Latest news with #fooddesert
CBS News
a day ago
- Business
- CBS News
International grocery store brings relief to Baltimore neighborhood in food desert
International grocery store LA Mart opened a new Maryland location less than a year after a store closed in a Baltimore neighborhood, leaving a food desert. The new store opened at 4624 Edmondson Avenue, at the former location of a Giant Food store. Supermarket closure leaves food desert When Giant announced it was closing in June 2024, the company redirected customers to its newly remodeled store on Wilkins Avenue, two miles away. "It was mixed feelings for the community," said Jeffrey Young. "I don't know what the situation was, but I don't think they were concerned about the community at all. Not knowing that it affected people that live in this community and the surrounding communities that have nowhere to go to get fresh food at a supermarket." Young doesn't live far from the supermarket and, like others, is happy there's a grocery store that neighbors can walk to again. "When the Giant left, we became a food desert," said Councilman Paris Gray, who represents District 8. Neighbors appreciate new grocery store LA Mart offers a wide selection of produce, international products, a bakery and a seafood department with fresh fish, lobster and crabs. Customers like Carolyn Young, who lives nearby, were devastated when Giant closed in 2024. She said it was especially hard on older neighbors who had to venture further to get their groceries. Young is no stranger to LA Mart as she used to drive to one of the store's other locations. She welcomed the new location, which is closer to her home. "It's a multicultural area, so the market really gives everybody in the neighborhood what they need, so I think it's a great fit," Young said. Young and other customers said they're enjoying the fresh produce and low prices. "I just think the best thing about it so far is the prices on the fruits and vegetables, and even the salmon and fish and stuff like that," said neighbor Rudo Minson. "Lobster is on sale, crabs." Minson lives down the street from the new store, and for months, he has been commuting to different markets to get groceries. "I appreciate the supermarket being here, that's for sure," he said. New development in Baltimore neighborhood Councilman Gray worked with the owners at Edomdson Square and the Edmondson Village Shopping Center next door to find grocers when he learned Giant was closing. The new LA Mart opened less than a year after Giant closed. "I think it shows the economic power that we have in southwest Baltimore," Gray said. "Oftentimes we are overlooked, but we have strong communities, stable communities that can support not only one but what we will see is two grocery stores." Aldi is slated to open a location at the Edmondson Village Shopping Center. Gray said there is no timeline yet, but the lease is signed. It's part of a multi-million-dollar redevelopment in the works by The Chicago Trend Corporation. Baltimore's Edmondson Village Shopping Center is undergoing a renovation project. The Chicago Trend Corporation "What we're really excited about is just the opportunity and the opportunities that are going to come from both shopping centers when it comes to jobs, when it comes to food accessibility, making sure our dollars in Baltimore stay in Baltimore," Gray said. Quickway Japanese Hibachi and Charley's Philly Steaks also plan to open locations in the shopping center, and additional stores are expected to be announced. The changes can already be seen with Councilman Gray pointing to improved lighting, new awnings outside most stores, new signage and improvements to make sidewalks more accessible. "We're already starting to see the changes, but it's going to be really important that folks keep their eyes open and continue to see the changes each and every day and each and every month as we move to full completion," Gray said. The new developments are something neighbors are already taking note of. "I'm happy to see the construction and development in the neighborhood actually coming up," said Carolyn Young. "I think that everyone can appreciate that." Local restaurant wanted for new development As development continues at Edmondson Village Shopping Center, the search is on for a local restaurant, Gray said. "If you want to be a part of the renaissance that's happening in Baltimore and the beautiful thing is it's happening in all corners of Baltimore and not just one area, come to the Edmondson Village Shopping Center because we have a place for you," said Gray. Restaurant owners interested in opening a southwest Baltimore location can reach out to Chicago Trend for more information or contact Gray's office.
