City-Funded Grocery Store in Kansas City has Empty Shelves, Plagued by Crime
Socialism doesn’t work.
New York City mayor frontrunner Zohran Mamdani wants to build a city-run grocery store.
Kansas City, MO, built its own city-funded grocery store, KC Sun Fresh, in 2018, and it has failed.
Community Builders of Kansas City, a nonprofit led by Emmet Pierson Jr., “leases the site from the city.”
Empty shelves. Rotting food. Persistent crime.
The $15 million idea is a bust. From KSHB:
A rancid odor fills the market, with shoppers turned off by bare shelves and coolers, along with empty meat and deli departments.
Jannine Owens told KSHB 41’s Alyssa Jackson on Monday she’s been shopping at the store since it opened, but in recent weeks, she can’t leave with everything she needs.
“We need answers because at the end of the day, that don’t make sense,” Owens said.
The City of Kansas City owns the shopping center.
The Sun Fresh Market is part of a Community Improvement District (CID).
The city collects revenue from a 1% retail sales tax on purchases in the CID to help pay for the development.
The Linwood Shopping Center was a $15 million public/private investment.
Over the years, the city has spent tens of thousands of dollars on security because of persistent crime problems.
That crime? So gross:
The store was first run by a private grocer; Pierson’s nonprofit took over in 2022. Sales were okay at first, but after the pandemic, crime rose and sales began to plummet. Police data show assaults, robberies and shoplifting in the immediate vicinity have been on an upward trend since 2020. Shoplifting cases have nearly tripled.
At a community meeting last year, Pierson played videos of security incidents so graphic he gave a warning in advance — a naked woman parading through the store throwing bags of chips to the ground, another person urinating in the vestibule and a couple fornicating on the lawn of the library in broad daylight.
Maj. Chris Young said an “overwhelming presence” of cops hadn’t stopped crime. Young pointed out the city lacks a jail:
Part of the problem is the city’s lack of a jail, Young said. The left-leaning council closed the previous facility in 2009 as a cost-saving measure — a move the Kansas City Star has called a “$250 million mistake” — and so people arrested for minor crimes are quickly released instead of being held in rural counties miles away.
That allows them to hop on the local bus system — free since the pandemic — and head back to the same location, Young said.
“We typically have the same group of offenders every week that are recognizable by face and by name, just loitering and hanging out,” he said. “A small percentage of people are ruining it for the rest of the community that deserves to go to their grocery store and their library.”
The city is making plans for a new jail, though construction could take years.
Socialism does not work.
On May 8, activists demanded city council pass an emergency ordinance to release $1 million promised to the store last year.
The city council passed an emergency ordinance for $750,00 for immediate assistance.
So where is the money?
KCTV sought answers and hit brick walls:
“Mayor Lucas and Kansas City remain deeply committed to access to healthy food on the Prospect corridor. The City will work closely with store ownership and all neighborhood stakeholders to support the long-term viability of the store based on normal revenues from customers and area consumers.”
The office of Mayor Quinton
Lucas Pierson has not addressed that question either. He sent a statement as well.
“Community Builders of Kansas City, through Midtown Grocers LLC, has worked tirelessly to provide food and necessary services to the urban community. Community Builders is committed to addressing the food desert that exists within our under resourced communities. However, for years Community Builders has been vocal, in the press, with the community and with the City of Kanss City, Missouri (the landlord of the KC Sun Fresh Midtown location) of the challenges we face. Community Builders’ concerns and fears are well documented.
“We have no other comments at this time.”
Emmet Pierson Jr. Community Builders of Kansas City President/CEO
City council members told KCTV, “No comment.”
However, Pierson told The Washington Post he used the $750,000 “to pay off outstanding invoices and restock the shelves.”
The store is now $39,000 in the red.
“It’s a deep, deep, deep hole,” Pierson said, adding that the store is a long way from breaking even, “even with all this city money.”
Huh. Imagine that.
It doesn’t help that no one will take responsibility:
Police and city officials say the area around Linwood Shopping Center has in recent years become a hotspot for crime and nuisance problems like loitering. Last year, Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves promised more police officers would patrol there.
“The city of Kansas City, Missouri, owns the store,” Grant said. “It owns the shopping center, and therefore it is responsible for addressing crime and blight in that area.”
The city also established the Linwood Community Improvement District to provide more oversight and management of the grocery store. Community improvement districts allow the city to levy a tax over a specific area — one as large as Westport, for instance, or as small as this Sun Fresh — to raise revenue for infrastructure and other improvements in that district.
But City Manager Mario Vasquez said at Friday’s meeting the revenue from the Linwood Community Improvement District isn’t enough to meet the needs of the store, and a chunk of the money already goes toward private security to patrol the area.
“The city does provide another set of funds to the (community improvement district) to take care of basic things like the snow removal, landscaping, any kind of repairs that need to happen on the property, security,” he said.
Oh, read this. I emphasized an important word:
Grant said the store shouldn’t have to pay private security to do a job that should fall to local police.
“They can’t sustain that,” she said. “And it shouldn’t even be expected, especially with how much money we invest in KCPD from the city anyway.”
