Promising Strategies to Improve Access to Fresh, Healthy Food and ...

PolicyLinkMarket Creek Plaza: Resident Ownership of Neighborhood ChangeMarket Creek Plaza in the Diamond Neighborhoods of San Diego provides one example of the community benefitsthat can accompany a grocery store development. Around a third of the residents in this area have incomes of lessthan $20,000 a year, and 30 percent of residents do not have access to a car. The Jacobs Center for NeighborhoodInnovation (JCNI) is an operating foundation dedicated to neighborhood strengthening and community building. Overthe next 20 to 25 years, JCNI will invest its resources into the Diamond Neighborhoods until it spends or transfers allof its assets.JCNI purchased 10 acres of land for Market Creek Plaza, a commercial real estate project that benefitted fromsignificant community input into the plaza’s design and implementation. Sixty-nine percent of the constructioncontracts for the plaza were awarded to local minority-owned enterprises. Food 4 Less, which opened nine years ago,was selected by the community as the anchor tenant for the development and was the first major grocery store in thearea in 30 years. The grocery store has been consistently profitable, even in economically difficult times. Having ananchor tenant attracted other businesses—additional stores in the plaza include restaurants, a bank, and a gift shopfeaturing crafts made by local residents. Many of the 200 jobs at the plaza and the grocery store are held by peoplefrom the surrounding neighborhoods.Market Creek Plaza has become a vibrant community gathering place and entertainment venue. With residents, JCNIrestored a creek adjacent to the plaza, created walking paths, and built a 500-seat outdoor amphitheater that hostsmulticultural arts and entertainment. The new Joe & Vi Jacobs Center—which has office space for organizationsworking on the revitalization of the Diamond Neighborhoods and a conference and performance center—alsocontains a 5,000-square-foot commercial kitchen which will eventually house a culinary academy focused on thehealthy preparation of foods that reflect—and celebrate—the many cultural traditions of the neighborhood.The next phase in the project is an 800-unit housing development that will include additional commercial tenants.Numerous residents invested money through Market Creek Partners, LLC, a resident-owned community developmentlimited-liability company that owns Market Creek Plaza. In 2007, investors saw their first distribution of profits, andmany are exploring how to reinvest their dollars into the ongoing community revitalization efforts.Residents will eventually own a new community foundation and a property development business as a result ofJCNI’s investments and ongoing efforts to promote “resident ownership of neighborhood change.”suburbs, taking with them jobs and tax revenuesin addition to their selection of healthy food. Cutoff from opportunity and investment, inner-cityneighborhoods declined precipitously, becomingincreasingly isolated and racially segregated and leftwith limited options for purchasing healthy food. 54In the suburbs, opportunity for purchasingfood multiplied. Suburbs contained abundant,inexpensive sites for development, as well as highrates of car ownership, making it possible forresidents to drive to stores located farther fromtheir homes. As a result, retailers adopted largerstore formats with large parking lots. Because themovement to the suburbs was largely restrictedto whites, and because the suburbs were fairlyhomogenous with respect to income, communitieshad relatively similar product preferences. Largechain retailers developed business modelsthat they applied across all the stores in theirchain based on their suburban stores. 55As suburbs grew, inner-city neighborhoodsbecame a forgotten piece of the retail equation.It has not helped that data and market analyses,done by private marketing firms to help informgrocery store decision makers, have systematicallyundervalued inner-city neighborhoods’ purchasingpower. 56 For the most part, these firms rely onnational data sources which tend to undercountinner-city residents, especially people of color. Inaddition, retailers often miscalculate by looking ataverage household income rather than at total areaincome, which would more accurately capture theHealthy Food, Healthy Communities19