Kansas City poured millions into a grocery store. It still may close.

Washington Post

18-07-2025

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It was the lone tomato in the produce bin that nearly made Marquita Taylor weep.
She'd stopped in her neighborhood grocery store, the place that was cause for celebration when it opened seven years ago. Area residents had long lived without a decent supermarket on Kansas City's east side, and KC Sun Fresh was the city's attempt to alleviate a lack of access to healthy food in its urban center.
But the store, in a city-owned strip mall, is on the verge of closure. Customers say they are increasingly afraid to shop there — even with visible police patrols — because of drug dealing, theft and vagrancy both inside and outside the store and the public library across the street.
KC Sun Fresh lost $885,000 last year and now has only about 4,000 shoppers a week. That's down from 14,000 a few years ago, according to Emmet Pierson Jr., who leads Community Builders of Kansas City, the nonprofit that leases the site from the city. Despite a recent $750,000 cash infusion from the city, the shelves are almost bare.
'We're in a dire situation,' Pierson said.
As grocery prices continue to climb and 7 million Americans face losing federal food assistance, more cities and states across the country — in Illinois, Georgia and Wisconsin — are experimenting with the concept of publicly supported grocery stores as a way to help provide for low-income neighborhoods.
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City, has attracted attention for his campaign pledge to combat 'out-of-control' prices by establishing five city-owned supermarkets that he says will pass savings onto customers by operating 'without a profit motive.'
Yet these experiments, like the one in Kansas City, often don't account for social issues that can make success even more challenging. Critics say the efforts are unrealistic regardless because grocery stores have such slim profit margins and struggle to compete with the prices offered by big-box chains like Walmart. High-profile projects have failed in recent months in Florida and Massachusetts.
'Running a grocery store is a difficult business,' said Doug Rauch, a former Trader Joe's president who founded a chain of low-cost stores in the Boston area that shuttered in May. 'You can have religion about the mission, but if you don't have vast experience and knowledge about how to run these operations, you're really going to be in trouble.'
Taylor, 68, has supported the KC Sun Fresh since it opened just blocks from her home. But that solitary tomato was almost too much to bear.
'This is pathetic,' she said, shaking her head as she pushed her cart down an aisle. 'Every neighborhood deserves a good grocery store. This is the nearest store for six neighborhoods, and this is what we've got.'
Nearly a decade ago, Kansas City spent $17 million to buy and fix up the moribund Linwood Shopping Center on busy Prospect Avenue. KC Sun Fresh opened in 2018 with a salad bar, fresh shrimp on ice and flower bouquets. 'We were thrilled,' Taylor recalled.
The store was first run by a private grocer; Pierson's nonprofit took over in 2022. Sales were okay at first, but after the pandemic, crime rose and sales began to plummet. Police data show assaults, robberies and shoplifting in the immediate vicinity have been on an upward trend since 2020. Shoplifting cases have nearly tripled.
At a community meeting last year, Pierson played videos of security incidents so graphic he gave a warning in advance — a naked woman parading through the store throwing bags of chips to the ground, another person urinating in the vestibule and a couple fornicating on the lawn of the library in broad daylight.
Advocates like Taylor have accused the city of neglecting the property. Discussions about fixing a fence behind the store dragged on for months until it was repaired in early July, and the city just remedied the sewer stench that Taylor and others say has pervaded the store for weeks.
'Obviously, they don't feel like this is their responsibility. … Or they don't care,' she said.
In May, after the city was slow to turn over the $750,000 in promised assistance to the store, residents from the racially mixed neighborhood stormed a council meeting waving signs that read, 'I need access to fresh food!' and 'Cut the check!' Gwendolyn Grant, president and chief executive of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, called on Mayor Quinton Lucas to 'stop lying,' and 'get the job done.'
Lucas, a Democrat in his second term, said in an interview that despite KC Sun Fresh's financial issues, 'I still have confidence in the long-term future of a grocery facility in that area.' He sees two challenges: The first will be saving the current store. 'Changing consumer behavior will be another,' he said.
The issues defy quick solutions. The police department's East Side patrol division is just four blocks away, though police Maj. Chris Young said that even an 'overwhelming presence' of officers in recent months didn't significantly decrease incidents. Young, the patrol division's commander, links the rise in crime to fallout from the pandemic, rising inflation and a shortage of police officers following racial injustice protests in 2020.
