If Margaret Gilland had a car, she could get to a Kroger in less than five minutes. The closest one is just over a mile from her Binghampton apartment.

But, like about 27% of the people in her community, she doesn't drive. By bus, the round trip could take more than three hours.

Gilland is 66 years old. Still recovering from a stroke, she has trouble walking long distances, she said. To get to Kroger, she walked to a bus stop on Holmes Street. Bus 53 took her north to Summer Avenue. She then walked to a second bus that took her back south then down Poplar Avenue where she would first walk across the busy street before crossing the vast parking lot to the grocery store in the Poplar Plaza shopping center.

To get home, she had to do it all again. This time, weighed down by grocery bags.

"I didn't go because I didn't like to ride the bus too much," Gilland said.

Instead, she would wait for her sister or her son to free up time to take her. They didn't mind giving her a ride.

Gilland said she made sure to check expiration dates meticulously and stay clear of too many fresh produce items that could spoil before she a chance at another grocery run.

If she forgot something, she did without it.

A Save A Lot grocery store opened in February 2018 at 516 Tillman St., in Binghampton. Gilland can now get to a grocery store in about 15 minutes on a single bus. While the new store made fresh food more accessible for Gilland, across Memphis there are many others still facing the struggle she once did.

Late last year, family-owned grocer Montesi's along Summer Avenue closed. While it was difficult for Gilland to get to Montesi's too, her neighbors lost an alternative to the Poplar Plaza Kroger. It was replaced by a wholesale furniture store.

Two Kroger locations — one in Orange Mound and one in South Memphis — closed early last year after the company reported the stores lost more than $2 million each in four years.

While there is a SuperLo, a Save A Lot and a Kroger in Frayser, all three are along Frayser Boulevard. Those living in the northern and central part of the neighborhood can generally access fresh produce, but those in the southern part of the neighborhood and other parts of North Memphis struggle.

Then finally there is South City, the neighborhood surrounding the site of the former Foote Homes public housing complex Downtown.

South City's persistent food desert

When Foote Homes was demolished in 2017 to make way for higher-quality affordable housing Downtown, the redevelopment, funded in part by a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant, had plans to include a grocery store.

Right now, the closest full-service grocery store is a Kroger at Poplar Avenue and Cleveland Street about three miles away from the former Foote Homes. It takes two buses to get there.

Despite early promises, no grocery store is coming to the neighborhood. At best, South City may see a small shop selling produce but specifics for where and when that could be installed are scarce.

The search for a grocer started in 2015, said Paul Young, director for the Memphis Division of Housing and Community Development. But when the city put out a call for grocers who might be interested in opening in South City, none responded, he said.

And now, even if a grocery chain was interested, it's nearly impossible to open one in the neighborhood.

"Right now, in South City we don't have a piece of property that's in the right location," said Shawn Massey of The Shopping Center Group. Massey helped bring the Save A Lot to Gilland's Binghampton neighborhood and is also looking for grocers for South City and Frayser.

A plot of land near Clayborn Temple was nixed early because of the number of tourists in the area, Massey said. Another site just east of South City was also shot down. It was too far for residents in South Main whose dollars would be needed to support the store. Late last year, the last available spot — an empty lot near the corner of Vance Avenue and B.B. King Boulevard — was purchased by Wiseacre Brewing Co.

That spot is only about three blocks from the former Foote Homes. The brewery broke ground for its Downtown location last month.

While the brewery took the spot that Massey hoped would eventually be home to a grocery store, breweries are also celebrated additions to neighborhoods that can often kickstart more investment.

"Local breweries and taprooms have the power to be catalysts for economic development in emerging neighborhoods," Downtown Memphis Commission staffers wrote in a report recommending the approval of a 15-year tax break for Wiseacre in December. "Taprooms are often seen as draws for people and additional investment to vacant buildings and sites in their proximity. Local breweries and taprooms also function as informal community hubs and places for residents and visitors alike to gather.

"As a relevant local example, many point to the opening of Wiseacre’s first location on Broad Avenue as a key step in the reemergence of that district."

Both Massey and Noah Gray, executive director of the Binghampton Development Corp., said the development of Broad Avenue helped convince Save A Lot that a Binghampton location could be successful.

MEMPHIS DEVELOPMENT:As Broad Avenue booms, business owners want to lift Binghampton

But while a brewery can be an economic engine for a community, the process of getting a grocery store in an underserved community is still a slow one. Gray said he's not surprised South City still doesn't have a grocer after four years of searching. After all, it took Binghampton a decade to get its store.

