Innovations in Healthy Retail Pay Off

Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn

In a recent webinar called “Using Economic Development Funds to Create Incentives for Healthy Retail,” five speakers detailed how programs to beautify streetscapes, improve neighborhood retail climates and bring fresh food to urban stores paid off for store owners and community residents alike.

Hosted by Public Health Law & Policy , a project of the Public Health Institute based in Oakland, the webinar attracted more than 150 participants for presentations on four major projects summarized below.

Brooklyn’s Storefront Facelift

In the Myrtle Avenue project in Brooklyn, New York, () organizers worked with local economic development agencies to influence small retailers along 20 city blocks to beautify the street and develop a focused economic development strategy. Jennifer Stokes and Sarah Farwell described a “holistic approach” including graffiti removal, substituting see-through security gates for solid gates, additional lighting and upgraded store fronts. Before and after images from their Storefront Improvement Grants showed that an investment of less than $20,000 could make a huge difference in the appearance of the street and the sense of vibrancy and safety of the neighborhood. Surveys indicated what types of new businesses to recruit, such as a gym or bakery, to attract more people to the business district and improve sales for all.

San Jose Spruces Up Grocery Stores

In San Jose, California, Richard Keit, Director of Neighborhood and Business Development with the San Jose Redevelopment Agency, reported that they take a great interest in grocery stores. Their well-funded program includes: façade improvements using a menu of architect-developed design schemes, project management, tree planting, lighting and banners. Participating grocery stores have seen great increases in business when they update and open up their building façades, add plantings and remove or diminish the appearance of security bars. Sales tax revenue data also shows steady increase of business.

Urbane Development Builds Grocery Store Partnerships in Underserved Communities

Urbane Development advances local economic development strategies for health food retail with major municipal clients such as the cities of Detroit, Michigan, and Newark, New Jersey. To bring about improvements, CEO James Johnson-Piett accesses capital from federal, state, municipal sources, and financial intermediaries including community development banks. Health food retail projects range from discrete projects such as façade improvements, and geographic corridor improvements to comprehensive approaches that focus on all phases of “intervention” including technical assistance and financing.

Urbane Development is working with Detroit Economic Growth Corporation to address the lack of full service grocery stores in the city of Detroit by designing a comprehensive food retail attraction, retention and expansion program through dedicated grants, lines of credit, and varieties of technical assistance. Working with the Brick City Development Corporation in Newark, NJ, Urbane Development created a small grocery technical assistance and capacity building program to increase the availability of fresh, healthy foods to Newark residents. They also created a program of grants and loans for leasehold improvements, inventory and equipment costs, plus training in grocery operations and even design and construction support.

It Pays to Open Up a Grocery Store in Philadelphia

Brianna Sandoval of The Food Trust, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, discussed the need for understanding the needs of food retailers. In the Fresh Food Financing Initiative, a $120 million funding pool created by public-private partnership provides incentives to operators to open shops in areas where they might not otherwise have done business. Businesses have to be located in low or moderate income census tracts and areas considered underserved based on size of businesses and proximity from other stores.

Programs also aim to improve access to healthy food in existing stores. In one case study, a local store increased sales from five types of fruits and vegetables to 20 types, and moved the fresh food to become the centerpiece of the renovated store. In another example, small refrigeration units for fresh fruit salads were added to a network of 40 corner stores. This change also resulted in new jobs as entrepreneurs moved in to provide the packing and distribution of the fruit salads.

All of these programs demonstrate the financial pay-offs of integrating community food systems into a city or region’s economic development plans.

The Seattle Connection

Seattle has also embarked on an initiative to create more healthy corner stores in underserved communities such as the Delridge neighborhood in West Seattle. Here are just a few resources to learn more about these local efforts.

Click here to view recent KOMO video on Healthy Corner Stores.

Click here to read KUOW transcript on the Delridge Healthy Corner Store project.

Click here to read recent Seattle Times article on Healthy Corner Stores.

About the author:  Karen Holt Luetjen has been a food-related educator through her work for Seattle Tilth and WSU Extension, and is currently coordinating a conference on urban agriculture scheduled for October at the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture. Contact her at khluetjen@msn.com.

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