A food desert in downtown Minneapolis?

Some residents struggle with access to groceries

As the civic and business leaders focus appears to be on courting residents and tourists to downtown Minneapolis, the city may be neglecting the needs of those who already make downtown their home. 

Residents of several downtown neighborhoods, including Loring Park, Elliot Park, and North Loop, say they need amenities. In particular, Elliot Park residents say they want a grocery store. 

But the powers that be are struggling to woo such a store to the neighborhood. “It’s not that easy to just bring a grocery store. It’s up to a grocery store whether they want to be there or not,” said Shannon Fitzgerald, executive director of the East Town Business Partnership. As she and her partners figure out how to bring a grocery store into some of downtown’s impoverished neighborhoods, some nonprofits are helping out by deploying a grocery store on wheels. 

The food situation

Downtown Minneapolis is home to more than 56,000 people, according to the Minneapolis Downtown Council. The Downtown Council reports that 5,460 residents moved into the neighborhood since 2020. 

Developers have built over 3,000 housing units downtown since the pandemic began, with at least 2,500 more housing units being built now. 

There may be more homes to come as owners of office buildings consider converting their holdings into residential housing, and as the federal government has been encouraging transit agencies to offload surplus land to developers to build affordable housing.

With an influx of people moving into downtown, residents new and old are wondering where they may get their food. Downtown residents living in the more upscale part, generally along Hennepin and Washington Avenues, have access to four grocery stores: Lunds & Byerlys at 12th and Hennepin, Whole Foods at Hennepin and Washington, Trader Joe’s at Chicago and Washington, and Target at 9th and Nicollet. Those living on Washington, also have access to the year-round Mill City Farmers Market.

Those living in the more impoverished areas, such as near 15th and Nicollet in Loring Park, as well as in Elliot Park, don’t have access to any permanent grocery store within a ten-minute walk. Instead, Elliot Park, where about 40 percent of households make less than $25,000 annually, is served by a mobile market run by a nonprofit organization called The Food Group. 

A grocery store on wheels

One cloudy Wednesday morning, Marybeth Teetzel joined several of his Elliot Park neighbors in lining up onboard a bus to get groceries. “It’s a hard time to get to Cub,” said Teetzel. “People don’t have a way to Cub.”

The bus, which The Food Group owns, makes a stop in the Elliot Park neighborhood, at the Park Center public housing high-rise at 15th Street and Park Avenue, once a week. The stop lasts around an hour.

The program was started by the Amherst J. Wilder Foundation in 2015. It’s intended to resolve an issue endemic to the neighborhood—a lack of grocery options. The program started out with two former Metro Transit buses, which are being replaced with converted school buses.

Stephanie Wagner, who runs the mobile market program, believes they are more important than ever as grocery stores leave low-income neighborhoods. “We’re seeing [grocery redlining] more and more, where groceries are abandoning many communities where basic needs aren’t being met,” said Wagner. 

The mobile markets are mostly stocked with products from Cub Foods—The Food Group is a food bank with bulk buying power—but will also carry produce and meat from local vendors, such as Organic Valley, Ferndale Farms, and the Red Lake Nation. 

Elliot Park has been left with few options since a grocery store on 14th Street between Park and Chicago closed in 2013. Although the neighborhood has easy access to an Aldi’s by the Route 9 and 14 buses, as well as a Target by the Route 9 bus, some residents have taken the liberty to go on a 30-minute trip via the D Line bus to get to the Wal-Mart in Bloomington. And despite a Trader Joe’s being nearby, no Metro Transit route brings Elliot Park residents directly there. 

Though the lack of grocery stores is not the only amenity Elliot Park lacks, residents the MSR interviewed say it is the most important. “I have agoraphobia so I don’t leave my house,” said Elliot Park resident Danielle Schlemmer. “I don’t have to [leave home to] get food and then some.” 

Improving existing options?

It’s unclear if any grocery stores plan to open anywhere in the neighborhood anytime soon. The neighborhood association is considering courting a grocer. 

Although The Food Group is looking to expand its operation, it needs to be within one-half of a mile from an existing grocery store and an existing stop. That rules out Elliot Park.

Metro Transit could potentially realign bus routes to better connect downtown residents to amenities such as grocery stores, potentially as part of their Network Now initiative. 

“As downtown continues to change and grow, we’ll be looking at ways that we can make adjustments,” said Metro Transit’s director of service planning Adam Harrington, who added they will also consider where the main destinations are, how far of a walk is reasonable for riders, and if they are providing frequent service to those destinations. 

Meanwhile, perhaps in an effort to respond to the needs of downtown residents, Target began to extend its store hours later in the evening. Before mid-July, they closed at 6 p.m. The store is now open until 8 p.m. Target did not respond to requests for comment.