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photo
by
George Kelly
"I used
to be a liberal Democrat," says Winters. "But I turned into
a registered
Republican. I know people will call me a sellout, but I'm
convinced conservatives have a point."
Key
to the city's case against Winters is the City Council's
1991 designation of inner Northeast Portland as an "alcohol
impact area," meaning the city is opposed to any new licenses
in the neighborhood.
As Winters
notes, predominantly white neighborhoods with higher crime
rates, such as Lents in Southeast Portland, have not been
labeled "impact areas."
Harold Williams (below) says it's odd that city officials
constantly cite historical problems at the Chevron station
yet never mention Winters' solid background.
"I've
known James Winters' family for 40 years," he says. "They
are decent people, period. He's one of the few positive
symbols we have. Somehow that's been missed."
Although
just 5 feet 7 inches tall, James Winters played on Benson's
basketball team, alongside future NBA all-star A.C. Green.
Other
African Americans say the "alcohol impact area" is racist.
"[The city is] saying a piece of ground is the problem,"
says activist Fred Stewart. "That debases this community."
African Americans have to rely less on the public sector
and more on the private sector for economic and political
power, says Lolenzo Poe Jr. "Until we have hundreds of James
Winters building economic capital, we can never get social
freedom," he says.
Some
Northeast
residents think Winters is being hassled because his station
doesn't fit the city's redevelopment plans for Northeast
Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
The
city has an ownership interest in five properties near the
station, including the King Food Mart across the street.
The
neighborhood's designation as an "alcohol impact area" insults
the community because it presumes African
Americans can't responsibly consume a legal substance, James
Winters asserts. Alcohol isn't the problem, he says. "The
problem is poverty and unemployment. Drugs and gang activity
are the symptoms."
Portland
Development Commission Chairman Carl Talton maintains the
Chevron station doesn't conflict with any city plans. "We
have no thoughts about that particular property," he says.
"We
should put the same hurdles on white and black business,"
says Lawrence Dark of the Urban League.
Richard Brown (above) says he supports Winters' right to
operate the Chevron but wonders where Winters and his allies
were when neighbors fought with the previous owner. "He
and his supporters were nowhere on the radar screen when
all that foolishness was going on at the station," Brown
says.
James
Winters appeared on the cover of the June issue of Black
Enterprise, the first time an Oregonian has been featured
so prominently in the magazine.
"In
my opinion this smacks of discrimination," Bowman says.
"I can't believe a white millionaire would be getting this
kind of grief."
"This
is definitely about more than one man and one gas station,"
says state Rep. Jo Ann Bowman.
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James Winters thinks Portland should be cheering him on.
In 1991, the Benson Tech grad borrowed $6,000 from a college
buddy to start his own business. Today, he runs Oregon's
largest minority-owned firm--United Energy, a $32 million
fuel company.
Winters, 37, wants to move his business into retail sales
by buying gas stations with mini-marts. Last year, he spent
$900,000 to acquire his first in Portland--the Chevron station
at the corner of Northeast MLK and Fremont.
But instead of standing up and applauding, the city wants
to shut him down. Three weeks ago the city filed another
complaint against his property as part of a "chronic nuisance"
lawsuit, a legal maneuver used mainly against drug houses.
Winters is burning. He says the city is penalizing him
for problems at the site that predate his ownership. In
addition, the city is flat-out disrespecting him. Among
other demands, city officials asked Winters to submit to
an FBI fingerprint check. "That left me very bitter," he
says.
After all, you don't see the city fingerprinting the McMenamins.
And Chris Girard, president of Plaid Pantries Inc. (which
has 105 stores), says he's never even heard of such a request.
Winters sees his struggle as emblematic of how the city
is trying to keep Northeast Portland under its thumb. He
views it as a commentary on the leadership and future of
Portland's African-American community. On one side, he claims,
is a well-meaning but patronizing agenda that's likely to
keep people dependent on handouts. On the other side stand
entrepreneurs like Winters who want to lead people to self-sufficiency
through raw capitalism.
"In many ways James is Jackie Robinson," says Ray Leary,
executive assistant to the president of Adidas America.
And he's locked in the fight of his life.
Winters thinks the city is out to get him.
It's not hard to see why.
All you have to do is look at what Police Chief Charles
Moose said when Winters applied for a beer-and-wine license
for the Chevron station last year. In a letter to the Oregon
Liquor Control Commission, Moose essentially called Winters
a liar and a criminal. Winters had told the OLCC his record
was clean. But Moose discovered otherwise: He found that
Winters was stopped outside Newport and ticketed for possession
of one undersized crab in 1983.
That was enough for Moose to oppose Winter's alcohol license.
Acting on the city's recommendation, the OLCC denied the
license.
