Indy Fresh Market planned for northeast Indianapolis food desert
A new locally owned grocery store on the northeast side of Indianapolis will offer relief to one of the city’s many food deserts.
Indy Fresh Market — a 14,000-square foot facility planned off of 38th Street and Sheridan Avenue — is welcome news for the northeast area. The store is part of a community investment launched alongside a new Cook Medical manufacturing facility that seeks to provide opportunities to the underserved community.
The intersection lies within a low-income census tract where about 6,000 residents live more than one mile away from the nearest traditional grocery store, according to analysis from the SAVI program at the Indiana University-Purdue University of Indianapolis. .
Cook Medical, which last year announced plans to build a 40,000-square-foot medical device manufacturing facility at the intersection, has also partnered with a coalition of community partners to develop the area under the initiative known as 38th and Sheridan.
Cook Medical will build the store, while Impact Central Indiana, a limited liability company created by the Central Indiana Community Foundation, will provide the startup capital.
The end goal: to create a local market owned by Michael McFarland andMarckus Williams. The two friends grew up together andoperate the nearby Wall Street Grocery, which is about the size of a convenience store. . Once the new store opens, they will close Wall Street Grocery.
“We have a personal vested interest in a grocery store,” McFarland said at the announcement at the Avondale Meadows YMCA on Thursday. “Other companies, you know, they’re (about the) bottom dollar, so they don’t have any personal attachments. I think that our personal attachment, our personal determination, our love for the neighborhood will help us keep it open and help provide our community with healthy food.”
Food deserts have particularly impacted Black neighborhoods in Indianapolis, communities that have long felt neglected by both the cities and the big-box stores that have slowly packed up and left over the years.
But Indy Fresh Market will be locally owned. McFarland and Williams will operate under a lease-to-own agreement, which McFarland estimates at $2 million. He hopes to decrease that amount through donations, while repaying the remainder through low-interest loans as the store begins to sell its stock.
The area’s grocery stores have depleted since the Kroger off East 46th Street, just 1.5 miles away, closed in 2018 and the Walmart Neighborhood Market just two miles down the street closed in 2019.
The store is expected to create between 15 to 20 new jobs with wages between $10 and $13 per hour. Employees will also have access to support services offered through Goodwill of Central and Southern Indiana, such as housing support, legal aid and mental health care, said Ashley Gurvitz, CEO of the United Northeast Community Development Corp.
The state’s newest budget features $600,000 in funding for the project, which Gov. Eric Holcomb called a massive undertaking.
“It’s not cutting corners, it’s not shortchanging, it is meeting needs right on the ground floor, right on the street,” Holcomb said. “And for that I’m eternally grateful for Cook always kind of blazing the trail, getting out in front of, dealing with reality.”
Construction will begin in July, with a soft opening in May of 2022.
Community partners hope the effort will grow to solve food insecurity issues elsewhere throughout the city, becoming a model for one solution to food deserts.
“In the next five years,” Williams said to the crowd on Thursday, “I want Indy Fresh Market to be a household name.”
Call IndyStar reporter Amelia Pak-Harvey at 317-444-6175 or email her at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @AmeliaPakHarvey.
