DETROIT — This city, with one of the worst “food desert” problems in the U.S., last month launched a new program aimed at bolstering the prospects of struggling independent grocers and bringing new food stores into underserved areas.

Mari Gallagher

The program, called the Green Grocer Project, is being managed by the Detroit Economic Growth Corp. (DEGC), a private non-profit group focused on revitalizing this hard-pressed city, which has seen a major shift of its population, along with virtually all of its chain food retailers, to the suburbs.

The flight of food retailers has left Detroit with numerous food deserts — low-income neighborhoods where access to affordable, quality and nutritious foods is limited. A 2007 study conducted by Chicago-based food-desert researcher Mari Gallagher found that about 550,000 Detroit residents — more than half the population — live in areas that are “out-of-balance in terms of day-to-day food availability.” This means, she wrote, that “they must travel twice as far or further to reach the closest mainstream grocer as they do to reach the closest fringe food location, such as a fast-food restaurant or a convenience store.”

Gallagher also found evidence that “communities with food imbalance are more likely to experience worse diet-related health outcomes than other communities.”

DEGC received a $500,000 grant from the Kresge Foundation to start the Green Grocer Project (originally called the Fresh Food Access Initiative), and expects to get a $500,000 community development block grant allocation from the city of Detroit this summer, said Sarah Fleming, program manager of the Green Grocer Project. The block grant would come from the federal American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009. DEGC ultimately hopes to garner $32 million over the next three years for the project, she said.

The block grant will be used as seed money for the project's loan fund. “We will be a subordinate lender, not a primary lender,” Fleming said. “So when a grocer goes to a traditional lender, we can provide a letter of support saying we have ‘X’ amount of money to back it up.”

The project hired Fleming to serve as a “clearinghouse” for grocers in their daily dealings with city bureaucracy. “I will help them with permits, zoning and other laborious bureaucratic processes,” she said.

Finally, the project will help finance consulting services for grocers to address such areas as workforce training, accounting, customer service and produce handling.

The Green Grocer Project is designed to support some of the 80 independent supermarkets that operate in Detroit so that they don't leave or go out of business, as well as help attract new stores — independent or chain — into the city, said Fleming. Detroit's remaining chain supermarkets include a few Aldi stores, though Meijer is expected to open a new store next year, she said.

In the project's first year, DEGC expects to assist five to seven existing supermarkets; the first to receive aid is Family Fair Food Center in the Lafayette Park area. Over three years, Fleming said, DEGC hopes to help 20 to 25 stores and bring one to three new stores into underserved areas. “We help grocers who are committed to staying in their neighborhoods,” she said.

The Green Grocer Project came about in response to Gallagher's 2007 report, “Examining the Impact of Food Deserts on Public Health in Detroit.” The report sparked the formation of a task force to examine the issue, which included the Associated Food and Petroleum Dealers as well as Spartan Foods and Supervalu, two wholesalers supporting independents in Detroit. DEGC eventually launched the project with direction from James Johnson-Piett, principal of Urbane Development, Philadelphia, and formerly program manager for the Fresh Food Financing Initiative, a highly successful food-desert program in Pennsylvania. (See “Success in Pennsylvania Stirs Hope for Food Deserts,” SN, March 15, 2010.)