Private. It’s almost as if you can always rely on the private sector. Weird.
Plus, the insurance company dropped KC Sun Fresh. The new insurance company’s premiums are 45% higher than the old one.
The store lost $885,000 in 2024.
KC Sun Fresh has about 4,000 customers a week, down from 14,000 a few years ago.
It’s basic economics. Prices don’t matter if you don’t have products to sell. You cannot sell the products you have without customers.
You cannot have customers with a history of consistent crime.
It’s no wonder a private grocery store won’t open a store in the area.
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Comments
mo money for duh mayor and his thuggs
another laundering scheme
doj investigation and throw blmplo lovers in prison
It’s odd they keep talking about a “food desert” when the arrested thugs can just hop a city bus and go right back. Do the buses only work one way and who’s fault is it no private grocer will open a store there due to crime,?
Whose fault? The private grocery chains’, obviously.
Probably racist, too.
They just wanted to recreate the old days of Soviet grocery shopping in order to teach us all a lesson about economic systems.
The lesson they want us to take away is that socialism works, we just need to do it “right”.
This publicly-funded grocery store is failing because they did something wrong.
Maybe if they released the shoplifters closer, so they wouldn’t have to take the bus….
pierson is another “well meaning” guy who is able to use tax funding ( thats fed…other states money) to create what they want to call a black oasis in kc…but runs afoul as he looks to fix up the area but is pushed back by
Harrietta Harris is a long-time resident of Parade Park and the former president of the co-op’s board.
The board dissolved after failing to register as a nonprofit with the state, something Harris says wasn’t intentional.
“We had no way of paying an attorney, getting an attorney or doing any of the things we needed to do to keep it going as a co-op,” she said.
Harris says the intention behind the co-op’s operations was to keep rent affordable so people could make any personal renovations to their individual units themselves.
“This unit right here, it cost me $767 a month,” Harris said. “Where else can you pay rent for $767 a month?”
its all the same..all the time
socialism doesnt work but that doesnt stop ..even the “well meaning” from pushing the agenda and until or unless maga happens …the cities will continue to open up MORE grocery stores
The bus system is free, therefor any resident of this EBT zone can hop on a bus at any time and access a grocery store in any part of the city at any time for nothing.
So why, exactly, is a city-owned grocery store needed there in the first place?
Particularly one that is poorly stocked and is losing vast amounts of tax-payer money?
Oh, wait, I know… without even examining the books, SOMEBODY is pocketing a nice wad of cash every month while maintaining this farcical socialist endeavor.
Maybe the KC political ‘leadership’ should convert the failing grocery into the jail which the city currently lacks.
If the store were to be run privately would it fare any better in an environment that ignores criminal and immoral acts and punishes self-defense?
Progressivism killed that store before socialism got its chance.
Food deserts in urban areas exist for a reason. When there’s no penalty for theft and antisocial behavior, you’re going to get a lot of it.
Re the mayor’s statement, is there a law, similar to Godwin’s law, that says the first public official to use the word “stakeholders” loses the argument? In the real world there are customers and sellers, both of whom must perceive a benefit to themselves to engage in a transaction. If someone is neither a customer nor a seller, but identifies as a stakeholder, isn’t s/he just a busybody?
depends u cud b part of a group
that owns the property or the
building ..
u r not buying or selling
u cud b classified as a stake holder
i cud b wrong…
It’s amazing how stupid progressives are and what is worse is most of them never seem to learn. No jail for a medium sized city. Revolving door for criminals. Free buses. City grocery store. Politicians talking about the city’s money as if they city earned it (not at the grocery store obviously). And so on and so on
They don’t care whether their retarded initiatives succeed or not as long as they get their grift in the process, and then it’s on to the next one.
Public or private, grocers.: nothing will work in a high crime environment. Ultimately it will take the Paul Kersey solution to stop crime. I lived and worked in high crimes areas of NYC in the 1970s. Not pleasant. I had the good luck to avoid a number of attempts at being a victim. I remember an interview with a NYC street mugger. He preferred to attack men because women would scream. He said he was not afraid of the police or prison. His only worry: his victim might be armed. Sometimes only the instant justice of a bullet will make a difference when government fails.
Socialism at its finest!
It’s not just the wrong people trying to makenit work, but it fails every time it’s tried. From the pilgrims until now on this soil, it just does not work.
Why are there so many otherwise intelligent individuals who know so much but about things that are not so?
You may as well ask why people fall for the same confidence games and pyramid schemes their great grandfathers did, It’s because the siren lure of something for nothing drowns out good sense.
A lot of people think socialism can work, if only done correctly. IMHO, socialism can never work. That’s because it is based on a fatally flawed premise, that being: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. The fatal flaw is that abilities are limited, needs are unlimited.
Unfortunately, the needs are ultimately determined by government. That’s one of the whole not-so-secret reasons for the failure of socialism.
Every. Time.
That’s because when the government wedded to socialism suddenly discovers that abilities are limited while needs are unlimited, it has to put a cap on needs.
