Indiana approves $600K for grocery store project in Indianapolis to address ‘food deserts’

(The Center Square) – The Republican-dominated state legislature passed a budget last week that seemed to please nearly everybody, with many Democrats taking to the House floor to thank Republicans for agreeing to spend state money on a varieties of programs, including $50 million to “address racial disparities in health” and also money for a project aimed at bringing grocery stores to urban neighborhoods that don’t have one.

The pilot project will give $600,000 to someone opening a grocery store in a low-income area “where access to resources for food is limited in a consolidated city.” The money is to be used specifically for providing training and acquiring equipment for a store being opened by people who already have private funding to build or rent a building.

The project is funded through the office of Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch.

“I’m happy to say this is my first time ever voting for a state budget since I’ve been elected,” said Rep. Robin Shackleford, D-Indianapolis, listing as reasons for her support the budget’s funding for black communities, including the money to address food deserts in Indianapolis.

The issue of food deserts – areas in cities where there is nowhere for people to buy groceries in an area they can easily walk to or access by bus or other public transportation – has been simmering in the background for several years.

Roughly 185,000 people in Indianapolis live in a food desert – an area where at least 200 people or one-third of residents are more than a mile from a grocery store, according to the SAVI program at IUPUI in Indianapolis.

Brandon Cosby, the head of an organization called Flanner House, which runs food programs in Indianapolis and two years ago started a small grocery store called Cleo’s Bodega a few minutes northwest of the center of Indianapolis, says he’s not sure if state funding is the way to get healthy food to the inner city.

“The conversation that’s not happening that should be happening is why the traditional model of a grocery store – a big-box grocery store – is not a sustainable model in low-income neighborhoods and communities,” he said this week.

Cosby says big grocery-store chains have told him their business model is people buying things other than basic items (eggs, bread, milk, meat, potatoes) that have high profit-margins.

In poor communities, he says, stores like Marsh and Kroger can’t make enough money because poor families don’t have money for lots of extras – only the basics, which the big stories actually sell at a loss.

“If 90% of your customer base is coming in and shopping that way, the model itself cannot work,” says Cosby. “You keep hearing these conversations about, we gotta get a grocery store in this neighborhood, we have to get a grocery store in this neighborhood, when in reality, if you look at true urban markets around the country – Chicago, New York, high-density areas – people don’t go to big-box grocery stores. Bodegas are the lifeblood.”

But bodegas – small, corner stores – aren’t cheap to start.

Cosby says Flanner House owned the building where they decided to open Cleo’s, and it still cost them about $900,000 to get the store set up, stocked and opened.

But he says the biggest barrier isn’t money, it’s getting good produce at good prices, to sell to customers. Small, independently owned stores can’t get the same fruit, vegetables, milk, eggs and meat that the big chains get at the same low prices.

“So you have policymakers that are writing policy trying to create these things without actually talking to the store operators and store owners about what would really address the issue,” said Cosby.

Gov. Eric Holcomb signed the budget bill Thursday.

About 50% of the total state budget for the next two years will go to fund K-12 schools, with another 11% going to higher education (IU, Purdue, Ball State, Ivy Tech, Vincennes University, Indiana State University and the University of Southern Indiana and) and 15% going to Medicaid/HIP 2.0.

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