LA Still Lacking Inner City Supermarkets

[MHMasch at aol.com]

FYI...

The following is an editorial from Sunday's LA Times regarding the continued 
lack of inner city supermarkets in Los Angeles. A full report on this subject 
will be released by the Urban and Environmental Policy Insitute in May. 

Maggie Masch, MPH, RD
Center for Food and Justice
Urban and Evironmental Policy Institute 
Occidental College
1600 Campus Road
Los Angeles, Ca 90041
323-341-5096

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1992 RIOTS
Promises of Renewal Broken
LA Times Sunday March 10, 2002

By AMANDA SHAFFER and ROBERT GOTTLIEB, Amanda Shaffer is the author of an 
upcoming Occidental College Urban & Environmental Policy Institute report on 
supermarkets in low-income Los Angeles communities (www.uepi.oxy.edu). Robert 
Gottlieb is the Director of the institute.

High school bands played. Proceedings were broadcast live on radio. 
Participants feasted at a VIP buffet. All this to celebrate the January 1994 
opening of a Vons market in the Compton Renaissance Plaza, the first 
full-service supermarket to be built in the inner city after the 1992 riots.

Danny Bakewell, whose Compton Commercial Development Corp. was the project 
developer, said, "People give rhetoric to wanting to help inner cities--this 
is the way to do it.

But just six years later, Vons quietly closed the doors of its ballyhooed 
Compton store, citing its lack of profitability. The promise of a 
supermarket-led economic boom, like so many other promises made to 
neighborhoods affected by the riots, had been broken. In July 1992, 
representatives of Vons and Rebuild L.A. held a press conference to announce 
the company's plans to build stores in riot zones. Vons promised to build no 
fewer than 12 markets in the inner city. Rebuild L.A. chairman Peter V. 
Ueberroth proclaimed that the action "provided a Good Housekeeping seal of 
approval to all those corporations throughout America who wonder: 'Should we 
really invest in the inner city?'" Vons "stepped up," said Ueberroth. It's 
the "bell cow."

Soon after, Ralphs, Smart & Final and Food 4 Less made similar announcements. 
All told, the four food-market chains vowed to build more than 30 new 
supermarkets in the inner city, and other supermarket companies were also 
expected to increase their investments in such neighborhoods. "Over a long 
period of time," said Vons chairman Roger Strangeland, "we simply lost sight 
of the [profit-making] opportunity that existed in the neglected areas--and 
shame on us for being so late to rediscover the opportunity."

Rebuild L.A.'s campaign to build supermarkets in the inner city made sound 
economic sense. The stores would be a major source of new employment, 
creating between 1,000 to 2,000 jobs, with some paying above the minimum 
wage. During the previous 30 years, supermarkets had significantly abandoned 
the inner city for suburban locations. A UCLA study done in 1993 quantified 
the exodus: The number of inner-city chain markets had declined by nearly 
half.

Inner-city residents' lack of access to fresh and affordable food was another 
concern. A 1995 survey done by RLA, Rebuild L.A.'s new coinage, asked 1,100 
residents living in a 52-square-mile area affected by the civil unrest what 
goods and services their community lacked. Quality grocery stores and 
supermarkets were their overwhelming response. Economically, this represented 
enormous unmet demand. In the riot-affected areas, a supermarket typically 
served 16,571 people, compared with 7,795 people in greater Los Angeles.

So, what happened? Of the 12 stores promised by Vons, six were built. One was 
a rebuild of a store damaged in the riots. A second was located in an area of 
Pomona that did not meet RLA's definition of neglected areas--those with 
poverty rates of 20% or higher. Two of the new stores have since closed, 
including the one in Compton.

But it's unfair to single out Vons. In evaluating the 10-year period since 
the civil unrest, the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute (UEPI) at 
Occidental College inventoried chain and independent markets in the RLA 
survey area. In 1992, there were 32 chain supermarkets and 23 independents. 
Today, there are 31 chain supermarkets and 26 independents. The change, such 
as it is, is marginal, at best. The ratio of stores owned by the four major 
chains to population is even more striking: one supermarket for every 42,000 
people in the area, compared with one supermarket for every 24,000 in L.A. 
County as a whole.

One reason for the lack of progress is consolidation in the supermarket 
industry. After Ralphs merged with Food 4 Less in 1995, 55 stores were either 
eliminated or merged with other ones, resulting in a loss of 1,000 
higher-paying union jobs, including some in the inner city. The replacement 
stores--independent or other retail--were largely nonunion, which could mean 
as much as a $162-a-week pay cut, loss of benefits and little, if any, job 
security.

Access to fresh and affordable food in the inner city is not much better, 
either. The rapid spread of fast food, with its high fat and salt content, in 
the inner city has compounded the problem. One recent survey, by the South 
Los Angeles Community Coalition, of a two-square-mile area in South-Central 
found 52 fast-food establishments and only one sit-down restaurant. The one 
chain supermarket in the area offered a far poorer quality of meats and 
produce compared with an equivalent chain market in a middle-class 
neighborhood. The health and nutritional consequences of this development are 
clear.

There are a few success stories, however. A couple of supermarkets have been 
built in joint ventures with community organizations, with government 
facilitating the permitting process and waiving various rules. A handful of 
independent inner-city markets have adopted innovative programs, like van 
shuttles, to serve their transit-dependent customers. And some inner-city 
neighborhood and community-development organizations have taken up the cause 
of fresh and affordable food for inner-city residents, sponsoring farmers' 
markets, community gardens or food enterprises like the Mercado La Paloma.

Perhaps the most important lesson to be gleaned from our recent experience of 
building supermarkets in the inner city is that private-sector investment 
isn't enough to solve the problems of too few supermarkets and lack of access 
to fresh food. We also need to see these problems as community-development 
and public-policy issues. The successful stores not only involve the private 
sector, but also government and the community. As important, if stores in 
Compton or in other low-income neighborhoods are to survive and even 
flourish, they need to reach out to the community they want to serve.
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