Illustration by Victoria Borges
Abraham Hunt trudges weekly along 25th Street with the aid of a black cane in his right hand. For five blocks, he wheels a makeshift cart from his North 32nd Street home to the Family Dollar near the intersection of Nine Mile Road and Fairmount Avenue — the proposed site of a mixed-use development that could bring fresh food to the area. Hunt, who has to take a bus to the Lombardy Street Kroger for more comprehensive shopping trips, relies on a number of corner stores stocked with overpriced prepackaged foods in the interim. He beams at the news of a grocery store near his home.
“I have arthritis so my leg hurts, but when I feel up to it I have to get food myself. No one brings it to me, so it’s an effort,” the 54-year-old Hunt says. “It’s an effort to choose where I can go within my limits. So, having a grocery store nearby with competitive prices would be nice.”
Much of Richmond’s East End is part of what the U.S. Department of Agriculture calls a food desert: a geographic area with a marked lack of access to fresh and healthy foods. In relatively urban areas such as Richmond, there’s often an added element of cruelty: Grocery stores may only be a few miles away, but are not on a bus route.
Church Hill is a neighborhood of stark contrasts, typical of historic corridors taking new shape under that loaded “G” word, gentrification. As the mix of culinary offerings, restored homes and small businesses continue to inch north of Broad Street, the area also is home to some of the city’s poorest residents.
But access and upward mobility are goals of a new plan: A proposed mixed-use development could bring a full-service grocery store, the J. Sargeant Reynolds’ culinary arts program, apartments and retail space to the neighborhood. Construction of The Church Hill North Retail Center is scheduled to begin this fall at Nine Mile Road, Fairmount Avenue and North 25th and 24th streets, with completion estimated near the end of 2018. It’s a food-centric infusion of job training and commerce that could give north Church Hill an economic kick start. It’s not so much a money-making opportunity as a chance to help alleviate poverty in the region, according to the project’s financial backer, Steven A. Markel, the vice chairman of the Henrico-based specialty insurer Markel Corp.
“This is a lot more about philanthropy for my wife [Kathie Markel] and me,” he says. “It’s a good place for community investment but not for making a lot of profit. I think dealing with Richmond’s poverty is something that’s important to do … [The project] is going to solve some problems, but there are a lot of fundamental problems that need to be dealt with. This is just a little finger in a great big dike.”
Markel purposefully chose to locate the center near Creighton Court, Fairfield and Mosby Court public housing communities to help solve the food dilemma. The development is set to consist of a roughly 26,000-square-foot grocery store, 10,000 square feet of retail space, an undetermined number of apartments and 20,000 square feet dedicated to J. Sargeant Reynolds’ culinary arts program. The school’s faculty hope that the new facility will provide a much-needed training ground for chefs to fill Richmond’s growing culinary niche. The school’s program, currently located on J. Sargeant Reynolds’ downtown campus, has only one kitchen. The new location would provide multiple teaching kitchens, a demonstration kitchen and a greenhouse.
As preliminary building plans await the rubber stamp of approval on the desks of city officials, it’s still unclear who will operate the grocery store.
One such contender is Jim Scanlon, a former Ukrop’s executive who is currently in talks with Markel. Scanlon is the owner of Jim’s Local Market in Newport News’ East End neighborhood: the same concept he might replicate here in Richmond to fill the development. The Newport News market, which opened in May 2016, allowed Scanlon to learn the lessons of providing a full-service grocery store in a neighborhood whose poverty mirrors that of Richmond’s East End. But he and Markel have yet to come to an agreement. “We are working on our model,” says Scanlon, adding that he’s currently focusing on his Newport News operation.
City officials also support the project. City council approved a $500,000 grant to subsidize construction, and rezoned the 3.24-acre parcel last year. Former Mayor Dwight Jones and Councilwoman Cynthia Newbille lauded the endeavor as an economic driver. “The East End food desert has needed healthy groceries and good jobs for a long time,” Jones said in a statement, “and I hope that success here can be replicated in other neighborhoods across the city.”
On average, slightly more than 22 percent to just over 33 percent of East End residents lack food security, according to Feeding America, a national nonprofit food-bank network. This means these residents’ access to adequate food is limited by money, location, time and other resources. In some areas of the East End, the rate of food insecurity is well over 40 percent.
The city’s total rate of food insecurity is 22.8 percent, which is nearly double Virginia’s 12.7 percent rate.
County lines are just as much of a barrier between “haves” and “have-nots.” Only 9.4 percent of Chesterfield County residents are food insecure. Henrico County’s rate of 12.5 percent is more in line with the state’s.
According to Hunt, food scarcity is a problem that will be solved only when more businesses are willing to invest in the East End’s impoverished communities. “It’s been slow coming. I think we need more people to take interest up here,” he says. “They’ll come up here and see they can do well, and probably better.”
That could become a reality as investors in food and housing ventures continue to permeate Church Hill. Church Hill North Retail Center is also in line with plans for a $175 million redevelopment of Creighton Court, which would transform the public housing complex into a mixed-income community over the next few years. These two juggernaut forces of change could provide a diverse economic base to support the retail anchor.
Markel sees continued development as an advantage that could be leveraged to serve the entire corridor. “It’s a challenging neighborhood, to say the least,” Markel says. “It’s starting to come to life, but it obviously has a way to go.”
