The faded white 15,000-square-foot former Save-A-Lot building just a block west of Northside’s bustling business district has been empty and boarded up for more than four years.
But the neighborhood’s community development corporation, Northsiders Engaged in Sustainable Transformation, wants to change that.
The group asked Cincinnati City Council Dec. 11 to chip in $515,000 so it can buy the building at 4145 Apple St. and make it a contributing factor in the heart of one of Cincinnati’s most popular neighborhoods.
NEST’s Stephanie Sunderland told city council’s neighborhood committee that the CDC already has a tenant lined up who is willing to pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into bringing the property up to code and opening it as a grocery store again.
Council will mull an ordinance by Vice Mayor David Mann granting NEST that money later this month, but there’s skepticism. The city’s Department of Economic and Community Development has doubts about the building’s most likely tenant, Apple Street Market. Mann’s ordinance is contingent on NEST’s ownership staying separate from the co-op market.
NEST was founded in 2005 to foster affordable homeownership.
“At the time that we started on this project, no one in their right mind would invest their time and energy as an independent contractor in the area,” Sunderland says about NEST’s first efforts on Fergus Avenue. “Foreclosure rates were high, The area was dangerous.”
The Fergus project, helped along by city funding for property acquisition, led to the construction of the first two LEED Silver homes in Northside. Since that time, NEST has rehabbed and sold 30 properties. It currently has another 10 land banked, one pending sale and three currently in rehab. The CDC has also helped transfer 21 other homes to homeowners in partnership with the Port of Hamilton County Development Authority.
Sunderland says the Save-A-Lot building is in a key spot, nestled between the business district to the east, Chase Elementary School and McKie Recreation Center to the west, a strong residential section of the neighborhood on the north and a still-struggling section to the south. Redeveloping it would catalyze further equitable progress in the area, she says.
That’s something Northside Community Council hopes will happen soon.
“We strongly support finding a way to acquire this property,” Council Vice President Mary Jo Minerich says. “The building stands almost in the center of our most important public spaces. Numerous times, the previous owners have told us they had tenants who were willing to take this property with almost no modifications. That means something like a U-Haul location.”
One of the most likely tenants under NEST's proposal, Apple Street Market, says it has confirmed $3.5 million in grants and loans it can pour into the building. The lion’s share comes from the Cincinnati Development Fund. Other sources include Finance Fund of Ohio and Interact for Health, which gave $100,000 for equipment.
The city’s economic development department isn’t convinced of the market’s viability, however, and says the city doesn’t fund grocery stores.
“While it’s certainly an interesting structure, it’s not something that we’re comfortable with at this point,” Greg Huth, interim director of Cincinnati’s Economic and Community Development Department, told council last month. “We’re struggling with, frankly, what happens with the property if the market doesn’t work. It’s not a piece of property the city would be willing to hang on to and try to maintain while we try to figure out what to do with it.”
NEST points out that the city wouldn’t be funding a grocery store, but instead providing money to a CDC to develop a neighborhood asset that could house a variety of tenants. Proponents of the plan asked the city to tap available money from federal Community Development Block Grants, which are often used for such projects.
“Worst case scenario, the building is a code-compliant upgraded white box space perfect for the right commercial development, giving NEST the ability to chose a tenant that is right for the community,” Sunderland says.
Sunderland notes that Northside has received just $195,000 of the roughly $264 million in block grant money the city has doled out in recent years. Downtown has seen more than $93 million from that funding source, and other neighborhoods like Madisonville, Oakley, Bond Hill and more have also received tens of millions of dollars from the federal grants.
During a dramatic city budget fight in June 2015, Cincinnati City Council voted 5-4 to give Clifton Market funding in the form of a $400,000 grant. But Mayor John Cranley vetoed the move, citing advice given to City Manager Harry Black by the city administration and outside experts. The city has helped with the acquisition of other former grocery sites, including the one-time Kroger building on McMillan Avenue in Walnut Hills.
Huth and council members Mann and Kevin Flynn expressed concerns about the financing structure of Apple Street’s plans for the building, saying that the it could still be tied up in $975,000 in loans from the Cincinnati Development Fund. But Apple Street Market officials say that’s not the case. NEST will have full control of the building and will also own the investments the market makes in the property, Apple Street General Manager Christopher DeAngelis told council.
Hanging over the Apple Street concept are the struggles of Clifton Market, a community-owned grocery store launched last year a couple miles from Northside. That store has experienced big difficulties meeting its projected sales numbers, keeping its cash flow up and competing with a new Kroger location nearby in Corryville.
“I live in Clifton,” Vice Mayor David Mann pointed out during last month’s meeting. “It’s no secret that the market isn’t doing as well as hoped.”
But Apple Street Market says its plan is much different. The Market is owned by both workers and community members, Market leaders say, and has based its business plan on very conservative estimates — the $69,000 a week in business that Save-A-Lot did profitably before its owners moved it out of the neighborhood.
Northside leaders say the grocery store isn’t the only option for the space anyway.
“There are other examples of uses that NEST could profitably use this location for,” Northside Community Council’s Minerich says. She mentioned co-working space, traditional offices, tech industry enterprises or restaurants as possible tenants for the location.
Victor Williams, president of Northside Business Association, says the group voted unanimously to support NEST’s plan.
“The business association has often done what NEST is asking to do,” Williams told city council. “We’ve acquired properties and turned them around, and we’ve had great success doing it. This property is pivotal. It’s important that it goes the right way.”
Some council members, including Yvette Simpson, support the plan and would like to vote on it before council changes over Jan. 2. Simpson, who ran for mayor, won’t be on council after that time.
“I actually appreciate the thoughtfulness of NEST on this,” she said. “That gives me a lot of security. Bigger picture, we’ve got to find a way in communities to have control over their grocery stores. This is a model that the community believes in.”
Others council members say they’re “intrigued” by the idea. Flynn says he bought a share in Apple Street when the initiative launched in 2015 and donated it to someone who otherwise couldn’t afford it.
“When I was in law school, I used to shop at the Save-A-Lot,” Flynn told NEST last month. “When it was an IGA, I worked there. I have a lot of history with this building and with Northside. But I remain concerned by the finances.”
At the Dec. 11 meeting, Flynn said he wants NEST to get control of the building and supports council moves to make that happen. But he’s still unsure that Apple Street Market would be successful there and would only support legislation that requires that the building’s ownership stays separate.
Northside Community Council, NEST and other boosters are hopeful the space won’t become storage or parking for trucks — other uses zoning code would allow. That could happen if a deal with Apple Street falls through, as the building’s owner has expressed a desire to sell soon.
“We can guarantee that the property will be used in a way that benefits the community and provides essential services,” Sunderland says. “We don’t believe a private owner would do that.”
Some Northside residents say they hope it becomes a grocery store in one form or another. Zach Cox came to the November city council committee meeting to voice approval for Apple Street Market’s plan.
“At a time when many communities have lost the local branches of their national chain grocery stores and feel helpless to stop this process, a community grocery store is one of our best options,” Cox said.