"That is ludicrous," says Harold Williams, a Northeast
Portland business owner and member of the Portland Community
College board of directors.
Winters doesn't get it.
He's the local boy who left Oregon to find success elsewhere--like
so many talented young African-Americans. Only he came back.
And now he employs 52 people, pays taxes, serves as treasurer
of the Urban League and raises thousands of dollars a year
for underprivileged kids.
Winters has deep roots in the community. His grandfather,
Dr. DeNorval Unthank, was one of the founders of the Urban
League, and his father was an all-American basketball player
at University of Portland and a teacher at Roosevelt High
School.
James' father constantly stressed the importance of a good
education. "He was always saying, 'Don't waste your time
with sports--get up and read your math book,'" he recalls.
So young James transferred out of Jefferson High, where
all his neighborhood friends went, to Benson Tech. "It was
a better learning environment," he says.
Still, it hasn't been an easy climb to the Columbia-Edgewater
Country Club, where he now golfs. Winters graduated from
Oregon State University in 1986 and spent several years
bouncing around accounting jobs in Oregon, California and
Texas.
He says he once aspired to be a "good company man for a
Fortune 500 firm." After he got a taste of office politics
in big companies, though, Winters wanted to be his own boss.
In 1991, he started United Energy and sold barrels of diesel
lubricant out of a house he rented from his parents. One
night, while watching Thirtysomething on TV, Winters
heard something that profoundly changed his outlook: One
of the characters said, "Whatever you're doing at 30, you'll
be doing the rest of your life."
Winters, then 29, decided to pick up his pace.
His first big break came in 1992, when he landed a minority-preference
contract with American Airlines for 480,000 gallons of jet
fuel. He parlayed from that into deals with United, Delta,
National Car Rental and Alamo. In eight years United Energy
has become the 74th largest minority-owned industrial company
in the country, according to Black Enterprise magazine.
In fact, next month Winters will be on the cover of Black
Enterprise for a feature called the "New Power Generation."
Winters has even dabbled in national politics. He contributed
$5,000 to the Democratic National Committee in 1996 and
got his picture snapped with Bill Clinton and Al Gore. The
photo hangs on his office wall just below a shot of Winters
and Jesse Jackson.
But the City of Portland, where Winters once toiled as
a financial analyst, is not impressed.
The city's case against Winters has more to do with historical
problems at the Chevron station than it does with him or
his partner, Greg Allen, the college friend who loaned Winters
$6,000 and now owns 32 percent of United Energy.
Problems at the corner of MLK and Fremont can be traced
back to the early '90s, when it was a vacant lot. "That
corner was a major mecca for prostitution," says Fred Stewart,
president of the association representing the nearby King
neighborhood. "You could get just about anything you might
want there."
In 1994, Dorian Boyland, the owner of Gresham Dodge and
Beaverton Nissan, bought the property. To win support for
a liquor-license application from the city and the Eliot
Neighborhood Association, Boyland agreed to a long list
of conditions: He wouldn't sell fortified wine or malt liquor;
he wouldn't sell single beers and 40-ounce bottles; he hired
a 24-hour uniformed security guard; and he enforced a no-loitering
policy.
The conditions proved too restrictive, Boyland says. They
eroded his profits and put him at a competitive disadvantage.
In 1996, he sold the business to Kowinder Johal, a Seattle
gas-station owner.
Neighbors were soon outraged by increasing problems at
the station. In September 1997, police arrested one of Johal's
employees for selling crack cocaine. Police also claimed
the lot was a magnet for other criminal activities, including
fencing and armed robbery.
Across the street was the King Food Mart, a store whose
problems made the Chevron station look like Sesame Street.
Between 1996 and 1998, the King Food Mart or its parking
lot was the site of a fatal shooting, drug dealing, assaults,
public urination, fights and the sale of crack pipes.
Last year, the City Council voted to take away the King
Food Mart liquor license. Emboldened, the Eliot Neighborhood
Association turned its attention to the Chevron station.
Winters acquired the station in January 1998. When he purchased
it, he inherited a "chronic nuisance" suit that the city
had filed against the property's previous owner. A nuisance
suit is a tool the City Council created in 1997 to protect
neighborhood livability. It states that if police report
three nuisance activities, which can range from illegal
gambling to unlawful drinking, at a property in a 30-day
period, the city can move to close the site for a full year.
To get the city to drop the lawsuit, Winters signed an
agreement on July 31, 1998, promising he would keep the
site clean, well-lit, problem-free and off-limits to loiterers.
He also hoped the concessions would lead the city to back
his application for a liquor license.
