West Oakland has been without a proper supermarket for eight years, but according to the SF Business Times, that might change. Real estate mogul Tom Henderson (owner of the Tribune Tower) is investing $25 million to open a 15,000-square-foot store near the West Oakland BART station. 800 Market Street was home to a full-size grocery until 2006, when the owner made off with the cash on a supermarket sweep and West Oakland became a so-called “food desert” once again.
This is great news for a neighborhood with 25,000 residents, half of them without cars, and which failed to attract a Foods Co only four years ago. Mandela Foods is small and somewhat pricey, and the People’s Community Market is inadequate to the task, as three-quarters of the neighborhood still leaves the area to go grocery shopping.
The concept of a “food desert” isn’t without class overtones, however. Nob Hill lacked a grocery store bigger than 3,000 square feet until Trader Joe’s opened on California and Hyde in 2012, but no one wrote that posh precinct off as a food desert. Unquestionably, there are high barriers to eating fresh produce, even here in the Land of Plenty, but the idea presumes that low-income people are mindless zombies who only eat what’s right in front of them and haven’t heard that leafy greens are nutritious. After all, 4505 Meats’ chicharrones really aren’t all that different from Baken-Ets fried pork skins in a gas station, but one’s a guilty pleasure for sophisticated foodies and the other is America’s obesity crisis writ small.
There’s also a glimmer of further changes to come if this project goes forward. As Henderson said, when “you put in a first-class grocery store, the [neighboring] tenants are going to change also,” and we know all too well what that means. It’s debatable whether Henderson would have eyed the property if gentrification weren’t already in full swing, but then again, it’ll create a number of jobs, too. Just as long as this grocery store isn’t entirely marketed to hypothetical customers who don’t yet live there, and the residents of West Oakland have their wants and needs heard and met, this should be solid good news.
[Via SF Business Times; photo via Google Maps]
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