By Walter Elliott
NEWARK – If you believe you are living in a “food desert,” then the New Jersey Economic Development Authority wants to turn it into an oasis with $240 million across the Garden State.
The NJ DEA has targeted 50 “Food Desert Communities” – from Sussex County’s Montague Township to Cape May’s Woodbine – for gaining its residents with greater nutritional food access through $40 million in annual tax credits, loans, grants and/or technical assistance over the next six years.
The appropriations are from the Food Desert Relief Act segment of the Economic Recovery Act signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy Jan. 7, 2021. the funding avenues aim to construct new supermarkets and/or grocery stores and to help their development and sustainability.
This list was compiled by the state departments of agriculture, community affairs, health and human services. The ranking is based on composite scores of supermarket access, vehicle access and SNAP/Food Stamp enrollment among an area’s 2020 population and unemployment rate.
The state estimates that 900,000 Garden Staters – a 10th of New Jersey’s population – are food insecure. They do not know where their next meal will come from the next 24 hours or face limited access to food.
What the NJDEA unveiled Jan. 5 is a “proposed” list. The following roster of “Local Talk” towns or areas may be changed after the public feedback window closed on Feb. 4. (Public input may be left at www.njdea.com/program-specific-feedback.
The current list includes six “Local Talk” towns that took seven of the top 50 places.
Newark’s South Ward (ranked third), West Ward (fourth), East Ward (seventh) and North/Central wards (eighth) are among “the food desert top 10.”
Irvington, the next “Local Talk” town, is 20th. East Orange is by itself at 27. Orange/West Orange/Montclair is next in 28th.
All 50 zones, should they get an equal share of the annual $40 million. would get $80,000. That annual $80,000 becomes $560,000 if all seven “Local Talk” zones get their equal share.
The $560,000 becomes a projected $3.360 million over the six-year program.
The question then becomes how did these seven “Local Talk” zones become “deserts.” Part of the answer may be found in how the grocery market chased demographics and trends over the decades.
Orange, West Orange and Montclair, for example, used to be served by the A&P, Pathmark, Grand Union, Food Fair, Foodtown and Acme. The Orange Valley, for example, had been served by two small neighborhood A&Ps, a 1940s-era Acme, a 1950s Grand Union Plaza and a mid-1960s Shop-Rite.
By 1980, Shop-Rite sold its Valley store to Bravo and moved up First Orange Mountain to the Essex Green Plaza. It replaced Penn Fruit there to compete against Hills-Korvettes and, later, Pathmark at now-West Orange Plaza.
Acme moved out of Tremont Avenue and was replaced by a Family Dollar. Foodtown left its South Jefferson Street and North Day Street stores which became the respective Extra and Bravo supermarkets.
The Grand Union Plaza is now CVS Pharmacy Plaza, which also houses a Krausers convenience store. The old A&Ps in the Valley and Orange’s Main Street, one of which became a Valley Road art gallery in the 1970s, have faded into obscurity.
While the Essex Green Shop-Rite has been in its second-generation building since the 1980s, Whole Foods replaced Pathmark in West Orange Plaza.
Many of these supermarket chains took advantage of the real estate made accessible by the opening of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s. (Interstate 280 had opened in this area in 1974.)
Supermarkets could then open larger volume stores with parking lots with relative ease and inexpensively compared to those in cities or older suburbs. The older stores were generally sold to smaller, more discount-oriented chains.
This pattern, with some variation, can be found among the other “Local Talk” towns/food desert zones.
Montclair’s Lackawanna Plaza Pathmark, which replaced the old Fourth Ward/South End Acme, remains empty while a disputed redevelopment plan works its way through the legal system. Another Acme, on Claremont Avenue, has been replaced by a CVS.
There is a Whole Foods (ex-Food Fair) by the Montclair Art Museum and the Upper Montclair Kings is still holding court. The once “A&P of the Future” on Upper Montclair’s Valley Road is now an Acme.
Pathmarks on Newark’s South Orange Avenue and Ferry Street have given way to an LA Fitness gym and an Acme-turned-Sebara’s.
Two former Foodtowns – one at Newark’s Ivy Hill Plaza and the other at Irvington’s 10 Mill Rd. – became City Supermarkets.
The A&P – under the leadership Orange’s George Huntington Hartford, Sr. and sons George, Jr. and John – pioneered open aisles and front-end cashiers. Customers, before then, who did not grow their own meat and produce had to ask for those items in individual specialty stores or at farmers’ markets.
Those innovations helped the A&P to become the United States’ largest retailer 1915-65. The 1859-founded A&P, which used to seemingly have at least one store in each “Local Talk” town was liquidated along with its Pathmark division in 2015.
A 1970 “Fortune” magazine article had indicated that the parent company had been slow in selling its older, smaller stores and in opening larger suburban stores.
Pathmark, before its absorption by A&P, opened 24-hour Super Centers in Newark, West Orange and Montclair in 1970.
Southland Corp. opened its first ‘Local Talk” area 7-Eleven in Bloomfield in the late 1970s. It ushered Quick Chek, Wawa and other convenience stores – making them almost as ubiquitous as the old A&Ps.
Department stores like Kmart and big box stores like Walmart and Costco opened food aisles in the 1990s. Dollar stores like Family Dollar, Dollar General and Dollar Tree began appearing here in the 2000s. More budget-minded, in-house branded Sav-a-Lot, Aldi and Lidl have also joined the local fray.
Then there are the food delivery services of the last decade, bolstered by the COVID pandemic’s self-isolation.
All of the foregoing leaves behind the smaller, older stores in the older neighborhoods. Some have survived as ethnic-oriented grocery stores. Some may have turned the corner delicatessen model into the bodegas.
These retailers have their advantages ($1 cup of coffee, $2.50 cheese sub) and disadvantages ($3.99 jar of peanut butter, lack of produce).
The final NJDEA list, where there may be changes to the seven “Local Talk” areas’ rankings, may well come out around March 1.
