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Of Whole Foods and gentry
By adamg on Wed, 06/01/2011 - 8:06am
Whole Foods holds its "town hall meeting" to introduce itself to Jamaica Plain on Thursday, 7 - 8:30 p.m. at the Curley School, 493 Centre St.
Then, next Thursday, the Jamaica Plain Forum holds a panel discussion on Gentrification: What Does it Mean for JP? featuring a panel of an advocate from City Life/Vida Urbana), which has opposed Whole Foods, the presdent of the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corp., which is looking at leasing space it owns to a possibly competing market, and UMass professor Michael Stone, who studies affordable-housing issues. The forum starts at 7 p.m. at the First Church in Jamaica Plain, 6 Eliot St.
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Comments
For the love of Pete
What Does it mean for JP?
I will boycott *all* JP businesses except Whole Foods if this is their mindset.
These people clearly have too much time on their hands and the "panel" doesn't look at all balanced.
Hi Lo closed BECAUSE THE PANELISTS DIDN'T SHOP THERE! Look in the mirror people!
JPNDC not equal to JPNC
There is no "Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Council." There is the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council (JPNC), an elected body that has voted to oppose Whole Foods because it was not a "good fit" for Hyde Square; and there is the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation (JPNDC) a community-based nonprofit organization that develops residential and commercial real estate, provides technical assistance to small businesses, etc. The JPNDC has not taken a position on Whole Foods. The speaker at the June 9th forum is from JPNDC.
You are right
Fixing now.
Are you kidding me...
The gentrification of JP has been progressing nicely since the mid 80s and now some of the still disgruntled anti Whole Food folk are just now having a panel discussion on what gentrification means to JP?!?
I think the panel discussion is more like "Why some of us in JP do not want a chain store like Whole Foods in JP and why we are going to continue to beat the issue of why we do not want a chain store like Whole Foods in JP under the false guise of "gentrification" to a bloody death."
Yup
Pretty much.
I don't see any of them stepping up to open a non-chain outfit, pay a better rent, and a living wage. And Whole Foods is far from the bastion of retail sweat shops that are out there, contrary to what they'd have you believe.
They're fast proving they have as much relevance as the LaRouche's
I wouldn't be surprised if
I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of the JP anti-WF people secretly shop at WF in other neighborhoods.
They do
Remember the interview with Felix Arroyo Jr. a month or two ago when he said that he shops at Whole Foods in Dedham, but he doesn't want to see a Whole Foods in Hyde Square?
Yeah, pretty much. A lot of
Yeah, pretty much. A lot of them have only lived in JP for like 5 years. Everybody wants to pull up the bridge after they've crossed it.
Very few people
who live in JP actually oppose Whole Foods. The Whose Foods/Whose Community folks have a great website but not much of anything else -- they were able to muster only 2 people to attend last night's JPNC meeting and one of them lives in Roxbury. Most JPers understand that our community is seriously underserved in the grocery store department and that while Whole Foods is going to bring traffic and logistical challenges to Hyde Square, it will also fuel a revitalization of this dying retail district, provide jobs and careers for our neighbors, and turn a negligected and dilapidated building into a welcoming and thriving business. These are all good and important things in our present deeply dysfuntional economy. Whatever gentrification continues in JP won't be driven by Whole Foods but rather by all of the same forces that have always driven it.
Historical Retrospective
I think that talk will have to be a historical retrospective.
I used to wander though there and shop there a decade ago when I worked on Huntington Ave. I also was a bit of a wanderer once I got a bike in '85, and I remember JP being sort of funky and lots of worn down.
Even in 2001, JP already looked more "gentrified" than Inman Square, Cambridge, and it had changed a lot more in the previous decade. I also had many coworkers who had lived there since the 80s and before who were already saying it had cleaned up a lot since they moved in - mostly "sweat equity" old school community work by people who lived there already joining forces with people moving in for convenience and affordable housing.
long time comin
Exactly. This has been going on for years and the folks who are complaining were the initial wave of it. 'It' being gentrification -- which I think of as a neutral concept; it can be bad or good. For many years now as you point out gentrification has been happening but it's been of the relatively good type. We're at a point where there's still a lot of diversity of income levels and demographics across the extent of JP but, provided the economy doesn't just completely shit the bed, I think we've probably gone over the happy side of gentrification and towards (what I consider to be) crappy gentrification. For some old timers in the n'hood (who predate the gentrifying hipster/hippy/sensible shoes crowd that have changed so much in the past 20 or so years) this change might be considered a good thing. Who am I to say they're wrong, I don't live there. But for the "newcomers" ... how long do they have to be there to have their opinions as "valid" as the old timers?
Combat Zone, Kenmore Square, the Fenway, Harvard Square, Inman Square, Davis Square, North End, Fort Point ... everything changes. Sometimes for the best, more often for the bland.
Hello? Mr. Dead Horse? How Would You Like To Be Beaten Again?
Imagine what all of these people could have accomplished had they set their minds to doing something useful.
Mind = Boggled.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
I think that's the point
Something useful = gentrification = higher property values and rent.
They have no want to do something useful for fear of change. So they kick and scream and try to get their hands on everything they can to scuttle anything they don't approve of.
Wal-Foods, the supermarket of the Tea Party
It is sad that Wal-Foods, the official supermarket chain of the Tea Party, is moving into Hyde Square, a neighborhood antithetical to the tea party's anti immigrant, anti health care, anti gay rights hate machine.
http://newsblaze.com/story/2009082808271100001.bw/...
Wouldn't Walmart super stores
Wouldn't Walmart super stores that sell groceries be the official supermarket of the Tea Party? After all, they are super right wing and don't want to pay their workers health care benefits and wouldn't deign to sell organic berries from local farmers... gasp, how elitist and ivory league intellectual that would be!!! Why support local farmers when one can import cheap food from China, that's the WallyMart way! Screw America, Yay cheap Chinese imports = HOORAY Walmart
But Bank of America,
smack dab in the heart of Jackson Square, is okay?
http://stopbankabuse.com/
http://www.bankofamericaboycott.com/
Gentri_what_now?
What we really need is something to bring the value of the neighborhood down. Maybe some perpetually un-rented store fronts, some 'Save Hi-Lo' posters (now that it's gone anyway) and maybe some abandoned cars in Hi-Lo's former lot. THAT will keep everybody's rent down and keep the hipsters in Allston... forever.