SitemapOn the west side of Youngstown, a former Sparkle Market along Mahoning Avenue has become a beauty products business.
At the Mahoning Plaza, a building that once housed Bottom Dollar Foods is today a plasma center. Along Canfield Road in the Cornersburg district, a former Giant Eagle grocery is now a Dollar General and a pet salon.
This pattern is evident across the city. Once-thriving markets that supplied fresh food and produce to residents on each side of town have closed, hollowing out a vital source of nutrition for the most vulnerable population of the community.
So dire is the situation that four years ago, Mayor Jamael Tito Brown declared the city a food desert, citing data that show a sizeable portion of the population lives one mile or more from a full-service grocery store.
“We told him we needed a grocery store in the city and wanted him to put a task force in place,” says Rose Carter, executive director and lead organizer of Action, a nonprofit coalition of faith-based organizations that addresses community needs. Just as the task force was beginning to take shape, however, the COVID-19 pandemic stalled any progress.
As it stands, just four full-service grocery stores sit within city limits, according to data compiled by the Department of Geography and Urban Regional Studies at Youngstown State University. Three of these grocers are located on the peripheries, bordering other communities. A Save-A-Lot along South Avenue near the intersection of East Indianola Avenue serves as the single central grocer in the city.
To address this, in 2020, Action initiated “pop-up” markets across Youngstown in cooperation with another nonprofit, Flying High Inc., Carter says. These markets, supplied with fresh produce by Flying High’s Grow Urban Farm, set up temporary stands throughout the city on select days to provide access to food to otherwise isolated neighborhoods.
But the effect of pop-up markets is limited in scope and available only during the warm weather months. “The pop-up markets were not enough,” Carter says.
This led Action and its partners to consider an idea novel to Youngstown – a mobile grocery truck that could supply key areas of the community with fresh vegetables, fruit, dairy and frozen products year-round. “People in the area need food. Fresh food,” Carter says with emphasis.
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