The Re/Storing Nashville Leadership Team, comprised of North Nashville, East Nashville and Edgehill residents, meets each Monday afternoon. Today, we took a field trip!
Over the last two weeks, we've been having lots of conversations with organizations, individuals and businesses planning/hoping to open smallscale grocery stores in Nashville food desert neighborhoods. Included in those conversations, was talk of a new Turnip Truck Urban Fare in the Gulch, just outside of Edgehill.
Our excursion today, however, was focused on North Nashville. We have been consulting for the last few months with a local food retailer working on a business plan for a neighborhood grocery store behind the Youth Opportunity Center, one block from Charlotte Ave. As we stood discussing the property amongst ourselves, two teenage boys were walking along the street, and we stopped them to find out their opinions. They readily talked about how a grocery store on that block "would put a smile on every face in the neighborhood." The neighborhood is walkable, and centrally located. I can imagine having the same conversation with each resident of the neighborhood.
From that location, we traveled to The Farm in the City community garden, serving the John Henry Hale Apartments. The garden was beautiful, with raised beds filled with everything from blueberry bushes to basil, tomatoes to turnips. We were excited to see that there was a handicap accessible bed with adjacent parking, water pumps built into the design of the garden, and a port-a-potty!
We moved from the garden to the old Matthew Walker Comprehensive Health Center site, on Herman between 14th and 16th, owned by Fisk University. The property, empty now, but for thistles in bloom, a concrete parking lot shrinking with the encroachment of grass and weeds, and hackberry trees blowing in the breeze. This 2.68 acre lot is in a perfect location for a grocery store. Surrounded by apartment buildings, a woman visiting a resident stopped to tell us that we should put a grocery store there. It was amazing! We hadn't said a word about why we were looking at the lot, or that our goal is to get affordable healthy foods into the neighborhood.
Encouraged, we drove back to the office and talked about all of the potential in our city, about the need, about the hard work ahead of us, and about the excitement of it all.