It’s a question that’s been nagging at public officials for decades: how do you address the problem of so-called “food deserts” in urban areas? Some members of the Hartford City Council once again think they’ve found the answer: get the city into the retail food business.
Two members of the Working Families Party, a left-leaning political organization that strives for an “egalitarian society,” introduced a resolution earlier this month calling on the city to hire an outside firm to explore the costs of operating a grocery store. The study would look at models for a for-profit store, a break-even store, or one that would operate at a loss. The impetus behind the proposal is that residents of food deserts are typically forced to shop at convenience stores or neighborhood bodegas, where healthful alternatives are expensive and hard to come by.
Currently, there is only one full-service grocery chain in the city of 125,000 people, a Stop & Shop near the West Hartford line. In 1968, there were 13 chain-owned supermarkets in the city. Of those quoted in the Hartford Courant story on the initiative, all agreed that there is a need for a store, especially in Hartford’s impoverished North End. None, however, spoke of the underlying causes of the food desert.
According to the Courant, during the course of the last two decades, exactly one new grocery store has opened in the city, the upscale Market at Hartford 21 on Asylum Street. It closed for good in 2011 after struggling to find consistent customers over its first few months in business. Other communities in the region that are tiny in comparison have far more options. In this neck of the woods, hardly-wealthy Torrington, a faded milltown of about 35,000 people, has two Stop & Shops, a Market 32, a Big Y, a ShopRite, and an Aldi – all within a three-mile radius of downtown. How could this be?
What are the barriers to success for these businesses? People in a city of Hartford’s size obviously need to feed themselves. The market potential is there but Hartford is one of the nation’s poorest cities and its violent crime rate surged in the wake of the pandemic, culminating in 2022 when the city experienced its highest murder rate in nearly two decades.
Supermarket chains simply will not open in places where crime adds greatly to the price of doing business and the clientele is not inclined to purchase expensive items that will help the store’s bottom line. When I was visiting Charleston, South Carolina, over the summer, the Food Lion half a mile from our rental had an armed guard roaming the store. But Charleston, whose population is not much larger than Hartford’s, has a bustling tourism industry and several colleges and universities whose students and employees shop for food often. Hartford has no such customer base to offer.
The much larger Chicago has the same problem. Mayor Brandon Johnson and the city’s Food Equity Council are exploring what he calls a “public option” to restore “food justice” and “help repair past harms” that have resulted in “deliberate disinvestment and exclusion.”
Chicago’s crime problem is even worse than Hartford’s. Over the last decade or so, the Windy City has become best known for its violent weekend crime sprees such as the one that occurred in June, when 75 people were shot, 13 fatally.
Like Hartford, Chicago has tried to offer incentives to grocery stores to open within its borders. In 2016, a Whole Foods opened in the city, boosted by a $11 million tax incentive from the office of then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel. By 2022 it was closed, reportedly because of concerns about poor performance and low traffic.
In 2006, the Chicago City Council passed a law that dictated the wages and benefits of stores such as Walmart that wish to locate in the Windy City. It was wisely vetoed by then-Mayor Richard Daley, a Democrat who cautioned that it would encourage large retailers to avoid his city. Walmart has since closed four Chicago stores in recent years, as annual losses had doubled since 2017.
Chicago’s arrest rate for retail theft now stands at 16.4%, down from 42.5% in 2019, according to Wirepoints, an Illinois research portal. The Chicago Police Department has released data showing an epidemic of smash-and-grab retail burglaries on the South Side, where the now-closed Whole Foods was located.
Yes, Mayor Johnson. I suspect the disinvestment was indeed “deliberate.” If you want private-sector investment in your community, you need to reduce the risk for investors. If you’re unable or unwilling to do that, then I guess government-owned grocery stores are the best option you have.
As fellow columnist Chris Powell observed, it would be a shame to see this Hartford supermarket become just another government vehicle for the patronage and graft that is so common in state and municipal governments.
I also wonder how competitive such a store would be, even against private-sector out-of-town grocery stores. After all, if the workers at this government store are unionized employees of the city of Hartford, they will likely be eligible for top-shelf health insurance policies and defined-benefit pensions – luxuries most employees at stores like Price Chopper and Sam’s Club could only dream about.
Unless the city is willing to operate the store at a loss, it will be hard to meet the prices of those private-sector establishments. If this government store becomes a reality, the city of Hartford should consider hiring a private company to run it.
“While people may say just open a grocery store, there’s a lot of factors that go into it,” Councilman John Gale told The Courant. “It’s not rocket science, but it’s not as easy as just opening up the doors and putting lettuce on the shelf.”
I hereby nominate attorney Gale for the CTNewsJunkie understatement of the year award. He needs to talk to Mayor Johnson in Chicago as soon as possible.
