Occasionally you stumble upon a previously published article from a year or two ago that time has only made more impactful.
This is one of them. In an effort to combat the problem of being a food desert, the citizenry in the zip code of 64109 (45 percent black and 38 percent White) have had the government in Kansas City create a tax-payer funded – supported – grocery store to serve them. KC Sun Fresh has been a disaster. Though the grocery store has received more than 10 million dollars since 2018, it lost more than $900,000 in the past year.
Many call it a disaster of centralized-planning, a reminder of the limitations of socialism or a communist ideology. In reality, it’s just another glimpse into the ruinous egalitarian mindset pervasive across the nation. Cue up the story from 2024 about KC Sun Fresh, opened for catering exclusively to the black community in zip code 64109 and quickly spending most of their revenue for hiring security guards to keep black patrons safe.
Why? Well… “it’s common for unhoused residents to sleep outside the SunFresh, and reports of fighting, drug use and public sex lead to frequent 911 calls from the plaza.” [SunFresh Linwood was supposed to revive business in east KC. The store is now in crisis, KansasCity.com, September 4, 2024]:
Teenage grocery store shelf stockers have taken to carrying tasers in their pockets in case they have to defend themselves from customers at the SunFresh Linwood at 31st Street and Prospect Avenue in East Kansas City.
The SunFresh, which anchors the Linwood Shopping Plaza along Prospect, has changed hands several times in the past few years as city leaders and organizations tried to keep East Kansas City from becoming an urban food desert. Most recently, CBKC, a Black-owned development agency, took over operations of the entire plaza in 2022.
But today, it’s common for unhoused residents to sleep outside the SunFresh, and reports of fighting, drug use and public sex lead to frequent 911 calls from the plaza, according to residents and CBKC.
Two managers have quit in the last year, citing hazardous working conditions. The store is now managed by assistant manager Adriana Rentie, who said at an August meeting with Mayor Quinton Lucas and Kansas City Police Department chief Stacey Graves that her short tenure has been far from easy.
Sales are so low that the store cannot afford to repair its broken front door, developer and CBKC CEO Emmett Pierson said in August. About 85% of the store’s total revenue goes to security.
Meanwhile, Rentie and other SunFresh staff have begun calling 911 frequently, often reporting limited success. On one recent occasion, Rentie said, a Kansas City police officer declined to intervene with a SunFresh customer accused of theft because the officer was busy responding to another customer wielding a machete.
Another time, Rentie said an officer refused to arrest a man threatening to kill Rentie and other customers, instructing Rentie to instead “talk it out.”
Five years ago, city officials put more than $20 million into businesses along the Prospect Avenue commercial corridor, including $17 million into SunFresh, hoping to get ahead of blight and make the area a more attractive gathering place for residents — and their dollars.
Now, CBKC wants Kansas City officials to know that evidence of the city’s investment has all but vanished along Prospect Avenue — and Pierson is considering shutting down the store if conditions continue.
“[Adriana] is young and fearless, but I don’t want her putting her life at risk to sell groceries,” Pierson said. “That’s what’s happening.”
PROBLEMS AT SUNFRESH
The Sunday meeting with the mayor was one of several similar events in the last week as community leaders work to draw attention to deteriorating conditions at the grocery store.
Urban Summit of KCMO, a nonprofit dedicated to advocacy in east Kansas City, hosted a meeting to discuss the problem Friday at Morningstar Family Life at 27th and Prospect, while third district councilmembers Melissa Patterson Hazley and Melissa Robinson scheduled a news conference at the SunFresh on Tuesday.
At the first meeting on Aug. 24, about twenty residents walked with Lucas and Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves from 30th and Prospect to the Linwood Square shopping center. Lucas spent most of the walk conferring with Rentie, who pointed out areas along the street where loitering has escalated into incidents of crime in recent months.
“I can’t bring my kids here,” one neighbor told Mayor Lucas. “It’s unthinkable.”
Before the recent five-year, multi-million dollar revitalization plan funded by the city, the plaza had been vacant for several years. At the time, local developers and supporters of the plan said it was necessary and would bring food security to the neighborhood for good.
“It’s a big deal,” Pierson told The Star in 2022. “First of all, it’s a grocery store in an urban community. It’s in a food desert. But it’s a bigger deal because it’s owned by a minority led organization. There’s not that many African-American grocers in the country.”But grocery is an industry with tight profit margins, Pierson said. With fewer safety concerns consuming profits, other SunFresh locations have more to spend on security and cleanliness.
