Mixed Reactions To Whole Foods Store Opening In Jamaica Plain

Not long ago, a couple blocks away from hi-lo, the flower shop on the corner of Moraine and Centre street shut down. Dominos Pizza wanted to put a location there in it’s place but it was meet with tremendous protest. The protest was strong enough that it succeeded in keeping dominos out of the neighborhood. One has to wonder why whole foods isn’t being met with the same protest. Like Dominos they are a national corporate chain. Jamaica Plain is definitely experiencing gentrification, I’ve seen it all through the 9 years I’ve lived here, I don’t quite know what can be or should be done about it, but regardless I find it very upsetting that whole foods is moving in.

When the woman in this article speaks of a Catholic church closing and becoming condos…is she talking about Blessed Sacrament? If so, that’s an incredibly misleading comment implying gentrification. Blessed Sacrament closed because of the numerous problems the Archdiocese is having financially. JPNDC bought the property and is turning it into affordable housing. (http://www.jpndc.org/bss.php)

It’s not as though the neighborhood threw out the church and threw up lofts.

I think it’s sad for the Latino community to see Hi-Lo close. Hi-Lo sells specialty food items from Latin America and this is important culturally. Whole Foods is expensive and will harm other existing retailers in JP. Harvest will have trouble competing with a Whole Foods outlet that offers parking.

I’ll miss HiLo, I’ve been shopping there for years. They have interesting food I don’t usually see elsewhere.

What we really need Is a MARKET BASKET in jackson sq or on the mbta bus parking lot in forest hills.
all the markets like Star, Stop and shop Roche bros and Shaws are WAY too expensive Market Basket is reasonable!!

As a former JP “yuppie” I can understand that people are sad to lose a store that had a tremendous amount of ethnic food that is difficult to find elsewhere. But there was no reason to shop Hi Lo otherwise. Even the gentleman commenting in Spanish recognized that the place is often dirty with expired items. Its prices were cheap but you got what you paid for. I went in twice the in the five years I lived in JP and never went back. As for Harvest, it’s about time they got some competition – their staff atitutdes are often poor, the place is also far from clean and it is DEFINITELY more expensive than Whole Foods (unless perhaps you are a member of the coop, something I was never inspired to become). City Feed is not a real grocery store and will be fine, as will Stillman’s farmer’s market in the summer. I also disagree with those who say Whole Foods is a terrible place to work – I suspsect those are frustrated union organizers who have not been able to gain a toehold with the company. I have never had better service in a supermarket than I have at Whole Foods and that doesn’t happen when employees are “abused” and miserable. I don’t buy it.

Re: the “dirtiness” of Hi-Lo–I have shopped there for years and never felt that it was dirty, let alone seen vermin. Yes, of course a gleaming Whole Foods that was built in the past ten years and that is lit with bright, white lights will look different from a store that hasn’t had a facelift since perhaps the 70s. But that doesn’t make it dirtier. I just feel very skeptical about the one comment regarding a rat in the face of several heartfelt reflections from other Latino people quoted who have shopped at Hi-Lo for years. Certainly those folks have standards regarding where they buy their food and if Hi-Lo was some rat-infested, filthy place, there would be more ambivalence in those comments.

Can’t we talk about the obvious? Whole Foods markets to a different demographic from Hi-Lo’s (and frankly, Stop and Shop’s and Trader Joes’). A more affluent, and yes, whiter demographic. This is not simply bringing “more business” to JP. It involves replacing a place that belongs primarily to Latino and Caribbean people with a business that caters to upper middle class, mostly white folks. JP, and its residents, lose something in the process.

I don’t think anyone is saying that Whole Foods can do no wrong, but a lot of people are saying that businesses have been leaving Hyde Square (we still miss Bella Luna, La Papusa, and June Bug!) and the fact that a business wants to come to our neighborhood that has the potential to revitalize all of Hyde Square is welcome news.

For those of you who are criticizing this decision, I invite you to come to JP and walk around Hyde Square. Count the empty store fronts. Talk to the business owners (many of whom are Hispanic) about how how they view this news. Ask the people who live here where they do their grocery shopping. Walk down Centre Street in one direction and you’ll see the new affordable housing being built, as well as a Rent-A-Center, numerous bodegas and small businesses, a Dunkin Donuts and a Stop & Shop. Walk in the other direction and you’ll see a thriving Cuban restaurant, a library, a 7/11, a CVS, and a small independent bookstore that is morphing into a bookstore/cafe. And directly behind the Hi-Lo building is the internationally-renowned MSPCA/Angell animal hospital. The VA hospital is down the street from Angell, as is the location of a new hotel (a hotel? in Jamaica Plain? I’m still getting used to that idea!).

All of this is to say that JP and Hyde Square, like its residents, is not easily characatured or stereotyped, despite all of the efforts in the general reporting of this story and the many blogs it has inspired, to the contrary. It is precisely the complexity of our community and its people that gives me confidence that a new business like Whole Foods will be assimilated into JP, not the reverse. So bring on the jobs, the traffic congestion, the crowded sidewalks and bike lanes. This is JP. We know how to make this work.

