Whole Foods Co-op, new market house aim to improve food access in Erie
For Tecumseh Brown-Eagle, shopping for groceries is often a time-consuming and multilayered journey.
“I have to catch a bus to the grocery store, probably two times a month at least. Depending on the amount of groceries I buy, because I don’t have a vehicle, I either have to catch a bus back or take a cab home,” Brown-Eagle said.
The 64-year-old retiree lives in a downtown apartment in the 700 block of State Street. He said that he typically spends $100 to $150 grocery shopping, at least twice a month. Each of those trips includes another $10 to $20 in bus and/or cab fares, he said.
“It’s definitely challenging in terms of transportation,” Brown-Eagle said. “I would love to have food access closer to where I live.”
Two downtown food access projects in the works
Brown-Eagle’s grocery-shopping challenges are a major reason why he has a strong interest in two high-profile, multimillion-dollar developments that aim to improve food access in downtown Erie.
The board of directors at Erie’s Whole Foods Co-op, 1341 W. 26th St., on Wednesday night signed off on moving forward with the Erie Downtown Development Corp. to become the primary tenant in the 8,000-square-foot Flagship City Public Market along North Park Row, which could open as soon as this fall.
The board voted 6-1 to authorize LeAnna Nieratko, Whole Foods’ general manager, to execute a lease agreement with the EDDC and to start a campaign to raise the required capital,” said Shari Gross, the co-op’s board president.
“We’re excited about it,” Gross said. “This is a good project.”
Earlier reporting:Erie’s Whole Foods Cooperative eyes possible expansion to EDDC’s downtown property
Plans call for the grocery store to open a second location in that space, which would be paired with a local butcher and a distillery. It is a key element of the EDDC’s planned $30 million downtown culinary arts district that also includes more than 80 new apartments.
The development will pay property taxes.
“We want to have both an economic and a social impact with our projects,” said John Persinger, the EDDC’s chief executive, who added that a full-service grocery is necessary to bring new residents to downtown. “We think that Whole Foods is a good partner for what we’re trying to do downtown.”
Persinger said Whole Foods’ rent would be based on a percentage of the market’s gross sales. The exact percentage would be included in a final lease agreement.
Nieratko told the Erie Times-News that Whole Foods likely needs “about $270,000 to $300,000 in start-up capital” to make the plan work, and that the co-op might borrow that money.
A few blocks north, at the 12.5-acre former GAF Materials Corp. property on the city’s west bayfront, Erie Events is pursuing a 22,000-square-foot indoor market that would operate year-round, featuring a full-service grocery store as well as local vendors that sell chocolates, wine, meats, produce, crafts and other goods.
The market house would cost between $7.5 million and $10 million, according to estimates.
The facility is part of a larger Erie Events development plan, first made public in early 2016, for a mixed-use, property-tax-generating waterfront development with significant public access that includes restaurants, office space, housing, bicycle trails and green space, among other amenities.
Kevin Flowers:Erie Events pushes forward with bayfront market house plan
“We are excited about this prospect,” said Casey Wells, Erie Events’ executive director. “We think this facility will serve downtown well and can even be a regional draw.”
Both the EDDC development and Erie Events’ market house have the potential to help alleviate the lack of access to grocery stores in general — and fresh fruit and produce in particular — for many downtown Erie residents.
10 ‘food deserts’ located in Erie
According to the Erie County Department of Health, the downtown area is one of 12 food deserts countywide; 10 are located within city limits.
Nearly 28,000 people live in downtown Erie, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines a food desert as an area where at least 33% of residents live one mile or more from the nearest grocery store or supermarket.
Department of Agriculture data shows that 2.3 million people in the U.S. live more than a mile away from a supermarket and don’t have reliable access to a vehicle. Food deserts are also common in low-income and minority neighborhoods.
More: Local leaders help communities where healthy food is hard to find amid coronavirus
To put the issue into even more context, the census tracts that include the Erie Downtown Partnership’s 70-block downtown Erie service area — between the bayfront and 14th Street, from Sassafras to Holland streets — have poverty rates between 30% and 64%, according to census data.
“It’s absolutely critical to get a grocery store down here,” said John Buchna, the downtown partnership’s executive director. “Access to fresh, healthy foods has been a major issue in the downtown for many years.”
More:Search for food deserts anywhere in the U.S.
More:Erie County Department of Health food access information
Erie Mayor Joe Schember added: “We shouldn’t have food deserts anywhere in the city. These two projects can be really significant.”
David Burley is an associate professor of environmental sociology at Southeastern Louisiana University who has done extensive research on food access in various communities.
Burley said that both of the downtown Erie projects reach for a unique solution to the issue of food inequity, by incorporating grocers and other needed services as part of developments that will generate tax dollars and create jobs and opportunities for entrepreneurs, while also bringing much-needed amenities downtown.
“Both of these sound like projects that could be viable,” Burley said of the EDDC and Erie Events developments. “The ideas are good. A lot of downtown areas are looking to do things like this, as well as improving walkability, bikeability, and giving people things like pocket parks, greenways, food halls and market places.
“The thing to remember is that due diligence is important,” Burley said. “They need to do things like get the community’s input, first of all because it’s the right thing to do to make up for disinvestment and (discriminatory) policies that have been put in place over time, and to get the community to feel like it has a seat at the table. That way you’re going to get more buy-in.”
