A public safety task force met last week to discuss the future of the Linwood Shopping Center, and how to spend $750,000 in emergency city funding intended to keep a troubled grocery store afloat there.
Meanwhile at the Sun Fresh Market, shelves and freezer aisles sat mostly barren. Store operators say the city’s stopgap funding will go toward stocking those shelves, but there’s still a larger problem — and it’s not management.
“You don't go from having 14,000 customers when we acquired the store, down to now about 2,000 because of management,” Community Builders of Kansas City President and CEO Emmet Pierson Jr. told the Prospect Corridor Public Safety Task Force on Friday. Pierson’s nonprofit operates the Sun Fresh.
“That's because of environment,” he said.
The Sun Fresh, at Prospect Avenue and 31st Street, has been beset with problems over the last year. Crime nearby has caused safety concerns for shoppers and employees, and has made it difficult for the store to make money.
The Kansas City Council approved spending $750,000 this month as a short-term solution to keep the store open. People who want the store to remain open, though, are hoping the city will support the grocery store long-term.
Pierson said the store runs daily deals for customers, even offering essential items like eggs and milk at a cheaper price. But the financial strain remains.
“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.”
A food desert, and concerns over crime
Kansas City purchased the Linwood Shopping Center in 2016 and spent about $17 million to revitalize it. In 2022, Community Builders of Kansas City took over operations and management of the grocery store.
“Our inner city neighborhoods have suffered from the absence of a full-service grocery store, with fresh produce and all of the other amenities that many suburban communities enjoy,” Gwen Grant, president of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, told KCUR last week. “Having this store closed would return this area to a food desert.”
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.
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.”
‘We’re going to do our part’
Vasquez offered some ideas to better support the grocery store and the surrounding area.
He suggested that expanding the boundaries of the current Linwood Community Improvement District, which currently only covers the grocery store, to include more of the area around Prospect Avenue and 31st Street would allow for more improvements along sidewalks and the street to make the area more inviting.
The district could then use “ambassadors,” like the ones who wear yellow shirts in the River Market and around downtown, to pick up trash and interact with customers.
“Make people feel like they can come to the corridor safely, and enter in and do their business,” Vasquez said. “Those are the kinds of things that are going to help people feel like there's somebody that cares for the street.”
Looking ahead to next summer, Vasquez wants the Sun Fresh and Linwood Shopping Center to be a place World Cup tourists can visit without safety concerns.
“I want them to think it is as good a shopping area as any in the city,” he said. “So we're talking about maybe replacing all the sidewalks along the street. We're talking about putting banners. We're talking about branding the corridor as a shopping district, and enhancing the entire thing.”
Pierson, with Community Builders of Kansas City, said management already has plans for the $750,000 check from the city.
Orders are being placed so the grocery store has more products in stock later this week. Some of the money will also go toward fixing air conditioning throughout the store.
“We're going to do our part, we're going to put stuff in the store,” Pierson said at Friday’s meeting. “But … we've got to control the exterior environment. If folk don't feel safe and want to come inside the store, or any other merchant, then we have a problem and all this is for naught.”