CBS News
5 days ago
- Business
- CBS News
Stockton's Food Source, last remaining U.S. location, to close for good
Food Source's last remaining location is in Stockton. Now it's closing for good. Food Source's last remaining location is in Stockton. Now it's closing for good. Food Source's last remaining location is in Stockton. Now it's closing for good. STOCKTON — The city of Stockton is losing yet another grocery discount store. Food Source, under parent company Raley's, announced it is closing its location on West Hammer Lane for good on June 6. It's been the last remaining Food Source in operation nationwide. Nearly all of the Family Dollar stores, all the 99-cent stores, and Big Lots have left the city, and the Stockton Sears closed last year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture actually considers a large portion of the West Hammer Lane area a food desert for people who live more than half a mile away. A lot of the big-box stores left because of nationwide closures. Family Dollar claims inflation and retailer competition. Raley's told us that Food Source is closing because the lease is up and the owner of the property is looking for a new tenant. As for what's going to take its place, that has yet to be announced. People like Stockton native Mary and her family have made Food Source their go-to spot for groceries for decades. "I was very disappointed, kind of shocked, you know?" she said of Food Source closing. Now, she'll have to find the food to feed her family somewhere else. Cynthia Burnham is new to Stockton but found a piece of home in these grocery store aisles, which now sit empty. "We just moved here from Alabama. I found this place because it reminds me of some of the stores in Alabama, and I could find some of the stuff that I like," she said. Just like Mary, Burnham, too, has to start from square one. "I finally found something I like, and now I got to start looking again," said Burnham.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Erwin Montessori Elementary School property's future tied to hope in East Greensboro
GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) — Erwin Montessori Elementary School is no more. It was demolished earlier this year after sitting dormant for years, but the future of the almost 10-acre property means a lot to the future of East Greensboro as a whole. East Greensboro is disproportionally low-income, high minority and high crime. Community members and representatives want more for the area. On Friday, FOX8 walked alongside them as they shared information with the neighborhood about the next steps for the EMES property. 'We can't just put something on this site,' said Kesha Dockery, with the Erwin Steering Committee. She's also a local. The campus formerly sat on the side of East Bessemer Avenue, which is not far from East Market Street. It was damaged beyond repair in the 2018 tornado and finally demolished earlier this year. The ESC held a walk on Friday afternoon that was led by Zanzella Zavoy Dockery. 'This means a lot to me. We are talking about fixing up areas. People don't want to live over here,' said Dockery. The frustration among locals was apparent. One man stopped our crew to say they deeply need a grocery store. East Greensboro is considered a food desert. 'We have nothing over here, and they never put nothing over here,' the man said. He told us he'd lived there for decades. Councilwoman Goldie Wells agrees. She said the area must be cleaned up. The future is in the community's hands. 'You can't take a diamond and put it in the middle of a trash heap. We can't take a lot of money, invest it over here if we aren't thinking about the surrounding neighborhood and the people who live over here,' Dockery said. The conversation about East Greensboro has been happening for decades, and the now vacant EMES property holds the power to spark change. FOX8 walked up East Bessemer Avenue, Elwell Avenue and up to Sunnycrest Avenue and back, talking to neighbors with the committee members and two Greensboro police officers helping to hand out fliers. 'We're still trying to talk about what's happening over here. We know that will affect you,' Dockery told a group of people living near the property. There's a trio of stores on the corner of Elwell Avenue and East Bessemer Avenue. Just beyond that, a shooting in late April claimed the life of a man. It was the city's 13th homicide of the year. 'When that incident happened over there, it's been closed down since then,' Wells said. Wells walked around the block, taking notes about things that were out of place, like a couch abandoned in a tree line across from a cleaners she uses. She also complimented a duplex and said, 'We want to have more duplexes' as a nod to affordable housing. The walking crew told people to participate in a meeting about the future of the old EMES land. They have ideas for housing, a multipurpose center and other community amenities. One member said the Revolution Mill area could serve as inspiration to have a place to live, work and play. The county owns the land, and it's up to them to make the final call. The county awarded consultant Sadie Blue $20,000 in April to get community feedback about the Erwin Redevelopment Project. She is hosting a community meeting on Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the Islamic center across from the property, and there will be free fried fish and hot dogs, with all stakeholders welcome to come. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
