Two weeks after launching a survey on urban food access and how to best invest $1 million in federal ARPA funds, Saginaw City Council members have taken the next step for a separate $1 million they already have reserved for a specific project.
The aim is to address the “food desert” lack of a major supermarket on the East Side, or anywhere near the river. Even on the most prosperous outer West Side, shoppers have seen their Kroger flee to the suburbs.
Monday’s agenda included a contract with the new Saginaw Food Community Club and Kitchen, grantee for the first $1 million, to lease the city-owned former Big Brothers property at 1910 Fordney, across from the YMCA, to serve as a “nonprofit membership model,” which is parlance for a co-op. The Food Club would demolish the old offices and build a new facility.
The outline from City Manager Tim Morales and from Cassi Zimmerman, planning and economic development director, states, “The use of the property will ultimately serve the important purpose for the City by addressing and impacting food equity through increased access to healthy foods and nutritional resources.”
Food Club will pay a nominal $1 lease for paperwork processing purposes and will be responsible for all insurances and property upkeep.
Through the Food Club guidelines, for example, a family of four with annual income up to around $50,000 will pay in the $15 range for $100 in credits. Half of households will qualify for at least some sort of aid, while others without subsidies could benefit from suburban-type prices at an in-town location.
Organizers represent agencies that aim to uplift families in financial and social need, including a number of the existing shelters, soup kitchens and food pantries. Planning began in 2018, prior to the pandemic and ARPA, the American Rescue Plan Act. A Food Club goal is to seek an alternative to the long lines on drive-through distribution days at locations that range from Saginaw County CAC to Old Town Christian Outreach to East Side Soup Kitchen/Hidden Harvest to The Salvation Army.
In total, Saginaw’s fledgling Food Club, based on a Grand Rapids model, has raised $3.75 million toward a $5 million goal.
An Oct. 17 forum with neighborhood leaders took place to help kick off the survey for the remaining $1 million, and some participants asked whether the first priority for any sort of new grocery facility — Food Club or other — should be to make use of one of the still-solid vacant structures that dot the city, especially school buildings that remain. Monday’s approval of the land lease for Food Club, which had looked at the abandoned Civitan Center and other sites before deciding to build new, is counter to that concern.
To take the survey, click here.
Saginaw’s total ARPA share is $52 million. Leading priorities have been to keep the general fund in balance, to upgrade infrastructure like Ojibway Island, Hoyt Park and City Hall itself, to increase activity options for children and teens, to perform basic home repairs for those in need, and to promote development in Saginaw’s new economic base, which has switched from automotive to health care.
