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EAST PALO ALTO - Residents often speak passionately before
a city council about what a city needs, but sometimes
it doesn't hurt to ask for help from above, too.
Nine ministers and 100 or so people gathered at the steps
of East Palo Alto City Hall Sunday afternoon to pray for
a supermarket.
In a city with 54 churches, the congregations are part
of the glue that has held the community together through
its most difficult days. Now, the ministers are ratcheting
up pressure on the city leaders to bring a supermarket
to the city.
The issue has been vexing for the City Council, too.
Two large redevelopment projects have been built in the
last decade, but the inability to get a supermarket built
has been the most glaring failure of the city since its
1983 incorporation.
Not that the city hasn't tried. Both Safeway and Albertson's
(then Lucky Stores) reportedly took a long look at the
6-acre site at Bay Road and University Avenue -- where
a Palo Alto Co-op Market stood in 1970s -- and walked
away, believing that the city couldn't economically sustain
a large supermarket.
After incorporation in 1983, the former grocery store
site was a one-stop shopping area -- for illegal drugs.
Police eventually cleaned that up. Knocking down the shells
of the buildings of the former small shopping center was
seen, post-incorporation, as a sign of progress and of
promise for the future.
But the promise has been a long time coming. The site
has lain fallow for almost 20 years.
Now, there is a supermarket developer, Blake Hunt Ventures,
that is negotiating with the landowner, a group called
Washingtonia, Inc. But negotiations have been going so
slowly that the council was scheduled Tuesday night to
renew its 2003 development agreement with Blake Hunt,
scheduled to expire today (March 16).
Mayor David Woods, who was at Sunday's prayer vigil,
threw some cold water of reality on the urgency of the
day by telling the crowd that a grand opening of a supermarket
within 15 to 20 months is unrealistic. And he warned the
crowd that a supermarket may require a subsidy from the
city to make the deal happen.
"But it is a priority for the city," Woods
said.
The hour-long prayer vigil was uplifting, with a rousing
rendition of the hymn "What a Fellowship," led
by the Rev. Alvin Macklin IV of New Sweet Home Church
of God in Christ. It had people singing along, swaying
and clapping.
Ministers offered prayers to the council and city staff,
the developer and property owner, the community, the land,
and the vision of the community.
"We need our decision-makers to be good stewards
over the community," said the Rev. Floyd Purdy of
Faith Missionary Baptist Church, who emceed the event.
"This community deserves fresh food at fair prices.
Our leaders cannot afford to have this time pass us by."
Norma Taylor, a resident of the Runnymede Gardens apartments
for seniors and disabled people, said residents there
need help to go outside the community to shop.
"It is a hardship for them," she said. "They
desperately need a supermarket."
Deacon J.T. Turner of Open Bible Church said that site
was "designed to be a blessing to the people."
He prayed that if the people holding up completion of
an agreement "have a stony heart, remove the stony
heart and replace it with a fleshy heart."
And Pastor Clifton Bennett of Walls of Faith Ministries
noted that "the Bible says that there is wickedness
in high places" and offered a prayer for the council
to "exercise righteousness" for the people.
Sunday's event was co-sponsored by the Community Ministerial
Alliance of East Palo Alto, Peninsula Interfaith Action
and Youth United for Community Action.
The ministers sat on chairs in front of the doors to
City Hall, taking turns to speak. Looking up from the
parking lot, members of their congregations, many still
in church-going clothes, applauded them. The scene added
a new dimension to residents' long-standing frustrations
about having "to cross the freeway" to buy groceries.
Then Rev. Macklin's strong, clear tenor rang out over
the crowd as he led people in singing the hymn. |