An Anchorage neighborhood is fighting food-desert status after the closure of a historic grocery store
May 18—Residents of the Fairview neighborhood near downtown Anchorage are fighting to protect their access to grocery stores and pharmacies after the historic Carrs on Gambell Street closed this month, leaving an empty, boarded-up building. Many people in the diverse, low-income neighborhood don't own a car, and the closure makes it hard for them to reach other stores outside the neighborhood, said S J. Klein, a board member with the Fairview Community Council. "Pulling the store out really rips the heart out of the neighborhood," Klein said. "So we'd really like to see that site reactivated as a grocery store, even if it's on a smaller scale." In just one of their efforts, Fairview residents helped convince the Anchorage Assembly to pass a preemptive ordinance that aims to prevent the creation of food deserts in Anchorage, high-poverty areas with limited access to affordable and nutritious food. The measure prevents certain grocery stores that are closing from using restrictive language in sales or lease deals to prevent another grocery store from moving into the same spot. Lower 48 stores, including those owned by Safeway and parent company Albertsons, have used such terms to prevent competition, according to news accounts. "If no one could ever put a store there, that's doing twice as much damage as the store just pulling out," Klein said. Sara Osborne, a spokesperson with Carrs-Safeway, did not respond to a question about whether the company would attempt to pursue restrictive language in a future sales agreement. In other steps, the neighborhood has won support from Anchorage leaders for programs to facilitate trips for needy residents to grocery stores and pharmacies in the Midtown Mall area. The plans consist of redirecting a People Mover bus route later in the year, and providing short-term shuttle service for households, following a $75,000 budget revision by the administration of Mayor Suzanne LaFrance. The shuttle will "provide temporary harm reduction so that people from Fairview who maybe don't have access to a vehicle can still get to the grocery store or the pharmacy for their life-sustaining medications," said Daniel Volland, the Assembly's representative for the district that includes Fairview, along with Chair Chris Constant. Volland said he brought the idea forward at the request of Fairview residents. LaFrance said in a statement that she's "deeply concerned by the impact of the Carrs closure" on the community of Fairview and the nearby neighborhoods of Government Hill and downtown, which also relied on the store. "People need access to food and medicine, and these neighborhoods have supported this business for decades," she said. "We're talking to Albertsons/Safeway about potential options for the site. And we're doing everything we can to ensure the community has continued access to food and medicine, including rerouting transit." 'A huge blow' The Carrs store on Gambell was built in the 1950s, launching a homegrown Alaska chain that would grow to consist of more than 15 stores. It was later bought by national giants Safeway and then Albertsons. The store at Gambell played a big role in civil rights in Anchorage in the 1960s, hiring the first Black person to work in retail in a public-facing position in the city, after picketing by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The store also survived the disruptive decision by road planners to connect the Seward and Glenn highways through the neighborhood in the 1960s, even as the the highway corridor caused business closures and hurt neighborhood appeal and investment. Carrs-Safeway announced the store's closure last month, giving Fairview residents little time to react. The grocery chain said in a statement the store was "perpetually unable to meet financial expectations." The property is now encircled with a chain-link fence. The 43,000-square-foot building and the lots are on the market for $5 million. Resident Kyle Mielke said the announcement "was a huge blow" to his family. He and his wife, Rhianna Murphy, had moved to Fairview only days earlier. They'd intentionally found an affordable apartment near the store so they could walk or bike there. Their old Toyota Prius is an unreliable, "last-ditch" option, he said. Murphy is pregnant with their first baby, a girl. She has gestational diabetes with the pregnancy, so they needed to be near the store's pharmacy, he said. "Being able to get refills as quickly as possible is dire for her and for the baby," he said. But what was once a six-minute walk now takes 30 to 45 minutes to reach the Carrs in the Midtown Mall, he said. "It's pretty disappointing that something we were relying on got pulled out from under us," he said. Mielke, a member of the municipality's Public Transit Advisory Board, proposed rerouting a People Mover route in Fairview and downtown — Route 11 — so it also loops into the Midtown Mall area. Bart Rudolph, director of Anchorage's Public Transportation Department, said that's viewed as a long-term solution that the department was already considering. It's looking to implement the rerouting in October. "As soon as we heard that the Carrs was closing, we started thinking about how we can adjust service," he said. More immediately, Rudolph said, the money the city is providing for a shuttle would pay a third-party entity to drive Fairview residents to the Midtown Mall area, perhaps in a van that makes multiple trips on weekends. "We're trying to find a community partner that has some ties to Fairview, so they already have a sense of what the needs are there," he said. 