What happened to Baton Rouge’s Healthy Food Retail Initiative?

A three-12 months initiative released by Mayor Sharon Weston Broome’s administration in late 2019 to recruit new grocery suppliers to underserved neighborhoods in the parish sunsetted very last year without the need of any bargains for a new shop. 

For the Balanced Meals Retail Initiative, the administration partnered with Hope Company Corporation of the Mid-South, a Jackson, Mississippi-based credit union. The intention was for Hope Organization to supply financial loans to eligible grocers organizing to open merchants in certified food stuff deserts in the parish. 

The $1.8 million deal with Hope was meant to be funded by way of $750,000 from the metropolis-parish’s common fund, $750,000 from Group Advancement Block Grant cash and $300,000 from the mayor’s Healthier BR method. 

Hope Enterprise is the exact corporation that partnered with New Orleans in 2011 for its Fresh Foods Retailer Initiative. That metropolis and Hope Business partnered on $14 million in repackaged Group Development Block Grant funds to the application, which financed the opening of 3 new shops, such as a Full Food items Marketplace.

Since no new grocer was recruited as a result of the system, city-parish spokesperson Mark Armstrong says the city-parish ultimately paid out only $26,000 to its plan partners, Hope Organization and Pennsylvania-centered nonprofit The Food items Belief to go over administration prices. That $26,000 was paid out through Nutritious BR and was funded by way of philanthropic contributions, according to Armstrong. 

The remaining $1.7 million earmarked for the plan was intended to be employed as personal loan funds for grocers who made a decision to open a new retail store. 

“Ultimately, the agreement came and went with that initiative and we haven’t discovered a grocer however,” Armstrong claims. “The administration continue to really a lot would like to help a new grocery retailer and is even now committed to offering funding when we obtain a lover.”

While this particular initiative ultimately did not pan out, Armstrong stresses that the metropolis-parish stands ready to invest in a new retail store and has produced progress in cultivating entry to clean foods in underserved neighborhoods, together with its partnership with Dollar Basic to inventory contemporary make at its north Baton Rouge retailers as very well as with Our Girl of the Lake’s Geaux Get Wholesome application. 

The new Rouses grocery prepared for north Baton Rouge, on the corners of Florida Boulevard and North Ardenwood Travel, was not part of the initiative, Armstrong states.