Whole Foods: ‘We will do this earnestly’
Whole Foods’ leadership is doing that kind of outreach.
Through public, online listening sessions and other outreach, Whole Foods’ leadership has launched extensive, detailed conversations with local residents about what a second, downtown store would look like.
Like other food cooperatives nationwide, Whole Foods Co-op is owned by employees and consumers, not a private or public company, and decisions are made by members.
Members pay a one-time, $100 fee to join the co-op, but people do not have to be members to shop there.
Nieratko, Whole Foods’ general manager, said that conversations with local residents about a possible second location largely focus on affordability/pricing, what foods/services would be offered, and financing.
Nieratko has also spoken with both Faith Kindig, co-owner of the Oasis Market, which sold healthy, locally-produced foods in the 900 block of State Street from February 2019 until October, when the COVID-19 pandemic led to the market’s closure; and Carrie Sache, the owner/operator of French Street farms, an urban farming business that grows broccoli, tomatoes, peppers and other produce at a former vacant lot on the city’s east side.
Sache’s produce is sold to farmer’s markets and at other locations.
More:Oasis Market in downtown Erie set to close when inventory is sold
More:Urban farming proponents see ‘unlimited potential’ in Erie
“Since we are community-owned, community input is so important,” Nieratko said. “If we do this, how do we do it in a way that meets the community’s needs?
Nieratko said the new market, like Whole Foods’ West 26th Street location, would accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly known as food stamps.
“We’re not going to go down there and be gentrifying,” Nieratko said. “We’re not going down there to sell the fanciest produce at really high prices. We would do this earnestly.”
The project makes sense for the EDDC, Nieratko said, “because a grocery store is going to make their real estate property more lucrative. And we’re in a position where we want to help meet the needs of the community.”
Further, as a member-owned grocery store, “we don’t have to make money” the way a chain grocery store does, Nieratko said.
“For them, market studies come back and say ‘you’re not going to make any money and the debt you’d have to take on is astronomical,'” Nieratko said. “It’s a little different for us.”
Nieratko said the start-up funds the Co-Op needs to join the EDDC project are “way lower than the amount of money we would need to start from scratch and open a new location.”
Gross, the Co-Op board president, added: “This project has made us look at improving affordability and accessibility at both of our locations.
“There are many things compelling about this project,” Gross said. “One of our primary missions is contributing to the well-being of the Erie community, and we realize there is a food desert in that area,” Gross said.
“But there is also some financial risk. You have to go and borrow money. You will be on the hook for repayment, and if for some reason the store drains resources or doesn’t generate the revenue necessary, it could impact the 26th Street store.”
The Co-Op’s board voted 6-1 on Wednesday to move forward with the EDDC.
The lone “no” vote came from board member Freda Tepfer, who said “the EDDC is not in alignment with my personal beliefs” and that she has concerns about gentrification, or the process of displacing residents via urban renewal.
Tepfer said she doesn’t want to see the EDDC “gentrifying downtown and making it harder for lower-income people to live there.”
Persinger, however, said the EDDC wants to create a “vibrant, diverse and welcoming downtown” and sees Whole Foods as an ideal partner.
Bayfront market plans
On the west bayfront, Erie Events market house plan is on a less aggressive timetable, hoping to open as soon as summer 2022.
But the project is one of the top development priorities for Erie Events, which operates the Bayfront Convention Center, Warner Theatre, Erie Insurance Arena and UPMC Park.
The organization also oversees two waterfront hotels connected to the convention center: the Sheraton Erie Bayfront Hotel on West Dobbins Landing and the Courtyard Erie Bayfront Hotel, located on the Sassafras Street Pier.
“Clearly part of our intention is to help mitigate the challenges of the area being a food desert,” Erie Events’ Wells said.
The Erie County Convention Center Authority’s board of directors, which oversees Erie Events, in December unanimously signed off on hiring Pieper O’Brien Herr Architects, which has offices in Pittsburgh and Alpharetta, Georgia, to handle preliminary design work for the market house project.
Erie Events is “taking with two prospective tenants” for the market house, but Wells would not name them.
The market house plan has already received a $1.5 million state grant, awarded in 2019. Erie Events is seeking an additional $3.5 million from Gov. Tom Wolf for the project.
More:Erie Events seeks $3.5 million for waterfront market
Erie Events is exploring various options for financing the project, including using revenue from a long-term lease arrangement with an anchor tenant to help secure bank financing.
The organization would also use at least $700,000 of its own money to help finance the market house, Chuck Iverson, Erie Events’ director of finance and administration, has said.
Wells said the market house would utilize indoor and outdoor space for vendors and could become a popular “landing spot” for pedestrians who use the proposed walkways over the Bayfront Parkway that are part of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s planned improvements to that area.
Wells also said the project complements the EDDC’s food hall development.
“Each of these will have their own specialties, and I think people will support both of them,” Wells said. “There is plenty of room for both of us.”
Persinger agreed.
“Any investment they make on the bayfront, including a market, helps all of the investments downtown,” Persinger said.
Janet Hardimon, a retiree who lives downtown at the Boston Store Place apartments in the 700 block of State Street, agrees.
“A market down here would be better than going all the way to other stores that are quite a distance away,” Hardimon said. “It definitely would be more convenient.”
Contact Kevin Flowers at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @ETNflowers.