Pierson noted that a nearby store just off of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard generally has a clean parking lot with fresh plants outside, visual improvements which he says SunFresh Linwood cannot afford to make.
Along with theft and vandalism, store owners and workers near Linwood Square said they frequently witness people soliciting prostitution.
“This is an emergency,” Patterson Hazley said on that Sunday. “I ain’t never seen this many people outside before… Just outside, I slowed down and counted 20-some-odd folks, most of them being some women that look like it’s unsafe for them to be in that atmosphere.”
Drug use has also been a concern in store parking lots, which Rentie and Pierson say is underpoliced when it occurs outside of SunFresh.
“People use drugs and then they go straight to the grocery store and steal,” Pierson said.BUILDING A BUSINESS DISTRICT
Third District councilwoman Melissa Patterson Hazley said that she and fellow councilwoman Melissa Robinson have been attempting to alert city leaders about growing safety concerns in the district for months. She also said she has noticed an increase in residents sleeping and panhandling along Prospect.
“I’m begging my colleagues to take this seriously,” Patterson Hazley said. “…This is a place we want to be safe. I love Popeyes, but I can’t go through that drive-thru anymore because of the mayhem that is going on in this neighborhood, and it’s true that anyplace else in the city, this would not be tolerated.”
SunFresh Linwood stood vacant in the Linwood Shopping Center on Prospect Avenue from 2007 until 2014, when the city purchased it from developer Don Maxwell. Despite hopes of a two-year turnaround, the store instead reopened after four years, in 2018, to high hopes from neighbors.
The project represented a fresh start for businesses in predominantly Black and historically marginalized neighborhoods east of Troost Avenue, Maxwell told The Star in 2019.
Nestled between 31st Street and Linwood Boulevard, the Linwood Shopping Center also includes a tax preparation office, a beauty supply store, a T-Mobile cell phone store and a Pizza Hut, as well as at least one empty retail space. Across the street, a Popeye’s, a Wingstop, an Arvest Bank, a health center and several other clothing stores and cell phone retailers fill out Linwood Square, a strip also owned by CBKC.
CBKC took over operations at SunFresh between 2020 and 2022, though the nonprofit did not officially own the building until 2022. Pierson said the move was meant to keep the store open in the absence of interest from larger developers. Maxwell officially sold the shopping center and SunFresh to the city in 2022, where it currently operates as a for-profit subsidiary managed by CBKC.After several infusions of cash from the city in 2019, CBKC believed SunFresh was close to stabilizing, expecting developers to break even that year.
Now, Pierson said he’s had to chip in his own money to keep the store running. According to a third-party audit, SunFresh at Linwood lost $1.3 million in its second year under new ownership.
“If we send the message that no one cares, that message gets around the community,” Pierson said of the Linwood business corridor, bordering the Santa Fe and Oak Park Northwest neighborhood’s in Kansas City’s third district.
Though the city has continued to invest financially in the area in some capacity, high rates of blight and crime near Prospect and Linwood essentially cancel out the last five years of work and funding, Mayor Lucas said.
“We have spent money on the east side over the years, but if we’re just going to spend a bunch of money and then not have the follow-up, it’s not worth anything,” Lucas said.
‘MY STAFF IS IN JEOPARDY’
Pierson laid out a stark message for community leaders at an Urban Summit meeting Friday: “If this continues we will shut down the store,” he said, after the images of problems in the parking lot and inside the store flashed up on a screen.
“My staff is in jeopardy every single day,” he said. “I’ve been saying this now for a year. For a year.”
At the same meeting, KCPD Chief Graves said the department would have a two-person patrol in the area of 31st Street and Prospect Avenue 24 hours a day until further notice.
“We’re going to get this under control,” she said. “I do not want the grocery store at 31st and Prospect to leave.”
Graves said officers are frustrated when they arrest people and then they “are staring us right in the face 12 hours later.”
“We’re dealing with the same people over and over again,” she said.
At Sunday’s event, Lucas said he believes that the absence of a jail in Kansas City has been contributing to crime trends near SunFresh, as well as citywide. Officials are planning to reopen a temporary detention center on the eighth floor of city hall, he said.
