KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The decline of the Sun Fresh Market at East 31st Street and Prospect Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri, continues to be a concern for shoppers, neighborhood residents, and city officials.
KSHB 41 In-Depth Reporter Alyssa Jackson visited the store three times in the past month.
On her visit Tuesday, the store's decline appeared to have accelerated.
While the Sun Fresh has plenty of processed food, the produce, dairy, and meat departments are nearly empty.
John Reed usually stops by the grocery store for lunch, but hasn't been able to find any hot food.
"It's just like they abandoned the community," Reed said.
Jackson watched several people go inside the market, but they didn't stay long before they walked out.
Brenda Springs stopped by to find hot lunch on her work break.
"There is a smell, there is an odor, and it’s not a pleasant odor," Spring said. "I saw so many things not in the store... I don’t know how people are getting food or what they need."
The City of Kansas City, Missouri, owns the Linwood shopping center, and Community Builders of Kansas City, a nonprofit, owns the grocery store.
The Linwood Shopping Center was roughly a $17 million investment, according to City Manager Mario Vasquez. It was completed in 2017.
The center is located in a community Improvement District (CID), where the city collects revenue from a 1% retail sales tax on purchases to help pay for the development.
Linwood Sun Fresh Market has received more than $1 million in city funding.
Vasquez said the money has been allocated for security, maintenance, and repairs.
KCMO and Sun Fresh owners want the store to survive
KCMO Mayor Quinton Lucas, Vasquez, City Councilmembers from the Third District, and Community Builders KC met last week to talk about the store's operations.
Vasquez said they haven't fully figured out how to solve all the store's challenges.
However, everyone involved in the meeting wants the store to remain open.
"The owner of the grocery store is concerned about the long-term future of the grocery store, as are we," Vasquez said. "The City of Kansas City invested a significant amount of money to bring the shopping center up to par, and we had a really good run for several years, so we want to make sure our investment is protected and the grocery store wants to make sure their investment is protected as well."
The city has been through three contracts with security companies in the past 18 months, according to Vasquez.
He said crime surrounding the store also contributed to its decline.
Vasquez said: "At the end of the day, with this nonprofit, they pour any revenue they have into the grocery store to make it profitable. If their core business is not functioning, is not successful, then everything fails."
Community Builders declined another interview with KSHB 41 about its efforts to keep the store open.
Vasquez said the store is at risk of closing, but the consequences to the neighborhood would be significant.
"This is a project that was assigned to me when I was a project manager in the city," he said. "I’m personally, emotionally invested in this project. I put a lot of my time and effort into it, trying to make it work. It had been working for a while until 2023, which is when we experienced a weird uptick in public safety issues and those were hard to overcome."
Financial picture
KSHB 41 In-Depth Reporter Alyssa Jackson pulled Community Builders' latest tax filing available to the public.
According to its website, the company has an $80 million portfolio of commercial and residential development that's focused on the urban core.
A 2023 tax filing from ProPublica's database shows the nonprofit has struggled to get out of the red.
That year, the nonprofit took in $8.9 million in revenue, but had $14.7 million in expenses.
Five of Community Builders' top employees, including CEO Emmet Pierson, made six-figure salaries.
In 2023, Pierson had a base salary of $188,538 and earned a $33,250 bonus.
The city manager said the salaries aren't unusual since the organization runs more than a grocery store.
Vasquez agreed that there are some questions about the bonus structure that can be addressed with the nonprofit's board.
"One of the things to keep in mind in this industry, it does require a certain level of skill to run a business, however complex it might be. It doesn’t surprise me they are compensating executives to a certain degree because that’s what it takes to run that kind of a business."
"Trying to find a path to keep things working," City Manager Mario Vasquez
The future of the Sun Fresh market remains uncertain.
The store is a vessel for the community.
Before the shopping center was redeveloped in 2017, two grocery stores had closed on the city's east side.
The closing of the Sun Fresh Market would create a domino effect that may be difficult to recover from.
"Means a lot of unwinding of business relationships and becomes that much harder to attract the next investors or next companies," Vasquez said Like 'look, you can be successful here' and it doesn’t take long for them to say ‘can we?' and question whether they can be successful or not."'
He said one step they can take is encouraging people to see the store as a safe place to shop.
"That’s one of the things that was the biggest failing, I guess," Vasquez said. "A lot of emphasis on how unsafe it was."
Without Sun Fresh, some shoppers don't think the community will recover.
"Probably deteriorate because we need a grocery store," said Alexandria Canady.
The city manager said this requires a deep look at what it means for the store to be unsuccessful.
"Just want to know why? Why is it like this? The inner city, we are worth more than this," said Brenda Springs, a shopper.
