Slide Deck coming soon!
The UEDA The UEDA’s Place Affinity Network hosted Sean Park, Director of Western Illinois University’s Value-Added Sustainable Development Center (VASDC). An extension of the Illinois Institute of Rural Affairs, VASDC helps farmers, non-farm rural businesses, and community leaders excel by providing technical assistance and research.
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- Sean Park, Value-Added Sustainable Development Director
Sean discussed the Illinois Grocery Initiative, a unique, state-wide program designed to provide grants and technical assistance to communities in food deserts. Utilizing a model involving “Municipally Owned/Privately-Operated Grocery Stores,” the program demonstrates success for increased success and longevity of community organized food access programs.
RECAP
The reality of grocery stores, as Sean notes, is quite a daunting one, kicking off the presentation with an example statistic: grocery stores in Iowa dropped from 1,400 in 1995 to just over 700 in 2005.
Providing his own regional context (Illinois) to the situation, the Illinois Department of Public Health services is tasked with reporting on food desert and works in collaboration with the IIRA. The definition for a food desert is an urban area that is 0.5 miles from grocery stores, and 10 miles for a rural area. This represents 1.2 million Illinois residents living in a food desert. There are 3 million residents in Illinois in urban areas (1 in 4 areas).
Economically depressed areas are most affected most by food deserts, losing sales tax, jobs, economic power and third space (a gathering space of the community). This harms the community identity of a location, affecting development later as no one is interested. No one wants to move anywhere where there’s no access to food.
Fortunately, the Rural Fresh Markets program aims to address communities that are food deserts and those at risk of becoming a food desert. Focusing on General Business assistance & Grocery Store Assistance, communities are served with these core principles (benefits of the program):
- Reduce Energy and Repair costs: Grocery stores often face a 30% jump in costs due to old equipment, exacerbated by high volume in goods with a low margin of returns.
- Adjust product mix to be more competitive: Without the resources that a chain has, markets are not able to keep up with trends and do not have the capital to adjust to changes.
- Incorporating different revenue streams: With stores oversized, its encouraged to help bring resource providers in that can share overhead costs (workforce development, etc.).
Sean’s efforts are statewide under the Illinois grocery initiative: a state funded program designed to address the issue of food deserts across the state. The initiative aims to increase access to fresh healthy food in areas with limited grocery store options. Efforts include surveying for updated food desert information, as the USDA food map is rather outdated featuring information from 2019 (pre-COVID).
Current grocery stores are assisted with equipment upgrade grants (75% grant with 25% match with at least $250,000), addressing facilities that would turn the community into a food desert if it closed. The initiative also boasts new grocery store grants for communities that are already food deserts. (75% grant with 25% match with at least $2.4M). Both grants aim to assist in the cashflow for facilities.
Sean also discussed municipally owned / privately operated grocery stores. Identifying its potential strength and weaknesses:
Pros:
- Community cannot lose its story by losing the operator: Store will not sit empty due to changing developers, just have to update the bid for a new one.
- Community has a say in the services provided through lease revenue: people can dictate the direction and are more interactive towards spending.
- Avoids added workload in a municipally run store: Privately owned helps identify operators more directly.
Cons:
- Issue of Liability: difficult to determine who is responsible and accountable.
- No cost of facility upkeep: activity is up to the community, not in the hands of a developer
- New property tax revenue: No initial finance cost; can operate on a smaller footprint
- Appearance of “unfair” business assistance: Can look unfavorable to receive bids over others.