Even before the Sun Fresh Market at the corner of 31st Street and Prospect Avenue closed down this week, empty shelves and a shrinking customer base had plagued the grocery store for months.
Former customer Derek Hardin said, at one point, he liked the selection they offered, and visited the grocery store about four times a month.
“The selection was outstanding, to me, when it was on the shelf,” Hardin said. “I want all the good quality things and for me and my kids.”
But he noticed a decline in recent months: less product, empty shelves.
“And that's not good for the community,” he said. “Not at all.”
The market’s closing leaves the surrounding neighborhoods, which are majority Black and low-income, without a full-service grocery store. A note taped to the store’s front doors reads, “Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances beyond our control, we are no longer, at this time, able to serve the residents of this important community.”
“We are disappointed to learn of the closure of the Linwood Sun Fresh,” Mayor Quinton Lucuas told KCUR in a statement. “Over recent months, the city has worked diligently with store management to explore solutions that would keep the Sun Fresh operational, including a meeting with the grocery store’s operators as recently as July 28.”
The store’s operator, Community Builders of Kansas City, neighborhood leaders, and some elected officials have said for months that criminal activity in the area created an environment that made people feel unsafe visiting the grocery store. And the City of Kansas City, which owns the property, spent nearly $1 million in the past year to keep the store afloat. But it wasn’t enough.
City Council member Melissa Robinson, whose 3rd District includes the Linwood Shopping Center, said the council first discussed financially supporting the Sun Fresh last year, but did not actually allocate any money until this spring.
“So I began to wonder: Did that lag contribute to the situation that we're in?” Robinson said. “And I believe that it did.”
Community Builders CEO Emmet Pierson said in a statement “they have been vocal for years about our concerns and fears regarding the increasingly insurmountable challenges” facing the store and its location.
With the store now closed, and no clear plan for the future, Hardin worries about older residents in the area who can’t travel far to get groceries — the Aldi at 39th Street and Prospect, and the Happy Foods at 31st Street and Norton Avenue are about a mile away.
“That's why I believe this store is needed,” Hardin said. “It's totally needed, because sometimes, you know, they may have to walk a few blocks now.”
Gwen Grant, president of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, said the financial burden on Community Builders escalated to the point where the nonprofit had no choice but to close.
“These things are happening because of the public safety issues in the surrounding area, outside the store, and then going into the store,” Grant said. “When people don't feel safe, they're not going to go there and shop.”
She also emphasized that the closure was not Community Builder’s fault, and she said they shouldn’t be portrayed as “poor financial managers” because the bulk of the money the city invested there went toward acquiring and redeveloping the property years before Community Builders took over operations.
“We’re always fighting because we don’t get equitable allocation of resources in the Prospect corridor,” she said. “It’s a community that’s been neglected, and all of this stuff is coming home to roost.
Years of trying to revitalize
Kansas City purchased the once-empty Linwood Shopping Center in 2016 and spent about $17 million to redevelop it and put in a grocery store, ensuring the area would no longer be a food desert. Local nonprofit developer Community Builders of Kansas City took over daily operations and management of the Sun Fresh in 2022.
Since its opening in 2018, the store represented city officials’ efforts to revitalize a historically disinvested corridor.
“The grocery store is the anchor tenant that helps drive traffic to the other businesses at the Linwood Shopping Center,” Grant said. “So the economic impact of this is huge.”
The Kansas City Council allocated $161,000 and $750,000 earlier this year to cover rent and help Community Builders fill shelves with products and pay for store maintenance, but that was only after Urban League members and other activists marched into a May 2025 meeting and demanded the funds.
“We disrupted the meeting, and we would not stop until they went into closed session, and we stayed there until we worked it out,” Grant said. “Within three to five days of that happening, Community Builders received their payment that they had been waiting for over a year to get.”
But the store remained beset with problems, and local officials say the area has become a hotspot for nuisance and criminal activity.
“How do we make sure that we create less harm, putting the residents of the city first,” Robinson said. “And then looking toward, what do we need to do to support this nonprofit, who really, really put themselves out there to address this need?”
Kansas City Police Department spokesperson Officer Alayna Gonzalez said they increased patrols in the area around the grocery store, including having officers assigned to the 31st and Prospect corridor for 24/7 police presence. Off-duty officers also helped with patrols.
A community action network center also opened at 30th Street and Prospect, where community interaction officers work with neighborhood leaders to improve the area.
The area is also classified as a food desert, meaning at least 20% of residents live at or below the poverty level, and 33% live more than a mile from a grocery store.
More than 1.2 million people in the Kansas City metro area live half a mile or further from fresh food, according to the Kanbe’s Markets website. The nonprofit works to place affordable produce for sale within half a mile of every home in the city.
Kanbe’s Market Founder and CEO Maxfield Kaniger said Sun Fresh was a crucial community space.
“It’s always about more than just groceries,” he said, “It’s convenient, it’s connected. Any grocery store that size is going to be a vital part of daily life for anybody that lives around that neighborhood.”
Matt Hamer, communications manager at Harvesters Community Food Network, said the loss of healthy food options was “a loss for everyone.”
A grocery store as ‘critical infrastructure’
Since the city owns the property and spent taxpayer money to revitalize it, elected officials will now have to figure out its future.
Robinson said the city will look for a new tenant to take over the space, hopefully keeping it a full-service, affordable grocery store. She hopes a new grocery store will be up and running by Thanksgiving this year.
Robinson likened the arrangement, in which the city owns the property and then contracts with a business or organization to operate it, to something of a public-private partnership.
“The city is responsible for infrastructure and, when this was voted on by a prior council, it's my belief and understanding that they saw the grocery store as infrastructure — a critical infrastructure,” Robinson said. “That's why the decision was made to, (a) own the store, and then, (b) build the store.”
The Urban Summit Prospect Corridor Public Safety Task Force will host an online community conversation on the future of the Linwood Shopping Center and neighborhood stability along the Prospect corridor on Friday morning.
