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Standing at the intersection of Broadway Avenue and Webster Street, you can look east and see the shell of Wommack’s Great American Food Store. For more than 20 years, it served the Grant Beach neighborhood and others in northwest Springfield.
If you wanted a larger selection, you only had to walk about half a mile to the Price Cutter at Grant Avenue and Commercial Street.
But in the past year, both stores closed, and a part of town where many already struggled to get by suddenly found itself in worse shape — stranded in one of the largest sections of what the Springfield-Greene County Health Department considers the city’s food desert.
Wommack’s Great American Food Store closed last year. It was one of two grocery stores in the Grant Beach neighborhood to close, creating a food desert.
(Photo: Stephen Herzog/News-Leader)
How is it possible to have a food desert in a city packed with grocery stores?
Jon Mooney, administrator of the health department’s Chronic Disease Prevention Division, said food accessibility is more about the individual than the area.
“When we look at the food desert in Springfield, it certainly doesn’t mean everyone in that area has limited access,” said Mooney. “Really, Springfield is a town where, if you have a car, you can get to where you’re going.”
Map of Springfield food deserts.
(Photo: News-Leader)
However, for those who don’t have access to a car, food — especially fresh, healthy food — can be very difficult to get their hands on.
To build his food-desert map, Mooney plotted “qualified food stores,” which means full-size grocery stores, and drew half-mile circles around each. Any census tract that qualified as low income and didn’t touch the circle surrounding a grocery store was marked as having low access.
The result was a food desert that stretches roughly from Commercial Street and Kansas Expressway southeast across town to Glenstone Avenue and Battlefield Road.
Mooney pointed out the Phelps and University Heights neighborhoods are considered low access. That’s not typically seen as a low-income area, but Mooney believes a higher concentration of college students likely qualifies it as such.
Linda Simmons, left, a community garden volunteer, puts produce in the hands of fellow volunteer Briana Radosavlevici as they prepare to distribute them to Grant Beach residents during a weekly giveaway at the Grant Beach Community Garden in the Grant Beach neighborhood of Springfield on July 16, 2015.
(Photo: Guillermo Hernandez Martinez/News-Leader)
Still, even in these neighborhoods and maybe more so in others across the city, getting food is a matter of getting to the store.
“A lot of people around here don’t drive,” said Anita Kuhns, president of the Grant Beach Neighborhood Association. “After those grocery stores closed, it’s a long way to another one.”
Jerry Saylor, who lives in the Grant Beach neighborhood, has talked to people who struggle with transportation. It’s too far to walk, and cab rides can get expensive.
Also, “you can’t carry many bags on a bus,” Saylor said.
City Utilities spokesman Joel Alexander said riders are asked not to bring on more bags than they can carry in one trip and can reasonably keep in their laps or under the seat at their feet.
Even without those restrictions, toting more bags than that would be difficult.
So, what can be done to help those in need cope?
The city, Ozarks Food Harvest, and other organizations are working on solutions. Neighborhoods like Grant Beach are getting involved to feed their own with community gardens where both work and food is shared.
Monica Tindall, a Grant Beach resident and community garden volunteer, takes out weeds surrounding tomato plants at the Grant Beach Community Garden in the Grant Beach neighborhood of Springfield on July 16, 2015.
(Photo: Guillermo Hernandez Martinez/News-Leader)
It happens every so often that a young kid reaches for a piece of fruit in the one-car-garage-turned-grocery-store that Saylor oversees.
Every time, the mother tells her child to put the apple down — there’s a limit to how much each family can take from the Springfield Community Gardens food distribution center.
“No, it’s OK, go ahead,” Saylor will say to the child. He doesn’t want to stand in the way of a kid making a healthy food choice. “I like to let the kids graze. Then maybe when they’re at home, they reach for that apple, or that orange, instead of some kind of junk food.”
When the Grant Beach Neighborhood Association started its community garden in 2010, it wanted to address “food security” issues in the neighborhood. When the grocery stores closed, that need grew.
Now, every Thursday afternoon, people line up to walk through the Hovey House garage, loading cardboard boxes with fresh produce.
Saylor’s small crew of volunteers sorts produce into boxes with numbers drawn on them. The number indicates how many of each item a customer can take.
There’s no money changing hands today because customers have already paid with their time. Customers of the little Grant Beach “grocery store” are also its volunteers.
One, Joey Chavez, never seems to stop moving. On a sweltering July day, Chavez mows the yard and pulls weeds and picks vegetables in the garden next to Hovey House. He agrees to a short break so a reporter can talk to him.
The association asks that he pay $1 a year for a membership and work two hours each month in exchange for weekly food, but Chavez blew past those two hours weeks ago.
“It’s a lot cheaper to get a box of food here and just put in four hours of work every week than it is to buy fresh produce in the grocery store.”
Joey Chavez
“I come every Thursday from (noon) to like four,” he said. “I just walk around and find something that needs to be done. That’s all you got to do.”Chavez says fruits and vegetables are expensive, and the opportunity to volunteer his time in exchange for fresh produce is worth it.
“It’s a lot cheaper to get a box of food here and just put in four hours of work every week than it is to buy fresh produce in the grocery store,” he said.
