Grocery chain seems to be interested in Philomath

A regional grocery store chain has expressed interest in Philomath and the city manager will meet with a company representative on Oct. 1 to discuss the possibilities, Councilwoman Teresa Nielson said.

Nielsen announced the news during Philomath’s City Council meeting Monday night, saying the city received a promising email from the owner of the supermarket chain.

“The first thing I found hopeful in the email was that he had questions and a suggestion,” Nielson said. “So I took that as somewhat positive.”

To avoid sensitive topics in such preliminary talks, the name of the supermarket chain is not mentioned here. Nielsen had tried to attract interest from WinCo, which operates Waremart stores in smaller markets, but the October 1 meeting will not feature a WinCo representative.

“This is very, very exciting. Thank you for your commitment and your perseverance and for continuing to work on this,” Councilwoman Diane Crocker told Nielson. “I think we only get one chance with this guy, so hopefully we should take the time to do it right.”

Ray’s Food Place in Philomath closed in January 2014, and over the past decade, former city councilors, mayors and the city manager have tried to drum up interest. Dollar General opened in February 2017 to provide some shopping options, and has added a modest fresh produce section in recent months. The Philomath Farmers’ Market has become a weekend option for local produce and a handful of other items 22 weeks a year.

“It’s been an intense effort to meet the needs of our community members,” Nielson said of the effort to bring a grocery store. “I’ve never met anyone who said, ‘Please don’t bring a store to our town.’ Everyone has been really supportive.”

The nearest large grocery store is Safeway, located on Philomath Boulevard in west Corvallis. From Philomath City Hall, Safeway is 3.4 miles away, although travel time is often delayed by heavy traffic.

Nielson said the council has historically supported City Manager Chris Workman’s efforts to push for a grocery store, a task he has taken on several times since taking the job in 2014, just two months after Ray’s closed.

“I would like to know if we as a city council would support Chris in preparing appropriately for the Oct. 1 meeting because he really wants to get to know our city, its community, its needs and embrace the opportunity to bring a store to our city,” Nielsen said, referring to the grocery chain’s owner. “I would really appreciate it if we as a city were prepared for that meeting to present our best proposal and basically tell them who we are and how badly we need a grocery store.”

Workman had planned a meeting with the grocer for July, but it had to be postponed.

To realistically bring a grocery store back to Philomath would require overcoming some obvious hurdles, including the lack of developable land in town. The former Ray’s Food Place site is now occupied by Mary’s Peak True Value and other options seem limited.

“Even if the owner of a supermarket chain came into my office today and said, ‘Hey, we want to open a store in Philomath, can you recommend something?’ there aren’t many places in town that I could recommend,” Workman said in an interview early last week. “Everything we have is small.”

For this reason, the Philomath Planning Commission will consider rezoning certain sections.

“Some of the rezoning we need to do on the east side of the highway will allow for the creation of larger retail spaces that we just don’t have right now — right now it’s all zoned industrial,” Workman said. “We have large industrial properties and large residential properties, but we don’t have large commercial properties.”

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