Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration has dropped its request for state funding for a city-owned grocery retailer, elevating questions on the way forward for the daring proposal the mayor made greater than a yr in the past.
Johnson first floated the concept of a publicly owned grocery retailer in September 2023. He conceived the concept as a approach to enhance meals entry on town’s South and West sides, the place closing supermarkets has left many residents with restricted entry to contemporary groceries of their neighborhoods.
Activists who see groceries as a public good, just like a metropolis water division or put up workplace, have lengthy supported the idea. However, the meals enterprise is notoriously troublesome, and critics have expressed skepticism that town, which lacks in-house meals experience, can full the undertaking.
Existing public grocery shops are positioned in a lot smaller municipalities. If it does, Chicago may very well be the primary main U.S. metropolis to open a publicly owned grocery retailer, though the concept has additionally attracted curiosity elsewhere. including in New York City and Atlanta.
In December, town gave up on making use of for state funding for the undertaking regardless of beforehand saying it will achieve this.
The $20 million Illinois Grocery Initiative, signed into regulation by Gov. JB Pritzker in 2023, was created to assist open or finance grocery shops in “meals deserts” throughout the state. Municipalities are among the many entities that may request funding of as much as $2.4 million for every undertaking — not sufficient to fund the start-up of a grocery retailer, however a place to begin.
The Tribune filed a Freedom of Information Act request for purposes submitted by town for funding beneath the state program, however discovered no such data. The first spherical of state meals grants was awarded in October, and the deadline to use for the second spherical of funding was in early December.
A metropolis spokesperson had no remark Monday on the choice to not apply for the funding.
In a memo despatched to City Hall’s high workers on Aug. 28, the mayor’s chief of workers, Cristina Pacione-Zayas, stated she was coordinating efforts to use for a state grant.
Staff are anticipated to work on duties comparable to website assessments and monetary analyzes to arrange town’s utility for state funding, Pacione-Zayas wrote within the memo, obtained by the Tribune.
In the memo, Pacione-Zayas stated HR&A Advisors, a consulting agency that authored a feasibility examine on the city-owned grocery undertaking for town, will information and assist metropolis departments within the utility effort.
HR&A had highlighted the state grocery program as a potential funding supply in its examine, which deemed a public grocery retailer “crucial, possible and implementable” in Chicago. The metropolis has not launched the feasibility examine regardless of beforehand saying so. The Tribune and Sun-Times reported on the examine in early August.
The HR&A consultants have been employed by the nonprofit Economic Security Project, a longtime supporter of public grocery shops and Johnson’s preliminary companion within the meals undertaking.
In a press release, Sarah Saheb, director of the Economic Security Project’s Illinois affiliate, stated the group “urges leaders throughout Illinois to leverage state sources to assist assist meals entry of their communities.”
“As multinational companies have consolidated energy in almost each trade, together with meals retail operations, they’ve put income over folks, leaving households with continual sicknesses and shorter lifespans,” Saheb stated within the assertion , including that the state program “empowers municipalities with the instruments they should create viable public choices.”
Supermarket closures have plagued the south and west of town for years, making it troublesome for a lot of residents, particularly those that do not have vehicles or are aged, to purchase contemporary groceries.
City leaders in a number of union administrations have struggled to handle grocery retailer closings, in some circumstances deploying public funds to draw non-public grocery shops that then shut up store within the metropolis’s underserved neighborhoods.
Under Rahm Emanuel, for instance, town spent greater than $10 million to deliver a Whole Foods to Englewood that the corporate closed six years later.
Supporters of a city-owned grocery retailer argued that whereas opening such a retailer may very well be logistically difficult, it will alleviate a few of the issues Chicago has confronted by making town much less depending on the goodwill of for-profit meals firms .
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