tensions in the neighborhood.
Notes:
(1) The failure of the Gateway retail complex (recognizing that a few smaller retailers still remain) needs to be aggressively addressed but this in not the focus of this commentary. History teaches us when big real estate fails, building owners often fall behind on taxes, and the burden of additional police and fire protection increase. Zombie building complexes become magnets for vandalism, arson, trespassers, and trash dumping. How our city government engages or ignores the vacant real estate sprawl in Gateway will, large part define the legacy of the three elected councilors for District One. Expert organizations like Strong Towns and the Congress for the New Urbanism, (among others) speak eloquently about the public policy, development codes, and decades of financial incentives and disincentives that led to housing and retail sprawl and propose solutions to restore balance.
(2) The study of civic economics has repeated the basic contours of the the “local multiplier” effect of supporting small businesses verses large chains. See references.
I have spent my career building connections and supporting collaborative work. I was fortunate enough to be introduced to systems thinking as part of my graduate work in public health and have used community development skills in virtually every position I have held. If you need a meeting facilitator, trainer or someone to help design a process, the reach out and connect.
References:
Civic Economics. (n.d.). Indie Impact Study Series.
Fulton, W. (1996). New urbanism hope or hype for American communities? Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Marohn, Charles L., Jr. (2019) Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity. Wiley.
Peel, S. (2025, August 27). Prosper Portland poured $88 million into the Gateway neighborhood. it’s gotten worse. Willamette Week.
Risley, J. (2025, August 21). The local multiplier effect. AMIBA.
Schick, T., & Wilson, C. (2025, October 3). Tom Dundon, Portland Trail Blazers buyer, built his fortune on subprime loans. ProPublica.
Zielinski, A. (2025, August 8). A shopping center’s demise brings frustration to East Portland. Oregon Public Broadcasting.