Why are there so many otherwise intelligent individuals who know so much but about things that are not so?
[shrug] College.
Across from the Lenin mausoleum on Red Square is the classic Soviet mall GUM. From Wiki:
” In the end, GUM’s efforts to build communism through consumerism were unsuccessful and arguably “only succeeded in alienating consumers from state stores and instituting a culture of complaint and entitlement”
Nothing changes…..
I don’t understand why intelligent people call this socialism or progressivism:,
It’s a plain, pure thugocracy that can be treated only one way.
“So yeah, the shelves are empty, but we keep the customers coming in with BOGO coupons!”
And rain checks and IOUs that will never be fulfilled.
Socialism for the WIN! FWIW, it reminds of a YouTube short where shoppers were shopping, back in the 1980s, a Russian grocery store. It was terrible.
I was born, raised in Kansas City, and still have family, friends there, so I am there infrequently. Sun Fresh is a brand name, like Schnucks, HyVee, Whole Foods, and has privately franchised locations all over the metro.
This particular city-run store is in a location long known to be no place for a white man after dark, and it has only gotten worse over the years.
Much of that is due to The. Worst. Mayor. Evuh., mayor Lucas.
For three solid years the mayor spent millions of city dollars fighting the state of Missouri in order to defund the police. The KCPD is one of two cities in the nation controlled by a state board of commissioners, and the mayor was attempting to wield power he did not possess.
In those 3 years, many of KCPD’s finest resigned in disgust, and got better jobs elsewhere (my local sheriff is one of those who resigned). Recruitment numbers are still negative. No one wants to risk it all in a big city whose head guy doesn’t have their back, and indeed, seems eager to stick a knife in it.
The PD simply doesn’t have the man power to patrol these violent crap holes, so Hello! ‘food deserts’.
Probably they have good prices.
Like the ones you see on the poles at derelict gas stations.
In the early ’80s, I spent two years living in a third-floor walkup a couple buildings away from the corner of 39th & Walnut, one block east of Main. I could walk to Westport and sometimes I’d walk as far as the Plaza. Today, at least from what I’ve read, no way would a white man dare live there.
It was a dump then, but I knew it. Rent was $195. A decent apartment would have cost $450, so I put up with the cockroaches, the shitty furniture, and no A/C. One night a burglar tried to kick down my door, and I yelled so loud that I woke up the whole building. A few minutes later, the cops were right there and had arrested some black dirtbag stereotype outside.
The unit had a balcony that was probably dangerous, but I didn’t care. Bought a little grill and barbequed huge steaks out there, Main between 39th and 38th had a jazz club, a country & western singles joint, and a transvestite sho bar. I think there was a “video arcade” (peep shows) at 37th & Main or thereabouts. I always figured there was no fighting among the bars because the C&W patrons were cheating and didn’t want to linger or be seen, and same for the sho bar patrons. Jazz bar patrons were hipsters who wouldn’t fight anyway.
My balcony overlooked the parking lot in back of the sho bar. I still remember the late winter night when I saw a creature in a gold lame dress out there just after bar time, and heard her shout to a guy in a car: “Hurry up! My legs are getting cold!” I didn’t laugh out loud anyway. Oh, and I saw my very first possum strolling across Walnut Street just after I arrived there.
I did like Winstead’s for burgers and malts, but I can’t say I was real fond of Kansas City even back then. Hate me now, but I thought the barbecue was overrated, especially Bryant’s but the other ones too. I left as soon as I could find a job in a different city, which turned out to be L.A., but that’s a whole different set of thrills ‘n chills.
City owned grocery stores. Who in hell does anyone think they are kidding? Even if you are good at it — and you have to be DAMN good — it’s God’s own low-margin business. If that communist becomes NYC’s mayor and opens city owned stores, NYC’s taxpayers will get their asses handed to them.
as long as tax money is made available to them..they will stay open for business
not sure why we allow the gop to fund those ratholes
I think it’s safe to say that the G,O.P. won’t be funding NYC’s city owned grocery stores, but you never do know. They are sneaky.
“A rancid odor fills the market…”
Six words to completely describe the impact of socialism.
Well done.
KC Sun Fresh food desert victim Jannine Owens: “We need answers because at the end of the day, [a free grocery store with nothing in it] don’t make sense.”
She can’t always get what she wants, but she’s getting what she needs, a good and hard lesson on the wonders of socialism.
If the people arrested were taken to jails in rural counties miles away, they might have trouble getting back to town, and that would be an incentive not to commit a crime.
The Gateway Fred Meyer just closed in Portland. This store was located next to the large light rail transit center which was where the homeless congregated. Several years ago Freddies built a labyrinth at the doors which faced the transit center which resembled a supermax prison. After that failed, they simply blocked off the entrance/exit on that side. Now a year or two later they simply decided to close the store.
Of course locals are blaming Intel and the job losses while ignoring that a) all of the Intel people live 20 miles to the West and all of the Freddies stores between Intel and Gateway are doing just fine.
The best comment is that no one is standing up for the 6 fentanyl dealers in the parking lot who also lost their jobs.