This was a huge blow to me. I can’t believe Hi-Lo is leaving. It has been such A fundamental part of JP for so long. As if that wasn’t bad enough, a massive chain that serves primarily upper-middle class white people is taking its place. This type of development is what is driving out the Latino population out of Jp. Whole foods is not only out of many residents’ price range, but will take business away from local establishments that actually have a place in the community (like Cityfeed and Harvest). I don’t know how anyone can say this is good for JP (or that we “deserve it”). It’s a shame.

“It is the aim of good government to stimulate production, of bad government to encourage consumption.” – Jean Baptiste Say

If Retail makes NOTHING….and Government makes only MORE DEBT….the only thing that can have a positive affect on communities is Small Business and companies that make stuff.

The picture of George Washington can float around a town six to eight times before leaving the community but if that dollar is spent inside of a big box store it will leave the same day that it entered.

Big Box stores like Wal*Mart can take in 200,000 George Washington’s a day and that be a lot of “Liberty” “Pride” “Freedom” leaving town each day.

And when one figures into the equation America has a six to one trade deficit with China which means five out of every six George Washington’s that go there will never come back unless the US Government sells bonds(debt) this is what those on Jenkins Hill and Wall Street don’t understand when it comes to local banks not having any George Washington’s to loan out in their communities.

Why is it that people ain’t writing articles about those fifteen cargo ships that pollute as much as 760 million automobiles, T Boone Pickens owning a Texas Water District, Nestle draining the Great Lakes, the disconnect between Coca-Cola and the people of India, Wal*Mart putting less than 5% foreign in their stores in China and Warren Buffett buying a Choo Choo train a few years after Wal*Mart makes a deal on a port in Mexico.

In 1960 U.S. goods manufacturing produced a $5 billion trade surplus – - 2006 merchandise trade had a $836 billion deficit. Today, for some reason, the world thinks the American consumer needs to support what they make….well, it doesn’t work like that even a fifth grader can figure that out.

So-call cheaper items only breed cheaper wages and this will go on until the rich of the world carry out the manufacturing of ignorance through out the 182 or so counties that will have a chance to make something.

I’m just an O’fart with very little book learning but from what I’ve seen over the past sixty five years in this great union of fifty states has shown me that common sense left in the year 63′ and “my sh!! don’t stink” sense as been here every since.

Sad, those few fat farmers with penmanship of poets holding feather quill pens and writing the American dream has today become nothing more than a page within a history book that a bunch of asinine dipsticks are to lazy and ignorant to teach.

Over the past 100 years the Federal Debt has gone from $2.6 billion in 1910 to over $14 trillion today….In that time there has only been one 10 year period that the debt has gone down 1920-1930.

All done by a bunch of elephants and jack@sses acting like turnips. People today still think Clinton balance the budget but anyone knows if they think with an open mind that if the budgets of the Clinton years had been balance the debt would had not gone up.

America is over $57 trillion in debt and it didn’t get there by people using common sense. If the American people don’t wake-up to that fact within another twenty years they will witness Lady Liberty kneeling to her knees in the Hudson and someone in Tiananmen Square holding that tablet from under her left arm celebrating what is written upon it.

As a resident of nearly 11 years here in Jamaica Plain, I do indeed lament the passing of Hi-Lo. Has anyone thought about the employees of the store, many of whom have worked there for years and years? The management is retiring but did the management think about what its retiring would mean for all of those people who have dedicated themselves to Hi-Lo’s success over the years? Will Whole Foods take on those employees that the closing of Hi-Lo is displacing? I had once worked for Bread & Circus in Brighton, on Saturdays only, just at the time that Whole Foods had acquired it. The Bread & Circus name stayed for many more years, but it, too, is a thing of the past now. Whole Foods does give back to the community, I know that from my time with the company, but Jamaica Plain is not the same community as Brighton: Whole Foods would do well to remember the community into which it is moving and cater to IT, not have the community cater to Whole Foods. Whole Foods’ arrival is a mixed bag. The jury is out as far as its longterm impact on the Latin community in Jamaica Plain, though it is clear that the employees (soon-to-be-former employees) of Hi-Lo are already feeling the impact on themselves.

Yes, I too remember the suggestion box at Whole Foods/Bread & Circus; it’s true that they would try their best to obtain special-order products for customers. Will the diversity of products from all over Latin America that Hi-Lo has offered in its 47-year history ever be duplicated in a store such as Whole Foods, though? It is doubtful. Change comes, it always does; I hope, though, that the change Whole Foods brings will not be to the detriment of the community. It will have to prove itself worthy of being part of this community; not a bully not wanting to share (City Feed, which is community-based, should not have to suffer from a giant like Whole Foods). I hope that the management that is retiring and displacing its employees is not leaving those loyal employees high and dry.

So, if and when Whole Foods moves in, what requirements would the JP neighborhood have for demands? Hire all former Hi-Lo workers? Offer a farmers market weekly? Make monthly local donations? Free local compost? What is left of the uniqueness and diversity ought to be maintained and demanded, especially at a corporation with such a community based image (or fascade)!