When you look at the transit accessibility of Bellingham’s full-service grocery stores, the situation is generally pretty good. Trader Joe’s, Safeway, and all locations of Haggen, Fred Meyer, and Community Food Co-op in Bellingham are served by Whatcom Transit Authority bus routes. Some are even adjacent to the WTA’s frequent service GO Line corridors.

But something is amiss on Bellingham’s northwest side. Although Route 232 (Downtown to Cordata/WCC), which is the backbone of the WTA’s Green GO Line corridor along Northwest Avenue, has some of the most frequent bus service in the city, it doesn’t serve any major grocery stores, aside from Community Food Co-Op’s two locations at the Green Line’s termini at Bellingham and Cordata stations. But if you’re in between those two end points along the 232, good luck with groceries.   

A WTA bus stop on Northwest Avenue.
Good luck finding groceries along the Green GO Line, one of Bellingham's most frequent bus corridors. (Photo by Michael Grass / BhamByBus)

Fred Meyer (1225 W. Bakerview Road) is somewhat close to Route 232’s stops on Northwest Avenue & Bakerview Road, but just far enough away to be inconvenient for many local transit users. A Haggen location on Meridian Street (2814 Meridian Street at Illinois Street) is even farther from Route 232 than the Fred Meyer, but is adjacent to the less frequent Route 15 (Downtown to Cordata via Meridian Street).      

A diagram of Route 232 between Bellingam Station and Cordata Station.
Route 232 cuts through Bellingham's Birchwood Grocery Desert. (Route diagram via WTA)

But there used to be a transit-accessible Albertsons grocery store along Route 232 on Northwest Avenue near Birchwood Avenue. The departure of Albertsons from Northwest Avenue in 2016, a result of the Safeway-Albertsons merger, led to what became known locally as the Birchwood Food Desert.

In 2023, amid another big grocery merger and lingering concerns about what happens to food access when a grocery store leaves a neighborhood high and dry, KUOW Public Radio checked in on Birchwood, one of Bellingham’s most socio-economically diverse neighborhoods.

“At the time, we didn’t have a car,” Birchwood resident Julia de la Cruz said in an interview with KUOW. “So it was really good. And I was in a wheelchair, so my husband used to wheelchair me down here.”

Tina McKim of Birchwood Food Desert Fighters told KUOW of the early hopes of a new grocery store that never came and the reason why neighborhood residents have struggled with food access in recent years:

“Everyone thought, 'Oh, another grocery store is gonna go in,'” McKim said.

But that didn’t happen. The community also learned there wouldn’t be another grocery store going in — at least not for a while.

“Albertsons had placed a series of non-compete clauses on the building itself,” McKim said.

The non-compete clause itself wasn’t the issue. It was the duration of the clause — 22 years.

“It feels malicious,” McKim said.

Although the former Alberstons store location was sold in 2021, the land-use restrictions added to the site in 2018, became a rallying call around the need for better grocery access in Birchwood as community-led efforts took shape to fill the local gap.

But some good news emerged from Bellingham’s Birchwood Food Desert this week. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s office announced that Albertsons agreed to relinquish the non-compete clause for its former Birchwood location that has impacted local grocery access. 

“Access to fresh groceries is essential for every neighborhood,” Ferguson said in an announcement on Tuesday. “In a neighborhood like Birchwood, many residents may have less access to transportation, or may be elderly or disabled. Albertsons forced the residents of Birchwood to walk farther for groceries so it could reduce competition for its own grocery store nearby.”

While the agreement with Ferguson’s office won’t necessarily lead to a new grocery store materializing in the former Albertsons location, it is a good reminder of the critical relationship between grocery access and transit access. 

Transit skeptics will sometimes bellyache about how you can’t transport groceries home on the bus. While buses certainly don’t serve all transportation needs, anyone who rides a WTA bus serving the Lakeway Fred Meyer along the Plum GO Line or Haggen’s Fairhaven location can attest that plenty of people, including many senior citizens and people with mobility challenges, indeed ride buses regularly for their grocery needs.  

Local leaders can’t snap their fingers and make a new grocery store magically appear in Birchwood, but eliminating a major food desert that happens to be very well served by frequent transit should continue to be a local priority.