The Kent City Council unanimously adopted an ordinance that will prohibit owners of grocery, drug stores and pharmacies from having restrictive covenants that ban similar businesses from moving into their vacant buildings.
Bill Ellis, city chief economic development officer, told the council at its Oct. 21 Committee of the Whole meeting that the practice is pretty standard where a grocery store will shut down but not allow another grocery store to move in.
“When they vacate, they want to make sure there are not competitors,” Ellis said.
Ellis used as an example of the former Albertsons store that became a 24-Hour Fitness in Panther Lake, at the northeast corner of SE 208th Street and 108th Avenue SE. The store closed in 2012. The building became a fitness club in 2018. He said Albertsons restricted another grocery store from coming in because of a Safeway across the street. Safeway and Albertsons merged in 2015.
The recently closed Fred Meyer on the East Hill doesn’t have a restrictive covenant, according to city staff. But city staff proposed the ordinance to restrictions on grocery stores, drug stores and pharmacies opening in Kent at or near vacant stores.
That effort began in part because of a 2023 King County Report on Food Insecurity that “the number of people experiencing food insecurity in King County is increasing,” which was cited in city documents in support of the ordinance.
According to the report, community members in South King County are more likely to experience food insecurity compared to other locations in King County. Data collected by Communities Count shows that during the period from 2018 to 2022, an average of 15.9% of Kent’s adult residents experienced food insecurity compared to 9.5% of adults in King County, with the negative health impacts falling disproportionately on less advantaged socio-economic groups.
According to city documents, grocery store operators may be contributing to food insecurity by requiring buyers, renters, or landowners to agree to land use restrictions on sites where grocers operate, or when they close or relocate.
“These land use agreements often restrict the future use of the site, prohibiting grocery stores, drug stores, and pharmacies from opening in neighborhoods that otherwise lack ready access to such products,” according to city documents.
Adopted as an emergency ordinance, it goes into law immediately after the mayor’s signature.
“I’m very excited about this to do something about vacant properties,” City Council President Satwinder Kaur said at the meeting.
Councilmember Bill Boyce asked if the ordinance could be retroactive, but city staff told him that’s unlikely as there would be additional legal challenges. Kent has had numerous drug stores and pharmacies close in the past year or so.
The city modeled the ordinance after similar ordinances in Bellingham; Madison, Wisconsin; Chicago, Illinois; and Washington, D.C.
The Bellingham City Council passed an ordinance in 2019 to remove the non-compete clauses, in part because of Albertsons closing a store in the Birchwood neighborhood, according to several media reports. In 2024, after an investigation by then-state Attorney General Bob Ferguson about the land use restrictions and possible anti-trust violations by Albertsons, the company decided to remove the restrictions that no other grocery store could move in prior to 2038.
“By creating these illegal restrictions, Albertsons ensured that a competitor could not open a grocery store in this neighborhood,” according to a June 25, 2024 Attorney General’s Office news release. “Shoppers had no choice but to travel to other stores farther away, including a Haggen the company owned a few miles away.
“This effectively created a food desert in the neighborhood, defined as an area with limited access to affordable and nutritious food.”
Kent already took action, but Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell recently proposed to the Seattle City Council to remove “anti-competitive covenants” by grocery stores that prevent new stores from opening, according to komonews.com.
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