Red Apple Grocery
When Safeway's 40-year lease at its location on 6th and Adams in Eugene expired in 1992, the chain decided that it did not want to remain there, even though it was a profitable store, because the 18,000 square foot space did not match the footprint of the rest of its stores in the area. Prompted by concerns that the loss of the Safeway store would leave low income and elderly residents of the Whiteaker neighborhood without easy access to a full-scale, affordable grocery store, NEDCO worked to find a solution. Glen Gibbons, president of NEDCO at that time, was quoted in the local paper as saying, "a full service grocery store is absolutely essential to the viability of the Whiteaker community."

While community leaders and city officials tried to convince Safeway to stay, NEDCO started searching for an independent grocer with enough financial backing to make a 10-year lease commitment if NEDCO was to purchase the site. When it became evident that the most Safeway would do was to leave the refrigeration units, cash registers, and other built-in equipment to facilitate a transition to a new owner, NEDCO and a Seattle based food distributor, Associated Grocers, came up with a plan to keep a full-service grocery store in the neighborhood.

About a month before the Safeway lease ran out, NEDCO reached an agreement to purchase the building with the help of low-interest loans from the City of Eugene and US Bank. Throughout the negotiations, Associated Grocers had been working to find potential store owners and finally decided to work with Rich Bruns, a Eugene native with many years of grocery business experience, who would open the store as a Red Apple supermarket.

With only six weeks of interruption after Safeway closed, the new Red Apple opened in June 1992, creating a lot of relief and happiness among neighborhood residents. The Red Apple project, as then City Councilman Shawn Boles says, "was the most critical thing for keeping the neighborhood together."