A single gas station may be all that separates Southeast Austin's JD's Supermarket from permanent closure — and Austin's transit authority wants the land beneath it.
The threat to JD's is not a local zoning spat. It signals a broader pattern playing out in cities from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., where public transit expansion quietly accelerates the erasure of Latino commercial anchors in neighborhoods that can least afford to lose them.
The Stakes on Riverside Drive
JD's Supermarket #9, a Hispanic and Mediterranean grocery anchored at the corner of East Riverside Drive and Montopolis Drive, has become the focal point of Austin's most uncomfortable transit conversation. Project Connect, the city's 9.8-mile light rail line planned around 15 stations, is scheduled to break ground in 2027 — and one of its future stops sits directly adjacent to JD's property.
In March 2026, Austin Transit Partnership sent the store's management a letter warning that a portion of their property "will be needed for the proposed transit project" and that they could be entitled to relocation assistance, according to the Austin Chronicle. The parcel in question is the gas station out front — not the store building itself, ATP maintains.
When 30% of Revenue Disappears
That distinction offers little comfort to Vanessa Calixto, the supermarket's risk manager. Many customers stop for fuel before shopping inside, making the pumps a commercial engine, not a roadside convenience. Losing the station, Calixto told KXAN, would push the business into "survival mode" and eventually force it to shut down permanently.
The numbers frame the risk clearly. JD's gas operation is projected to account for $64,600 of the store's $661,343 in projected annual tax revenue. Remove that foot-traffic driver and the margin math becomes very difficult for a minority-owned grocer already operating in a competitive, thin-margin industry.
ATP spokesperson Jennifer Pyne has maintained that "the Austin Light Rail design does not displace JD's Supermarket," adding that design work is ongoing and the agency has reduced the number of properties facing potential eminent domain by 5 percent. The agency has acknowledged, however, that a partial land acquisition along the Riverside Drive frontage — covering the gas station footprint and adjacent sidewalk — remains a possibility as plans are finalized.
More Than a Grocery Store
Community members frame what's at stake in terms that reach well beyond square footage. JD's serves a Southeast Austin corridor where a large share of residents are Latino, many car-free and reliant on walkable access to affordable food. The store serves approximately 2,250 customers using EBT benefits each month at its Riverside location, per the company's own website — a number that reflects the neighborhood's economic reality, where roughly a third of residents live below the federal poverty line.
Since opening the Riverside location in 2023, JD's has created 90 jobs, becoming a concrete economic anchor in a community already feeling gentrification pressure. The building itself was previously a church, and neighbors pushed for it to be converted into a grocery store because the area lacked nearby access to fresh food and traditional Latino products, according to the Austin Chronicle.
More than 1,500 people have signed a "Save JD's" petition, and a public news conference on Oct. 9 drew community organizers and elected officials who cast the dispute as a test of whether Austin's expansion can be genuinely equitable. State Rep. Lulu Flores, whose District 51 covers Southeast Austin, attended and publicly backed public transit while raising alarms about its community cost.
"If this transit line forces our doors to close it will instantly create a food desert for the low-income families who depend on us for accessible groceries," Calixto told KXAN.
A National Pattern Austin Is Repeating
Austin is not the first city to face this reckoning. Research from UCLA's urban planning program found that neighborhoods near new light rail and subway stations across Los Angeles County consistently shifted toward higher-income, whiter demographics over the period studied — squeezing out immigrant-owned businesses and ethnic commercial corridors in the process. Areas adjacent to new transit lines showed stronger associations with losses of lower-income residents than areas farther from the tracks.
Along Washington, D.C.'s Purple Line corridor, transit construction put immigrant-owned and Black-owned small businesses under severe financial strain years before the line's opening day. In some cases, community coalitions negotiated binding anti-displacement agreements that provided affected businesses with technical assistance and pathways to remain in place. No comparable framework currently exists in Austin.
The Missing Protections
Advocates in Southeast Austin say the city lacks two safeguards that proved decisive in other transit corridors: a dedicated displacement fund for affected minority businesses and a binding community benefits agreement that guarantees businesses a path to stay, rather than simply a right to relocation assistance that may point somewhere unaffordable.
ATP says it will continue searching for design alternatives that reduce impact on neighboring properties. For the 90 workers whose livelihoods depend on JD's remaining open, that commitment has not yet translated into a concrete plan.
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