Tacoma food deserts are growing. Municipal grocery stores could help | Opinion

The announced closure of the Fred Meyer grocery store on 72nd Street South and Pacific has stunned residents of Tacoma’s South End. The area is already one of the poorest in the city. The loss of the grocery store — and potentially neighboring shops that are anchored by the establishment — has sparked an outcry from the community.

Andi Haug, chair of the South End Neighborhood Council (SENCo), told the Tacoma Weekly: “It’s going to be a huge loss… There are so many things that will be affected. The emergent issue is food access.”

Unfortunately, losing a major grocery store, especially in a depressed area like South End Tacoma, should not be all that surprising considering the turmoil the grocery industry has experienced in recent years. Margins are tight. Grocery sales dramatically jumped during the pandemic when people were not eating at restaurants and the government was essentially paying people to stay home, but those sales came crashing down soon after, especially as consumers cut back due to record high inflation.

Even if the pandemic did not occur, competition from discount stores like Dollar General and Dollar Tree have forced several grocery stores to drop prices to the floor. While this might seem initially good for consumers, the long-term impacts are devastating for communities. Part of the reason discount stores can maintain their low prices is that they do not carry fresh fruits, vegetables or necessary perishables. When they drive traditional grocery stores out of business, a hole is created, leading to food deserts.

The way the industry has responded to these pressures has not been to innovate, but to consolidate. The South End Tacoma store is part of a nationwide plan by Fred Meyer’s owner Kroger to close 60 stores in the next 18 months, representing 2% of its total footprint.

If the city council cares about the South End, it should not stand idly by. Instead, it should use this closure as an opportunity to create a municipally owned grocery store for Tacoma.

In recent years, municipal grocery stores have experienced a comeback. Democratic mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani has made municipally owned grocery stores one of the major planks of his platform. Here in Tacoma, City Council District 5 candidate Zev Cook has also campaigned on the benefits of community owned and operated grocery stores. Interestingly enough, it is the red state of Kansas that has been a pioneer in this form of local collective ownership, with a handful of its rural communities establishing municipally owned grocery stores.

Admittedly, the record of municipally owned grocery stores is mixed. Even grocery stores that are owned by the government are subjected to the same market forces that have led to so many small grocery stores closing in recent years; competition from discount stores and mixed retail chains like Walmart make it hard for any institution that does not have the power of bulk purchasing to survive.

However, this does not mean establishing a municipally owned grocery store is impossible. Rather, it means the city should follow the advice of Dwight Eisenhower: “If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.”

The city should consider an overall redevelopment plan for South End Tacoma which focuses on the creation of a municipally owned grocery store. This would be possible by using the state’s Tax Increment Financing (TIF) program, which allows underdeveloped areas to use a portion of their property taxes to pay for urban renewal projects. The city council could declare the area surrounding 72nd Street South and Pacific as an “increment zone.”

Use the TIF money to purchase the lot with the Fred Meyer, then move ownership of the property to the Tacoma Community Redevelopment Authority to run as a publicly owned grocery store. Because the surrounding area is also included in the “increment zone,” the city would have more leeway in redeveloping it, including ripping up nearby parking and putting in dense housing units. Ideally, this would lead to greater overall growth in the area, which would mean more consumers who support the grocery store.

Of course, a strategic TIF district is only one tool the city could use to save the grocery store. The overall point is that the city should not remain apathetic to underdevelopment, nor should the council erroneously assume that leaving everything up to the market means the situation will correct itself. Instead, the city should be actively involved, especially in its poorest areas, to ensure that residents are guaranteed a basic standard of living, which includes the type of easy access to fresh food that only grocery stores can provide.

Marco Rosaire Rossi is the executive director of Washingtonians for Public Banking and an adjunct professor of political science at Cascadia Community College and Olympic Community College.