I live in a community that has a lot of poverty. When we attended the Healthy Eating Active Living Cities Workshop a few months ago, we learned the locations of all the food deserts in our city.
An area is considered a food desert when there is no grocery store within a certain radius.
One of the largest ones is downtown. Standing right next to downtown is a church that occupies an old Safeway building. What I never understood was why that building couldn't be used as a grocery store again. In some of the other food deserts there are also buildings that once housed grocery stores but now house other businesses like furniture stores. Safeway has since moved out to bigger and better properties in other areas of the city.
So why haven't new grocery stores been able to come in to those areas? Because they were once owned by supermarket giant, Safeway, and now Safeway has put deed restrictions on those sites barring any future grocery store from using the property. In some instances, due to site limitations and availability these are the only places a grocery store could feasibly be located. So in the name of profits, Safeway has decided to create food deserts in my city. They put their profits above the health of our community, about the health of children.
This just drives home my commitment to no longer buy food from grocery stores.
Interesting I didn't know about prior occupants being able to put deed restrictions on former grocery store sites. Shame on Safeway they don't want it so nobody else can have it.
ReplyDeleteA regional chain Wegmans closed their second to last city grocery store in Rochester, reason given was inability to create a mega store. Noone in my old hood bought that explanation.
They act like spoiled brats don't they?
ReplyDeleteThank you for educating the public because half or more of the population has NO Clue what goes on.
ReplyDeletethanks for posting. I plan on following this blog with enthusiasm.
ReplyDeletethis may sound dumb... but can they legaly do that? i mean once the property leaves thier hands... its out of thier hands... just a curious question... i mean someone cant buy a house then once they sell it... lets say to someone without blond hair caus they hate blonds, they cant negotiate into the deed that only non blonds can live thier.. i mean once they sell it they sell all claim to it right?
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately deed restrictions are perfectly legal. They are used frequently to help in the conservation of farm land and ecologically sensitive habitats.
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ReplyDeletei think thiers a difference between conserving growing land and a corporation.. in fact from the sound of it it was designed to prevent corporations from ruining the land :/ not so they can loiter pointless plots of lands no one can use for the deployment of resources from those lands
ReplyDeleteit sounds like a perversion of the point of the law to provide protection for conservation of lands for the benefit of the future... well anyways thanks for the info :(
not that it will probably cause me to do anything about it other then point it out :/
The article you were referencing is not available online anymore. Did they say that was a general Safeway policy or site specific? There was a Safeway not too far from me that was torn down and something is being rebuilt there. Now I'm even more curious to see what goes in there.
ReplyDeleteShoot, the article has been archived. It appears that it's may be Safeway policy, at least in our city, because it occurs at every single site they once resided at.
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