The company is so good at the real-estate game that it has spawned a catchphrase, the Whole Foods Effect, a phenomenon Detroit is clearly banking on, having offered the retailer $4.2 million to come there. That figure suggests city leaders believe that Whole Foods is a force unto itself that can give a neighborhood the escape velocity it needs to break free of its doldrums. Are they right?
Detroit’s road to arugula also runs through plenty of resentment from local grocers, who see Whole Foods as unfair competition and a fancy national chain extracting special benefits from indulgent officials. “They’re getting tax breaks that we independents have never received,” says Norman Yaldoo, who runs University Foods nearby. “We should all be on a level playing field.”
Christy Pardew, spokeswoman for Whose Foods, Whose Community?, an activist group protesting the forthcoming Whole Foods, says the issue is “keeping multinational chains out.” According to Ms. Pardew, the addition of a high-end grocery store to Jamaica Plain will result in higher rents, pushing low-income residents from the neighborhood. “It’s a term that real estate agents use,” she intoned, “called ‘the Whole Foods effect.’”