Still, SunFresh staff are not confident that Kansas City police officers and Jackson County prosecutors always follow through with arresting and charging people after 911 calls, especially for non-violent offenses.
At Sunday’s event, neighbors said they don’t have the same concern when shopping at other grocery stores in Kansas City.
“I guarantee you I could not go to the Brookside Stop & Shop and make a threat…and [only] get a ticket,” one resident said.
One contributing factor that city officials have seen, Lucas said, is a rise in juvenile crime across Kansas City. The mayor noted that increasing police presence may no longer be an effective long-term solution.
“We see an interesting set of assailants,” Lucas said. “Younger, and a bunch of people who don’t care if there are 15 cops standing at the grocery store, they’re still going to roll up with their guns and do whatever they’re trying to do.”
Lucas acknowledged that some residents feel Jackson County prosecutors are not effective enough at following through, particularly on charges for property crimes. But he said that’s out of his hands.
“That’s not my spot,” Lucas said on that Sunday as he toured the area.
About 80% of cases delegated to the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office are fully prosecuted, including property crime charges, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said earlier this month. However, Peters Baker said, one police report is often not enough to build a successful case against someone accused of causing damage to public or private property.
To Patterson Hazley, more community policing could be one solution.
“If [officers are] living out in Harrisonville and you get to drive up to work, it’s a paycheck for you, it’s not an investment,” Patterson Hazley said. “It’s not to protect and serve, it’s to protect and get paid.”“It’s an unfortunate misconception to believe that the Black community does not want the protection of policing,” Patterson Hazley added. “…We want to get that protection, and we want to get that service, and, by the way, we’re paying lots of money for that to happen.”
Meanwhile, conditions at the SunFresh keep getting worse, cutting into store profit. The supermarket had to close its profitable liquor department recently after receiving a citation for a patron drinking outside.Without a long-term solution, attracting additional commercial tenants to the area could be difficult, Pierson said. At the same time, he noted, residents of nearby Hyde Park and Beacon Hill generally don’t spend their dollars at the SunFresh despite its close proximity.
“We can’t be community builders and not be for the community,” Pierson said. “But we need help.”‘A PLACE WE WANT TO BE SAFE’
Just across the street from SunFresh sits the Lucile H. Bluford branch of the Kansas City Public Library, which has turned into a de facto overnight shelter for unhoused residents, Lucas said. He said this incentivizes people to return to the area, and the Linwood Shopping Center, even if they have been previously arrested or asked to leave the parking lot.
“When you have people fornicating on a bus stop, or you have some of the substance abuse issues, that’s a person where even if arrested and cited, they’re going to come back,” Lucas said. “We need to do more with that… there are people that need help for real that are showing up.”
Similarly, some residents feel criminal activity near the SunFresh is harder to control when store management can’t discourage repeat offenders from staying at the bus stop at 30th and Prospect. Rentie also said she has seen multiple people “jump on a bus” to evade police.
KCPD Chief Stacey Graves said that Kansas City police officers continue to track suspects who utilize public transit after officers are called.
“Just because someone gets on the bus doesn’t mean they got away,” Graves said.
A lot to unpack here from a grocery bag fueled with egalitarian dreams, yet producing the same tried and true results we find all across America. You’d think once one of these experiments would work, but you just keep getting the same results: “Meanwhile, Rentie and other SunFresh staff have begun calling 911 frequently, often reporting limited success. On one recent occasion, Rentie said, a Kansas City police officer declined to intervene with a SunFresh customer accused of theft because the officer was busy responding to another customer wielding a machete.”
Meanwhile, at the grocery store by me, I routinely have to remind the friendly staff to make sure they ring up all of the items because we are engaged in witty banter about the day, the weather, or about the latest workout I’ve tried to perform (needing protein to fuel the gains). No machete wielding customers or broken front doors near me, nor any items with security devices on them or moderately priced goods behind plexiglass requiring an employee to retrieve for you.
Grocery stores already operate on razor thin margins (and if I see anyone dare to leave their shopping cart near their vehicle and not safely rolled to a cart return station, I’m quick to do it for them), but there’s no way to salvage a food desert save to simply admit why exist and will always persist when the same demographics are found in a zip code.
And, for the discerning shopper, avoiding these areas until Freedom of Association returns to the United States of America.
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