But several members of the public and board of aldermen weren’t happy that a planned new sales tax of 1 percent would be imposed in a poor area to help a developer that hasn’t built much with the millions in city and state incentives already offered to him. The CID, if a sales tax is approved, would bring the tax rate in the CID footprint up to 9.679 percent.

“We are taxing people more who have less,” Alderman Megan Green said.

Food purchased with food stamps or EBT cards can’t be taxed, McKee replied. The grocery store will be a GreenLeaf Market run by Good Natured Family Farms, a farmers group that provides fresh food from small family farms around the Kansas City area. Financing is lined up, and construction should begin next month, he said.

The store will be funded in part with a $10 million U.S. Department of Agriculture grant as well as New Markets tax credits and brownfield tax credits. The overall construction cost is estimated at $19 million.