Core desperate for grocery store
Wed, April 23, 2008
Western researchers have documented a long-standing concern -- large parts of downtown and east London are "food deserts," lacking decent access to supermarkets.
Historic mapping included in the study show that supermarkets packed into the city's core in 1961 had all fled to the suburbs by 2005.
That may be an inconvenience for some downtown dwellers, but it's a serious problem for residents of poorer core neighborhoods with no place to shop within a reasonable walking distance, one of the authors of the study says.
"Poor people with no car can be severely affected by living in food deserts and are more likely to suffer from bad health and low quality of life," said Jason Gilliland, a geography professor at the University of Western Ontario who completed the study with graduate student Kristian Larsen.
The study priced a 66-item food basket and found the cost was 60 per cent higher in smaller convenience stores than larger supermarkets.
Gilliland said retailers have simply followed the migration of customers out to the suburbs where land is cheaper, allowing for huge stores and parking lots.
London is faring poorly compared to larger cities such as Montreal and Toronto, which have developed successful downtown supermarkets, he said. But London does not have the same population density and is probably no worse than cities of similar size.
Gilliland is hopeful the recent boom in apartment construction in the downtown core will create the critical mass needed to attract a supermarket.
The city could offer direct incentives to retailers to locate downtown, he said, but the best incentive the city can offer is planning policies that boost the population of the downtown core.
"It's not a matter of 'build it and they will come'. It's more like 'if they come, they will build it'," he said.
Gilliland sees potential for a new supermarket right in the base of a 600-unit apartment complex that Medallion Development has planned for Old East London.
"If you have 1,200 customers living upstairs, I think you're going to survive," he said.
Gilliland said the new weekend farmer's market at Western Fair has already given East London a new source of fresh food.
Consumers also have to play a part he said, noting the successful campaign in Wortley Village to save the Valumart grocery story that was threatened with closure.
Janette MacDonald, manager of Mainstreet London, said supermarket chains prefer to open stores with at least 100,000 square ft. and downtown doesn't have the space or the population to support a store of that size.
"They don't look at the people who work downtown, they look at the people who live there. People tend to shop where they live," she said.
Downtown needs a grocery retailer that can offer affordable prices in a smaller location, said MacDonald. Core retailers such as Covent Garden and Sunripe Marketplace offer quality fresh food, but do not carry a lot of staples such as cereals and canned goods.
New downtown development incentives just approved by city council could help spur more residential development and commercial renovations in the next two years.
"Will that bring a grocery store? I don't know," said MacDonald.
Mapping food deserts
The map on the left shows how grocery stores were tightly clustered in the core of the city in 1961.
The map on the lower right shows that grocery stores had moved to the suburbs by 2005, creating a "food desert" in central and east London.
The full study is available at
www.ijhealthgeographics.com
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