Part of the problem is the city's lack of a jail, Young said. The left-leaning council closed the previous facility in 2009 as a cost-saving measure — a move the Kansas City Star has called a '$250 million mistake' — people arrested for minor crimes are quickly released instead of being held in rural counties miles away.
That allows them to hop on the local bus system — free since the pandemic — and head back to the same location, Young said.
'We typically have the same group of offenders every week that are recognizable by face and by name, just loitering and hanging out,' he said. 'A small percentage of people are ruining it for the rest of the community that deserves to go to their grocery store and their library.'
The city is making plans for a new jail, though construction could take years.
A number of cities and states have tried to address food inequity over the years. Since 2019, the Healthy Food Financing Initiative at the U.S. Department of Agriculture has spent $25 million to fund 162 food retail and food retail supply chain projects around the country, with mixed results, analysts say. The agency did not provide data on which projects have worked and which haven't.
Illinois has given out $16.5 million for new grocery stores since 2023. Chicago officials had a plan for a city-owned grocery store but dropped it, despite a study concluding the idea was both feasible and necessary, in favor of a plan for a public market with food stalls.
In Boston, Rauch founded a chain of five low-cost grocery stores called Daily Table, which sold only healthy food and avoided sugary snacks. The stores made about 75 percent of their budget from sales and covered the rest with private and public grants.
After a dozen years, they were anticipating a banner 2025, Rauch recounted. Then the Trump administration slashed federal programs that aided nutrition assistance. Both the stores and their philanthropic partners were hit hard.
'We ran out of money,' he said. 'The current freezing of funds at the USDA had a very chilling effect.'
Exploring 'public options' for groceries remains a popular idea because of high prices and fears of more dramatic cuts in food assistance, said Margaret Mullins, director of public options and governance at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, which recently released a guide to public grocery stores.
'Making sure people have access to fresh food is really, really important,' Mullins said. 'So even though it's tough, people keep turning to this public support idea because what else can they do?'
Patrick Tuohey, co-founder and policy director of the Better Cities Project, has been critical of the Sun Fresh project. He says the store looks 'great on paper' but does not have demand to support it. Plus, he noted, the neighborhood has other options because of a nearby Aldi store and the independent Happy Foods Center.
Data bears out both points. A USDA analysis showed the area around the store is low income but not low access. And a Washington Post analysis of the adjacent Zip codes show the area has steadily lost population since 2020. The council member who represents the area, Melissa Patterson Hazley, estimates there are more than 200 vacant lots in her district.
When residents and advocates gathered for an update during a breakfast meeting in late June, a minister spoke of 'fractured streets' and urged everyone to mobilize and 'reclaim the neighborhood.'
Pierson had bad news, however. He told the group that KC Sun Fresh was again in the red after he used the $750,000 in city aid to pay off outstanding invoices and restock the shelves. So far, according to Patterson Hazley, the city's finance director said it has spent about $29 million on the shopping center project.
'Everyone says, 'Why aren't we doing X, Y and Z at the store?'' said Pierson, who has spearheaded other urban revival projects, including another grocery store and a pickleball complex. 'Well, we covered the expenses and went negative-$39,000, and we're back in the same situation.'
And there was more, Pierson continued. The store's insurance company had dropped it, and the premiums with a new insurer were 45 percent higher. The audience gasped.
Later that morning, customers trickled into the store, past two armed security guards just inside the entrance even as two police officers monitored the scene outside. Small groups of people hanging out across the street seemed unbothered by the uniforms or the heat.
Taylor, who had come in for tomatoes, left the lonely one in the bin for someone else and moved on to ingredients for nachos — a Friday night treat for her and her husband. The chip aisle was bare, shelf after shelf empty. She finally found a few bags of tortilla chips nearby.
Taylor grew up in the area, and she and her husband raised their two daughters here. The nonprofit consultant remembers the long stretch of time when the strip mall's first grocery store was vacant and she had to travel several miles to go shopping.
After the city bought the property and KC Sun Fresh opened, she tried to do everything she could to promote the store, she said. The local neighborhood association, which she leads, launched a campaign called 'Save Our Store' and asked people to sign pledges to shop there monthly. She said it also handed out $10 gift cards.
Now, she explained, 'I can't even convince my neighbors to come and shop here anymore. They all say, 'Well, there's nothing there.'' Hardly any fruit. Hardly any chips. No bread other than hamburger buns. 'It's just such a struggle. We need our grocery store.'
John Harden contributed to this report.