North Charleston wants your feedback on how to improve healthy food access | News

NORTH CHARLESTON — Government officials are working together to improve food access in the southern end of the city.

The Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments and the city are cooperatively exploring options that would make it easier to access healthy foods in neighborhoods.

Many communities on the city’s southern end and in the Neck Area are in “food deserts,” where they lack a nearby grocery store.

Officials are asking for public feedback on mobility-focused efforts to provide people with food. The survey can be found at surveymonkey.com/r/NeckAreaFoodSurvey.

Residents who complete the two-minute survey by the April 11 deadline will be entered to win one of five Walmart gift cards.

“The idea with this was to find a mobility-related solution to improving access to healthy foods in those communities,” said John Lambert, mobility coordinator with COG.

The Council of Governments obtained a grant from the National Center for Mobility Management to fund the three-phase project.

COG plans to soon decide on a concept, which will be based on public feedback. The selected concept will be piloted this year and last until the fall.

If the pilot program is successful, the project will be implemented for a year.

COG has been given $60,000 to research and pilot the program. The group would get $75,000 to initiate the effort.

North Charleston said it is interested in seeing the public’s ideas regarding improved food access.

“I think it’s a positive thing that BCDCOG is taking additional research steps to create innovative solutions,” said city spokesman Ryan Johnson.

There are three ideas being considered, all of which are mobility-focused.

The first is increasing storage space on public buses for people to carry groceries. This could be a refrigerated unit that holds groceries, Lambert said.

The second idea is to help connect people to a ride service, such as Uber, that would take them to a grocery store. People would pay discounted rates to take groceries home. 

The third option would involve refrigerated food lockers. People would order groceries online and have the foods delivered to secured neighborhood locations.

Based on community input so far, increasing storage space on buses seems like a viable option. The lack of internet access for many people on the south end could be a barrier to internet-based solutions, Lambert said.

The Council of Governments conducted in-person surveys with people at corner stores and the CARTA Superstop off Rivers Avenue. Most of those folks favored increased space on the buses for groceries.

“A lot of people did talk about not having internet access,” Lambert said.

Online feedback has also been steady, Lambert said. So far, 265 have filled out the digital survey.

“I think it’s really good,” Lambert said. “Public outreach isn’t always easy to do.”

North Charleston has long tried to attract a grocery store to the corner of Rivers and McMillan Avenues, but to no avail.

Attracting one has been difficult because grocery stores look at metrics, such as homeownership, traffic and population, to determine whether a potential store would be profitable, Johnson said.

“There are these boxes you have to check,” Johnson said. “If you don’t check these boxes, you don’t get a grocery store.”

North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey has previously talked about building a city-run store as a last resort.

That option is still on the table, Johnson said.

Reach Rickey Dennis at 937-4886. Follow him on Twitter @RCDJunior.