Two months later, police visited the station and found
Winters had failed to keep his promise. Specifically, police
found that two lights on the property were out, rules against
trespassing weren't properly posted and a security guard
had yet to be hired.
In November 1998, the OLCC denied Winters' license application,
citing opposition from the city and neighborhood groups,
as well as crime statistics provided by Portland police.
Forty days later, city lawyers reinstated their nuisance
suit, asking Multnomah County Circuit Court to shut down
the station.
"Our goal is not specifically to shut down the Chevron
station," Harry Auerbach, one of the city's attorneys, says
about the April 22 complaint. "What we want is for it to
operate in a way compatible with the neighborhood. And to
do that, they need to comply with the conditions set out
in the nuisance action."
No court date has yet been set.
Winters says he was flabbergasted by the city's actions;
now he's fighting back. He filed a federal lawsuit in February
saying the city violated his civil rights. "We've reached
the point of no return," he says. "I can't see any negotiating."
Winters says the city's case is unjust in several ways.
For one, the police complaints have been inaccurate. Police
alleged that an undercover informant bought drugs from one
of Winters' employees; another police report claimed a man
was flagging down cars at a nearby intersection and offering
to sell drugs. The charges were dropped in both cases.
Winters also says police have not been truthful about his
willingness to work with them. Northeast Precinct Cmdr.
Derrick Foxworth, for instance, testified at a recent OLCC
hearing that an uncooperative Winters never contacted him.
But Winters' attorney, Lou Savage, was able to produce cell-phone
records showing that Winters had paged Foxworth three times.
Statistics used by the police have also been misleading,
Winters says. In arguing against Winters' application for
a liquor license, police noted that the Chevron station
was the site of 19 "incidents" in 1998, including aggravated
assault, larceny and vandalism.
What police haven't noted is the vast improvement in the
place since Winters took over. In 1997, when Johal still
owned the station, 66 incidents occurred on the lot.
Nor are police cracking down on stores with far more criminal
activity, such as the Safeway at MLK and Ainsworth, which
in 1998 was cited for 131 incidents, including armed robbery,
aggravated assault with a knife and heroin possession.
And the police don't seem to give Winters any credit for
maintaining a clean OLCC record during the two years he
owned a Gresham gas station with a liquor license.
To Winters, an unapologetic capitalist, perhaps the greatest
injustice is that the city won't allow him to compete on
a level playing field with a BP station less than a mile
away, which is allowed to sell gas and beer to customers.
Beer and wine sales are important, Winters explains, because
they account for almost 20 percent of in-store revenues
for a station like his.
"You can't take away that 20 percent," he says. "That's
like saying American Airlines can't fly to Latin America
because some passengers might be connected to the drug trade."
The issue of race inevitably surfaces in Winters' struggle.
While some African-American activists dismiss it as a self-serving
tactic employed by the aggressive young entrepreneur, others
insist racial concerns are legitimate.
There's no question that gentrification is occurring in
Northeast Portland. Or that the Eliot Neighborhood Association,
led by whites, is battling Winters.
"I look at it this way," says Harold Williams, the PCC
board member who lives seven blocks from the Chevron station.
"If you move out the strong ones like James, then you can
move out history. And in five years you will need a magnifying
glass to find anyone of color with real ownership in the
community."
Williams' fears may seem overblown, but they're echoed
by many leaders in the community.
Lolenzo Poe Jr. points to the city's recent restrictions
on Cleo's, an African-American social club, as a sign of
the times.
For over 40 years Cleo's has thrived on Northeast Williams
Street without any problems--until last year, that is, when
a row-house development was built next to it. New neighbors,
many of them white, started complaining about noise at the
club. In March, the City Council voted to limit Cleo's hours
of operation, although Portland police said they saw no
need to do so.
"There is no place for African Americans to socialize,"
says Poe, Multnomah County's director of community and family
services. "Our businesses are becoming few and far between.
Somewhere we've got to deal with the true issue of gentrification.
And someone has to help me understand where there are any
signs, concrete or symbolic, that say to African Americans,
'You are welcome here.' Because if they exist, James Winters
would not have the problems he does."
Instead of welcome signs, Poe sees threats, like the new
Nature's Northwest being built at Northeast 15th Avenue
and Fremont. "That area was once the heart of the black
community," he says. "What does Nature's sell that's traditionally
bought by African Americans? You've got to understand their
clientele isn't African-American."
That may sound paranoid, Poe admits, but how else can you
explain the city's treatment of Winters?
"You have a city that says it wants a strong African-American
business ownership. You have a strong young businessman,"
he says. "It appears the city is about to cripple his ability
to do business. Why is that? The questions are unexplained
by the answers given."
Richard Brown, an African-American community activist and
co-chair of Black United Front, disagrees. There are no
mysteries or conspiracies, Brown says.
