Dana McMahan

Special to Courier Journal

This is a tale of two not-grocery stores.

Last year when the (very nice) Falls City Market opened in the Omni Louisville Hotel, 400 S. 2nd St., in downtown to great fanfare, urban residents waited for the (real) grocery store we'd been promised in exchange for the millions of dollars in tax incentives the company received to add a market and grocery store to its hotel campus.

We're still waiting — and so is Louisville Metro Council President David James, who represents my district in Old Louisville.

I tried shopping at the new Omni market for dinner, which was a spectacular fail, and it's only gotten worse since then.

Falls City Market is a shiny food hall, and as it's pulled actual home cooking items one by one from its stock, it's ceased making any pretense at being a grocery. Instead, it's a great tourist destination with one section serving as a wildly expensive convenience store ($8 tortilla chips anyone?).

Related:I went shopping at Omni's Falls City Market: I left with nothing

Which brings us to the second kind of not-grocery store. I live in Old Louisville, where Kroger, our last grocery, pulled out in 2017. Despite efforts by business people, residents and city officials, every retailer from Aldi to Whole Foods ignored or refused efforts to rebuild or open in the “old Winn Dixie” at 4th and Oak.

Filling in the seams of Old Louisville, instead, are places billing themselves as "groceries," where along with smoking products, scratch-offs and 40 ounces of beer, a person might find fruit in the form of the seventh ingredient in “fruit pies” (right before beef fat and high fructose corn syrup), or a withered bell pepper.

I may have criticized the $6 broccoli at the Omni's market, but at least they had it. (Last I checked, they don't anymore.)

Look, I'm not asking for Blue Dog Bakery baguettes in my neighborhood, just a place in walking distance with fresh, real food my neighbors and I can cook for dinner.

I can't and don't speak for everyone in my corner of town, and some residents disagreed with objections raised when the latest “grocery store" plans were made public. But for at least some in the community, the sight of yet another of these "smokes and beer" shops — this one opening in a vacant former auto garage at the corner of St. Catherine and 3rd streets — was the proverbial last straw.

Read this:How design plans could help Louisville neighborhoods avoid gentrification

Council president James agreed and has also objected to the business, writing a formal objection letter.

Not that he doesn't want business in Old Louisville, he told me. I met up with the councilman one neighborhood over at Germantown's Full Stop Station, a cafe/small market that recently opened in a vacant former auto garage similar to the planned Old Louisville store.

“Old Louisville wants business, we want all types of business,” he said. “But we also want quality businesses. We want to maintain the quality of life. When we stand up and say we want a grocery store … we want a damn grocery store and we don't want someone to tell us it's raining when they're peeing on our feet.

"Don't tell me it's a grocery store when it's really a liquor store," he said.

The proposed store's owner, Hailay Araya, isn't doing anything numerous other business owners haven't done in the area — but that's my point.

James met with Araya at the shop owner's request, telling him he'd withdraw his letter of objection and support the store if it offered fresh produce. Araya agreed but couldn't provide specifics when James pressed him for details on what types of food he would sell, James told me.

Read more: Louisville has a fresh food problem. Can we fix it?

Araya also asked James to withdraw his letter of objection, so the councilman made an offer — bring a set of plans showing the shelving and refrigeration and what food items the shop would carry; and agree that if the shop doesn't offer those things, it would be closed.

Do that, James told me, and he's would pull his objection letter. Araya agreed, but the deadline for letters opposing the license passed, and “I haven't gotten the plans,” James said.

His objection stands.

“I am tired of businesses opening up with the idea that they're a grocery store and they sell a bunch of alcohol, some potato chips, smoking products, bongs and crack pipes,” said James. “It degrades the neighborhood.”

Which brings me to a question: What is a grocery store, anyway?

I wanted to know what requirements shops had to meet to call themselves groceries in the first place, so I scoured Metro Louisville's website in search a definition. There was none to be found, though convenience store is exhaustively defined. So I reached out to Director of Planning & Design Services Emily Liu to ask if a one existed.

“When we do not have a definition for a land use, we usually review the specific description of the business/use and make an interpretation,” Liu replied by email.

Wait. Shouldn't a business that calls itself a grocery on official applications have to actually be a grocery? As in, sell mostly food?

But when nobody defines the label, anyone from an upscale food emporium selling gourmet souvenirs to a malt beverage shop peddling lotto tickets can call itself a grocery.

This distinction is important because a Google map search of the neighborhood that I adore might show several groceries, but that doesn't reflect the reality of food shopping here.

Related: Sorry, we're closed: How everyone is hurt when grocery stores shut down

I recently learned a new term, interestingly, from a guest on one of the Old Louisville walking tours I host, that I think perfectly defines my neighborhood's food options.

The term? “Food swamp.”

More specific than lack of grocery stores, it means a food desert blighted with convenience-type stores selling ramen and Kool-Aid but little in the way of fresh, whole food — exactly what we have in Old Louisville.

The question on repeat for many of us is "why won't a grocery come to Old Louisville?"

The answers are way too complex to unpack here, but I have to think one reason is potential investors see the preponderance of food swamp shops and, thinking that's what we want, don't want to touch us with a 10-foot pole. (I think they're also overlooking a place brimming with unmet demand, so if anyone with the resources to open an actual grocery store wants to talk, come find me.)

And it becomes a vicious cycle. We'll never reach our potential as a neighborhood without a grocery store, but a real grocery store is probably not going to happen as long as we're stuck in our food swamp rut.

Recently I went to an open house on my block (because I'm that nosy neighbor). A home shopper from the East End looking at the beautifully restored Victorian had one inquiry when she learned we lived here and welcomed questions. That question:

“Where do you grocery shop?”

I hope soon we can answer at a real grocery store. But to get there, first, we'll have to define what that means.

See also: Tuition or food? How college kids use food pantries to help food insecurity

Tell Dana! Send your restaurant “Dish” to Dana McMahan at thecjdish@gmail.com and follow @danamac on Twitter.