A regional grocery store chain has expressed interest in Philomath and the city manager will meet with a company representative Oct. 1 to discuss the possibilities, City Councilor Teresa Nielson said.
Sharing the news during Monday night’s Philomath City Council meeting, Nielsen said the city had received a promising email from the grocery store chain’s owner.
“In the email, the first thing that I thought was hopeful … is that he has questions and a proposal,” Nielson said. “So I took that as being somewhat positive.”
To avoid sensitivities involving such preliminary talks, the name of the grocery store chain is withheld here. Nielsen had been trying to attract interest from WinCo, which operates Waremart stores in smaller markets, but the meeting on Oct. 1 will not be with a WinCo representative.
“That is very, very exciting. Thank you for being dedicated and following through and to keep working on this,” City Councilor Diane Crocker told Nielson. “I do think we might only get one chance with this guy so we should hopefully take the time to do it right.”
Ray’s Food Place in Philomath closed in January 2014 and there have been efforts over the past decade from past councilors, mayors and the city manager to attract interest. Dollar General opened in February 2017 to provide some shopping options and in recent months added a modest fresh produce section. Philomath Farmers’ Market has become a weekend option for local produce and a handful of other items for 22 weeks out of the year.
“It’s been an intense effort to maybe meet the needs of our community members,” Nielson said about work that has been done to try to attract a grocery store. “I haven’t met one person who said ‘please don’t bring a store to our town.’ Everybody’s been really supportive.”
The nearest major grocery store is Safeway, which is located on Philomath Boulevard in west Corvallis. From Philomath City Hall, Safeway is located 3.4 miles away although the drive time is often slowed by heavy traffic.
Nielson said that in the past, the council has supported City Manager Chris Workman’s efforts to advocate for a grocery store, a task that he’s taken on several times since coming into the job in 2014 just two months after Ray’s closed.
“I would like to know if we as a council would support Chris in adequately preparing for that meeting on Oct. 1 because he really wants to come to know our city, its community, its needs with the possibility of bringing a store to our town,” Nielsen said in reference to the grocery store chain’s owner. “I would really appreciate it if we are prepared as a city for that meeting to put on our best proposal and basically let them know who we are and how desperately we need a grocery store.”
Workman had been scheduled to meet with the grocery store owner in July but it had to be postponed.
To realistically bring a grocery store back to Philomath, there would be a few obvious hurdles to clear, including a lack of buildable property in town. The former location of Ray’s Food Place is now occupied by Marys Peak True Value and other options appear to be limited.
“Even if I had a grocery store chain owner who walked into the office today and said ‘hey, we want to put a store in Philomath and do you have a lot to recommend,’ there are not a lot of places in town I can point to,” Workman said during an interview early last week. “Everything we have is small.”
As such, the Philomath Planning Commission will be taking a look at rezoning in certain sections.
“Some of the rezoning that we need to do out on the east side of the highway is going to allow for some bigger retail spaces to come in that we just don’t have right now — it’s all zoned industrial right now,” Workman said. “We have big industrial lots and big residential lots but we don’t have any big commercial lots.”
