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Workers stock fresh produce at the Price Rite store at 611 South Ave. in Syracuse on Friday, March 31, 2017. The store is scheduled to open on Sunday, April 2, 2017.
(Rick Moriarty | rmoriarty@syracuse.com)
Syracuse, N.Y. -- The opening this Sunday of a Price Rite supermarket in a low-income Syracuse neighborhood took eight years of work by a nonprofit community organization -- and a big hand from state and local taxpayers.
Price Rite is set to open the 35,000-square-foot store at 8 a.m. Sunday at 611 South Ave., a low-income Southside neighborhood that's been described as a "food desert" because of its lack of full-service grocery stores. A ribbon-cutting is scheduled for 2 p.m. with store, city, county and state officials.
The $5 million cost of renovating, expanding and equipping an existing building to house the store is being subsidized by nearly $2.4 million in government grants and tax exemptions.
Workers stock shelves at the Price Rite store at 611 South Ave. in Syracuse on Friday, March 31, 2017. The store is scheduled to open Sunday, April 2, 2017.
The biggest single chunk of government assistance is coming from the state of New York. It is providing $1.2 million in grants.
Onondaga County is the next biggest contributor. It provided the building's owner, Jubilee Homes of Syracuse, with a $350,000 grant to purchase the property in 2009. It also provided $200,000 for the installation of permeable pavement in the store's parking lot to keep rainwater runoff from flowing into the county's sewage treatment system.
In addition, the Syracuse Industrial Development Agency granted Price Rite property tax breaks worth $329,140 over 10 years, an exemption worth $272,000 from sales taxes on construction materials and a mortgage recording tax exemption worth $30,000.
Josh Bartholomew, regional operations director for Price Rite, said the project would not have been possible without the government assistance because of the grocery business's historically slim profit margins and the need to keep prices low.
"It would have been very difficult because of our margins," he said. "It would have made it very difficult without the grant money."
Jubilee Homes Executive Director Walt Dixie, who recruited Price Rite to the location, said the government subsidies are money well spent. Without them, the project would not have been economically feasible and the low-income neighborhood along South Avenue would still not have a full-service supermarket, he said.
Dixie said the South Avenue area has been a food "desert" for decades because it has no supermarket -- just corner grocery stores that he said charge high prices and sell a very limited number of food items, and little or no fresh produce.
Price Rite will give residents of the area a place to buy competitively priced food, create some jobs (about 15 full time and 85 part time) and hopefully be the start of a commercial district that will attract more retailers to South Avenue, he said.
"If you don't have these anchors in your neighborhood, people won't want to live here," he said.
Jubilee Homes started 31 years ago as a private, nonprofit housing agency, using federal funds to renovate homes for low- to moderate-income families on the southwest side of Syracuse.
Registers are ready for customers at the Price Rite supermarket at 611 South Ave. in Syracuse. The 35,000-square-foot store is scheduled to open April 2, 2017.
As federal housing dollars have dried up, Jubilee has shifted toward offering workforce training services and, with the Price Rite project, has become a commercial property developer.
Eight years ago, the organization began looking for a way to attract a supermarket to South Avenue, something residents of the area have been seeking for many years. Using the $350,000 grant from the county, Jubilee bought a building at the southeast corner of South and Bellevue avenues that housed a Loblaws supermarket in the early 1970s and more recently was home to a painting contractor.
It then went on a three-year search for a supermarket company that would be willing to open a store in the building. In 2012, Price Rite, one of the few supermarket chains that likes to operate stores in inner-city neighborhoods, was opening one at the corner of Teall Avenue and Erie Boulevard East.
At the suggestion of former Rochester Mayor and then-Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy, Price Rite President Neil Duffy (no relation) agreed to meet with Dixie at Jubilee Homes' office on South Avenue to discuss opening a store in the building owned by Jubilee.
Two years earlier, Jubilee collected the signatures of more than 3,000 neighborhood residents on cards pledging to shop at a supermarket if one opened at the location. At the meeting with Duffy, Dixie dumped the 3,000 cards on a conference table to show the Price Rite president how eager neighborhood residents were to see a supermarket open nearby.
The presentation helped to convince Duffy and other Price Rite executives that a store would succeed at the location, but only if Jubilee could assist with the renovation costs, Dixie said.
Problem was, Jubilee did not have the money.
"We didn't have any other resources but the building itself," he said.
That's when Jubilee went to the state for a $600,000 grant for Price Rite and got it. As plans for the store progressed, it became apparent that grant wouldn't be enough, said Carolyn Evans-Dean, a business consultant to Jubilee.
So Jubilee asked the state for more aid for the project. The state came through with another $600,000 for the project, she said.
In addition to obtaining the state and county grants, Jubilee persuaded the city to seize 18 tax-delinquent properties -- 14 vacant lots and four vacant buildings -- and transfer them to Jubilee to provide space for Price Rite to expand the building and create parking areas.
Dixie said the government investment in the store is small compared with the public financial assistance that has been given recently to a string of high-end residential and commercial projects downtown, on University Hill and at the Syracuse Inner Harbor. None of those projects, he noted, are meant to service low- or moderate-income residents.
"We've got to make sure we don't leave these neighborhoods behind," he said of the South Avenue area.
Jubilee is retaining ownership of the building. Price Rite has signed a 10-year lease. Evans-Dean said the store will pay Jubilee $50,000 a year in the early years of the lease, with the amount increasing in later years.
"They're not paying a lot, especially in the first five years, but that's OK," Dixie said. "Our objective was to provide a service to the community."
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