He comes each week from a neighborhood a little west of Grant Beach. He thinks some people in his neighborhood would benefit from a similar set up.
“Absolutely. There’s nothing wrong with growing your own food and eating it — eating healthier,” he said. “If they’re wanting to expand then I’m all for that.”
Kuhns says many volunteers give more than they’re required to. The Grant Beach neighborhood certainly isn’t the only one in Springfield with residents that struggle with food access, but it is a neighborhood with a reputation for rolling its sleeves up.
“We chose Grant Beach because they have a really good volunteer base. They’re willing to work together, so it was an easy success,” said Maile Auterson, president of Springfield Community Gardens. “If it was going to work, it was going to work here.”
From left: Jordan Coiner, Joseph Chavez, Charlie Winger and Don Good unload boxes of produce from a truck in order to distribute them to Grant Beach residents during a weekly giveaway at the Grant Beach Community Garden in the Grant Beach neighborhood of Springfield on July 16.
(Photo: Photos by Guillermo Hernandez Martinez/News-Leader)
There are many other pieces to the puzzle of feeding Springfield. Like the garden distribution center, many of the ideas are unique.
Amy Blansit has been working to restore the old Fairbanks School building into a community center. Auterson said part of that plan could include a community grocery store co-op model.
Springfield city officials are also on the case. After a series of listening sessions in northwest Springfield this year, they put food access among its top five concerns.
City spokeswoman Cora Scott said officials are in early stages of coming up with answers. She said discussions include how to incentivize grocery stores to come in, what kind of community partnerships might work, and what property the city has available to use for food distribution.
The construction and eventual opening of a Walmart Neighborhood Market at Campbell Avenue and Grand Street will erase a piece of the existing food desert. It puts those roughly in the West Central neighborhood within half a mile of a grocery store. That footprint may also touch the Phelps and University Heights neighborhoods.
Mooney said the ultimate goal is to have a “more comprehensive food supplier like a grocery store,” but neighbors can’t wait for access to food. He said the work of Springfield Community Gardens, Ozarks Food Harvest and others is vital to finding solutions.
The Woodland Heights neighborhood has started a community garden with Springfield Community Gardens.
(Photo: Stephen Herzog/News-Leader)
There’s no guarantee a grocery store will locate to the area any time soon.
After Dillons announced it was leaving the market last year, Cindy McMillian, executive director of the Ozark Empire Grocers Association, said the market was already “very saturated.”
So residents in the deserts must look to alternative solutions.
“There are a lot of discussions going on, and plans in different stages of development,” he said, a lot of solutions that are “not quite a grocery store, but are certainly providing more food in a more comprehensive, more regular environment.”
He said the health department sees itself in more of a support role, rather than leading the charge.
“I don’t think any of the work could have been done if it was done just by government,” he said. “A lot of groups out there are passionate. From a health standpoint, from a community engagement standpoint — it doesn’t matter what angle. The end product is always the same thing. Let’s get food in bellies, let’s get people access to more healthy food, and so we’re able to come together in a common way.”
A community garden sits next to the old Fairbanks school, which Amy Blansit is trying to turn into a community center.
(Photo: Stephen Herzog/News-Leader)
Springfield Community Gardens has grown incredibly in recent years; the group now oversees 18 gardens in the city. Their first was at Grant Beach, started in 2010.
“They were already trying to handle the problem they had (with food insecurity), and were doing a really good job of it,” Auterson said. “So Springfield Community Gardens and Ozarks Food Harvest were just stepping in to encourage what they were doing on their own.”
The neighbors work hard in the garden. It looks impressive beside the Hovey House, a sort of neighborhood headquarters.
But the need of the area is greater than what the garden could supply, so Ozarks Food Harvest drops off about 1,500 to 2,000 pounds of fresh produce each week, which the association distributes from the Hovey House garage.
Ozarks Food Harvest has several pantries somewhat nearby but not with the same direct access the neighborhood association offers.
Denise Gibson, director of development and communication for the organization, said Ozarks Food Harvest has tried to “ramp up” in recent years its programs to get fresh produce to those inside Springfield with access issues.
One of Springfield Community Gardens locations is just north of a Cox Hospital on Boonville Avenue.
(Photo: Stephen Herzog/News-Leader)
Over the last couple years, that has included expanding its mobile food pantry distribution to certain Springfield schools. Gibson said they’re continuing to work on “getting food out to people who need it,” and what’s happening at the Grant Beach garden is a good example.
“We’re always looking for that type of partnership,” she said. “We do want to encourage the people that have the physical ability, time and desire, to get out and participate in these types of programs, to help us help them.”
Katherine Minx is the project manager for Springfield Community Gardens. On Thursdays, she runs the volunteer table at the distribution center. She makes sure people are up to date on their hours, which can be difficult for people who are on disability and can’t physically help in the garden.
Most of the time, however, Minx doesn’t have to push hard. The neighbors feel accountable to each other.
“Now they care about one another, and they’re trying to take care of one another,” she said. “And I think that’s a really beautiful thing. That’s what Springfield Community Gardens is about.”
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