By Kevin Krause, Brooklynn Cooper and Carrington Tatum
18:31 August 31, 2020 CDT
When the city of Dallas paid nearly $ 3 million to a local builder to expand and run a grocery store in a “food desert” where others had failed, many thought it was a bad idea.
Previous efforts to attract supermarkets to the Highland Hills network in South Dallas had failed, and staff briefings at the time indicated that the area’s population density, which about 1,200 people matched the square mile, “an impediment to attracting established supermarkets.”
Now, 4 years later, the city plans to spend more cash to rescue the owner by purchasing the Save U More grocery store.
The city says it is looking for a new style of food distribution in the low-income network.Employees say one option is to hire network nonprofits and food banks to supply a mix of food at home and on the street.Pick up.
Combating a lack of trust in food in underprivileged communities is a national challenge facing U.S. cities. Studies show that a lack of healthy food exacerbates inequalities between rich and poor. City officials said in 2017 that only about 20% of the Dallas County population faced lack of food confidence and not culmination and vegetables in their diet.
The Highland Hills community, which has a median source of income of around $37,800, is a desert food due to the lack of grocery stores.It is also found in one of five Dallas County zip codes where fitness disparities are the most severe, according to a 2019 Parkland Health exam.
Members of the Dallas City Council say they are determined to find a solution, but some wonder if shopping for a grocery store is the most productive approach.
“We believe we will make contributions without delight in supermarkets and we will be able to manage this,” Councilwoman Cara Mendelsohn said at a recent budget meeting.
Councilman Adam Bazaldua said he was looking for the main points on the proposed acquisition of the store on Simpson’s Stuart Road, near Paul Quinn College, which in the past belonged to the Save-A-Lot supermarket chain.
“I wish we didn’t put more cash into the same style of groceries that didn’t work out,” he said.
A spokesman for Mayor Eric Johnson said the mayor was surprised to hear about the acquisition proposal and needed more information.
Eric Anthony Johnson, Dallas’s director of economic development, said the city’s acquisition of Save U More is mandatory to show citizens that “we’re not leaving the community in terms of food.”
City purchase details for the store are not available to the public. City staff say they are still in negotiations with the owner, Joseph Kemp, about the value and other terms. The plan is to close the sale in mid-autumn.
Kemp, 70, declined to comment when he was contacted by phone.
Councilman Tennell Atkins, who several years ago helped the city make secure investments for his neighborhood store, called it “the most productive investment ever made south of the Trinity River.”
“I don’t need the net to not have groceries in this neighborhood,” he said Monday.”I have a grocery store in a food desert.”
Save U More, formerly Save-A-Lot, stands on the site of a former grocery store that had closed its doors.
The city said in 2014 that a grocery store would bring “fresh food and essentials to a domain that has been explained as a desert of food.”The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been in the area of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Hus Describe this as a low-income domain with no reliable transportation that has no groceries within a mile.
Before the store opened in 2016, some board members warned that spending money in public would be a mistake.
Board member Lee Kleinman in 2014, one of those who resisted the idea, he and others insisted that there is not enough population density to justify the spending.
Kemp became a franchisee for the Save-A-Lot supermarket chain when others were unwilling to come to Dallas.He told the Dallas Morning News in 2016 that he intensified his efforts because he was looking for something in the region.
City documents show that the total cost of the Save-A-Lot project, which earned $2.8 million in city cash and personal funds, $4 million.This included the acquisition of land. The 15,000-square-foot store is recently valued for tax purposes at $772,200.
A representative of Moran Foods, the St.-based company.Louis, who owns the Save-A-Lot supermarket chain, said the South Dallas store replaced the property in April 2019 and replaced its name, but did not know why.
And town officials did supply main points on the store’s monetary situation.
But a GoFundMe page created on July 7 for the store through a woman claiming to be Kemp’s granddaughter wrote that Save U More is now an “independent circle of the family grocery store” that has monetary difficulties.
He says the owner has his own cash to run the store because the proceeds from the sale of food are not enough. The GoFundMe page also shows that the grocery store is the only one within 8 miles.
“He [Kemp] diversified and invested in a grocery store in 2016,” goFundMe says.”As COVID-19 affects the world, it has also affected small businesses and the survival rate of businesses.Mr. Kemp made a leap of religion through a grocery store in the South Dallas domain where the PERSONA else did not need to settle down.
Kemp “is considering” promoting groceries “because of tension and monetary burden.”But your daughter and granddaughter are going to raise $600,000 to continue operating “with the prospect of growing up, especially at a time when our communities need black-owned grocery stores.”
As of Monday, about $3,400 had been raised.Annual store expenses are $650,000, $200,000 for police security, according to the GoFundMe page.
The city’s initial contract with Kemp that his grocery store would remain open for 10 years.
However, Kemp’s agreement with the city envisaged a “registration cancellation” after five years if his sales averaged $70,000 consistent with the week.
Johnson, Dallas’ leading economic progress officer, said the city had no contractual legal responsibility to buy the store, which suffered to sell enough product to cover its operating costs, adding greater security.
“They told us he was going to keep fighting to make the shop work,” Johnson said.
Regular shoppers like 25-year-old Jasmine Hightower said they prefer Save U More to other local retail outlets like Fiesta Market and Walmart because costs are cheaper.Hightower, a Dallas school bus driver, said she had never had trouble finding food there.
“I have children. So when you like snacks like Tostitos, Walmart is more expensive,” he says.
While Dallas was evaluating his characteristics for the store, Johnson said he and his staff were in favor of what other cities had done across the country and were talking to potential network partners.
“We’re not going to run like a grocery store,” Johnson told the council at a recent meeting.”We know it’s a desert of food. We know that this is a style of food that suffers and is not aligned with this community.”
Johnson proposes the acquisition of Save U More as a “temporary” measure.
However, questions remain about the city’s initial plan to subsidize a failed grocery model.
Kemp, who runs a Duncanville-based corporate structure called Kemp Repair and Remodeling, or KRR Construction, had no prior pleasure in operating a grocery store.He paid to demolish an existing structure on the site, build a new grocery store and then manage the old franchise.
He describes KRR as a “general contractor, developer and structure manager with a focus on advertising structure and multifamily projects.”
Sara M. Gilbert, a food policy expert, wrote in a 2016 column for The News that city-funded incentives are effective in bringing healthy food features to underprivileged communities.
She advised municipalities to choose models such as a cell grocery store, neighborhood farmers markets or a healthy convenience store that sells products, total grains and dairy products instead of alcohol, soft drinks and sweets.
The new style can come with a kitchen where workers prepare healthy food in a position at prices that can compete with fast food restaurants, he said.
“It’s time for us to allocate the budget of economic progression to new concepts and marketing specialists who are willing to turn them into paintings rather than pursuing corporations that continually say ‘no,'” Gilbert wrote.
Highland Hills resident Linda Roque said she knew what she would do without the store, where she buys meat, bread and milk.
“If they close the store,” he says, “that’s what we have here.”
Kevin Krause. Kevin has been with The Dallas Morning News since 2003 and has covered federal criminal courts for more than six years. Kevin has been a journalist for 26 years. Kevin received the Stephen Philbin Award for Excellence in Legal Reporting. Kevin received a BA from Boston University.
Brooklynn Cooper.Brooklynn Cooper covers South Dallas as a member of the Report for America corps.The local and faithful fan of Durham, N.C.tar Heel graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2019.
Carrington tatum
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