"Problems have transcended ownership at the station," he
says. "There are too many liquor licenses in the area. Problems
have spilled over into the neighborhood, so the community
has become rather rigid."
And it's not just white people complaining. Rev. A. Wayne
Johnson, of the Morning Star Baptist Church, opposes a liquor
license at the station; so does Fred Stewart, president
of the King Neighborhood Association, who's also African-American.
"It's wrong to think people didn't care before white folks
moved in," says Brown. "Black people may not be as in-your-face
because they know these owners."
The debate over the Chevron station is about more than
liquor and gentrification. It reveals a philosophical divide
in Portland's African-American community about how to attain
economic and political power.
In one camp are younger leaders who argue that the old-school
"social agenda," which focuses on using government programs
to address social ills, is outdated and ineffective. The
young lions say it's time to focus on economic justice.
"There is a transition within Northeast Portland and other
urban communities," says Leary of Adidas. "There is a belief
that the social agenda will not engender a solution to the
ills. Economics must be the leader."
That means trusting black entrepreneurs to do the right
thing, says Leary, a former social worker and co-founder
of Self Enhancement Inc., one of Northeast Portland's premier
social-service agencies.
Young community leaders, like Leary and Poe, see Winters
as a trailblazer. His company is expanding into commercial
real estate and fast-food operations. (He plans to launch
two new franchises, University Pizza and Taquito's Express.)
If United Energy and its subsidiaries grow the way Winters
envisions, the expansion might lead to thousands of jobs
one day.
"We now look at it as an issue bigger than us," says Winters'
partner, Greg Allen. "Which is the greater benefit? That
we don't sell alcohol and people have to go four or five
blocks to get it, or that we sell alcohol, employ people,
build the success of our company and get long-term change?"
"I think James is fighting for economic justice," agrees
Lawrence Dark, president of the Urban League. "And economic
justice is the next civil-rights frontier."
Even when it revolves around the right to sell booze?
"It's about allowing him a full opportunity," Dark responds.
"I do not drink, but it's legal and people buy it, and he
should have the opportunity to have a full store, not a
half a store. If he's successful, he will attract other
businesses of that caliber to the area."
The city denies picking on Winters and disputes the larger
concerns about gentrification and economic injustice.
"I don't see the link between gentrification and the Chevron
station," says Mayor Vera Katz, who will not comment on
specifics of the case because of pending litigation.
"All I know is that I've seen with my own eyes illegal
activities in that area," says Katz. "No community should
tolerate that. This is our response to a problem spot in
the neighborhood."
City Attorney Jeff Rogers says the lawsuit against Winters
is "straightforward" and stems from Winters' failure to
comply with the legal agreement he signed last July.
Rogers insists that the city doesn't really want to shut
down Winters, but it does hope to get the desired results
by threatening him with the maximum penalty. "That's the
way things often happen," Rogers explains. "The point is
not to put people out of business but to make sure they're
operating appropriately."
Chief Moose says it's "incredible" that people are dragging
gentrification and economic justice into the case. He says
the city is cracking down only because there are too many
liquor outlets in the area and Winters hasn't done what
the city asked.
Winters is now using his status to distort the issues,
Moose says. "When people don't have things go their way,
they may try to have people create whatever political pressure
they can. If if diverts us from the facts, then I guess
it's a job well done," the chief says.
Moose maintains that any business owner would get the same
treatment from police. "The station could be owned by you,
Saddam Hussein or George Bush," Moose says. "It's not about
him."
As for the Eliot Neighborhood Association, its land-use
chairman, Steve Rogers (who testified against Cleo's), did
not return WW's calls. But last year the association
did write a letter to the OLCC saying that "adding alcohol
to this drug entrenched, volatile milieu will only...place
an onerous and ongoing burden on neighbors."
Winters maintains that he doesn't want to hurt the neighborhood--his
parents own property in the area, and his partner's grandmother
lives just three blocks from the station. Nor does he want
to taint his reputation.
"It's unfortunate if people think this is about the right
to party," he says. "We're sure to alienate lots of people
because we believe that for African Americans to return
to success, things have to be done differently."
But city officials are mistaken if they think Winters is
going to back down.
They don't know James Winters. He's proud and headstrong,
and he's got a panther tattooed on his chest--because, he
says, it's pound for pound the fiercest animal in the wild.
"If there are any entrepreneurs who deserve a chance, it's
James and Greg," says Poe. "They are the epitome of what
we want. They are involved in the Urban League. They give
back to the community. They are what we've asked our children
to become."
"If there's a problem," concludes Leary, "it's that we
have only one James Winters in a community this large."
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Willamette Week | originally
published May 12, 1999
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