'A very long mile' Maria and Chris Crawford, who operate a small food pantry in Fairview, said they're hearing "a lot of uncertainty and a lot of stress" from residents who don't have an easy way to make it to the grocery store. "It may be only a mile from the old Carrs location, but that's a very long mile when you are trying to bring groceries back," Maria Crawford said. They launched the pantry last year, privately funding it themselves along with food donations. Now they're looking at creating a voluntary ridesharing network to help residents get to a store if needed, she said. With the Carrs closure, the couple expects to see more people coming to the pantry, which currently operates two days a month out of the Fairview Recreation Center. They provide three days of meals to households, and some chocolate or candy to "lift spirits," she said. "People are wondering how they're going to make this work," she said. "I think that the effects are going to be pretty drastic." The closing of a grocery store in a low-income neighborhood has many negative consequences, said Tina McKim, a founder of the Birchwood Food Desert Fighters in Bellingham, Washington. The Albertsons store in her Birchwood neighborhood in Washington closed in 2016 after 35 years, she said. "It caused the loss of jobs, the loss of a community gathering space and the loss of access to fresh produce," she said. The store also created "noncompete clauses" to prevent another grocery store from moving in for 20 years, she said. Albertsons removed the restrictions after the state of Washington opened an investigation into them. Fairview resident Harrison Smith said he didn't want to see a restrictive covenant placed on the Gambell site. His research on the topic led him to examples in the Lower 48 of grocery stores like the one that closed in Bellingham using sales or rental agreements to block new grocery stores from moving into the same spot. "The hope was just to prevent a situation to make that impossible," Smith said. "We believe the neighborhood is worth investing in and we continue to want a grocery store." Smith's work was instrumental in the Assembly's decision to pass the ordinance, Assembly Chair Constant said in an interview. The measure passed on a vote of 10-2, just days before the Carrs was closed. Assembly members Keith McCormick, representing South Anchorage and Girdwood, and Scott Myers, representing Eagle River, voted against it. Constant said that some people are concerned that the measure is an "overreach" that limits transactions between private parties. But the ban ensures that certain grocery stores in Anchorage cannot prevent competitors from moving into the same spot, he said. In the case of the Carrs at Gambell, it could help mean that the property continues as a grocery store, if a future store operator wants to move in. "That property has been a grocery asset for the neighborhood for generations, and it has value in that capacity," Constant said. "It has endured long before and probably will long after endure in that function, because that's what the neighborhood use is there," he said.
CBS News
06-05-2025
- Business
- CBS News
New grocery stores planned for Tarentum, New Kensington and Natrona
Food deserts are an issue for several communities in our region, but now, in parts of Tarentum, New Kensington, and Natrona, three new community markets are planned, which will make fresh food for people in these areas just a short walk away. On Tuesday morning, crews were hard at work gutting an old convenience store along East 6th Avenue in Tarentum and converting it into the soon-to-be Horizon Market. Local developers Cameron Yockey and Brianna Thorpe are the power couple putting this place together. They say that they saw a need in this part of Tarentum, as well as in New Kensington and Natrona, to have a local market where people can buy more than just chips and soft drinks. "So, we want to have ground meat, we want to have chicken breast, we want to try to get into produce," Yockey said. "All that kind of stuff. So, things that they would currently have to get on a bus line to go to, things along those lines. We are in a predominantly walking community." Yockey and Thorpe say they aren't just looking for shoppers for these new markets, they are also looking for local vendors to supply the store with fresh food and products. They also say that they are hoping to create about 12 new jobs at each store once they are open. One community member that KDKA-TV spoke with, Demani, says that he will definitely be coming here for groceries in the future because he not only knows and likes the owners, but the shop is within walking distance from his home. "I know a lot of people who actually come here all the time," Demani said. "The old store was very popular before, so now that this is happening, they are going to build it up even more. And probably more people are going to come, honestly. Out here, once a new store opens, a lot of people like to flood it." The Horizon Market in Tarentum will hopefully be completed by the end of May, and once completed, it will be open seven days a week.