'An enormous up-hill push'

The Save A Lot opened Feb. 1, 2018, the culmination of more than 10 years of finding, purchasing and clearing land, courting national grocery chains and approving millions in tax breaks.

"That was the first time that residents in the neighborhood could walk to their community's grocery store and buy fresh produce," Gray said.

At least a dozen times, the plan for the Binghampton Gateway Center and the grocery store that would anchor it was thought to be dead.

"One thing that needs to be considered is how hard these deals are to do," Gray said. "Think about all the moving pieces: We aggregated 11 different parcels of land in eight complex land deals, all of which started with a no. Every one of those deals started with a no. That's one way this Gateway Center died. There were 12 times this Gateway Center died and was resurrected.

"This is an enormous up-hill push and took real support from people who refused to give up."

From the beginning, the BDC decided it would be best if an outside retailer with experience running successful stores opened the grocer.

"We had no business running a grocery store," Gray said. "It was never going to be the BDC grocery store. It needed to be an anchor tenant and we needed to be the landlord. There has to be a business decision from a tenant that can come in and take the risk."

For years, every grocer — even Save A Lot — said no.

Residents made it clear that they needed a more accessible option. In a 2010 survey issued during the early part of the search for a grocer, 80% of Binghampton residents said they a needed grocery store in the community and only 35% said they drove to get groceries.

Gray and the team behind getting the store grappled with questions about whether Binghampton had enough density to support a grocer.

Even as the project moved forward and Save A Lot finally said yes and Dollar Tree followed shortly behind, there was still one more battle standing in the way.

"There was a day that I sat here and almost puked in my trash can thinking about how I've got to go tell the board and tell the neighborhood that we weren't getting a grocery store," Gray said describing the day he learned that amid all the project delays the price of materials and labor had continued to rise creating a $1 million chasm between the estimated and actual cost of the project.

But the BDC was able to raise the money to push forward.

Save A Lot Director of Real Estate John Raymond said the company measures the success of a store by how many people come to shop on a regular basis. He wouldn't share what the metrics for the Binghampton store were or if it met or surpassed that goal. He did however say the company is "pleased" with how the store is doing after its first year.

"We're encouraged by how the store is doing so far," he said.

Union Row will bring food closer to South City

Around the time Wiseacre announced its second location, another game-changing project was revealed. Union Row, a $950 million project that promised to bring more housing, retail and office space to the heart of Downtown, announced plans to build up less than half a mile north of South City.

Union Row has also promised to bring a grocery store that will likely be the one to serve South City residents as well.

"If you put a Union Row grocery store in, there's really not a big enough market for another grocery store in South City," Massey said.

That means the store will need to be affordable enough to serve the residents of South City, where Census data says the median annual income is less than $15,000, and have enough variety for future Union Row residents, who will likely have far more spending power. Average rent across Union Row's nearly 800 apartments is expected to top $1,400.

Project developer Kevin Adams said he is still looking for a tenant to bring the store and making final decisions on where the best location for the store will be to serve the most people and make it attractive to a grocer who needs space for massive trucks to deliver produce and other goods several times a week.

Henry Turley, who pioneered development in Downtown, said trying to serve so many different communities could prove to be a challenge.

"It's hard to do a lower-income and high-income store in the same facility," Turley said, adding that it will be important for Adams to get it right because he knows from developing housing in Harbor Town decades ago that a grocery store has the power to make a community feel complete.

Turley said he built Cordelia's Market himself after trying and failing to attract a big retailer 15 years ago "because the customers asked for it."

"People who were renting the homes out there kept asking me, 'Where is the grocery?'" Turley said of Harbor Town's earliest residents. "I think they were asking a deeper question. ... I thought they were saying, 'Is this a complete community? Is this real? Is this sort of like what I'm used to? Is this really a neighborhood or just a subdivision?' But they used that term: grocery store."

If Union Row is to succeed, its grocery store could be one of the most important tenants that takes it from just an apartment building and makes it a community. To do that, Adams will have to tackle the task of finding a grocer that can serve South City, too.

Although no retailers — a grocer or otherwise — have been announced in the six months since the project was revealed, Adams says he knows Union Row won't exist in a silo. He said he wants a grocer for all Downtowners, not just the middle or upper class ones.

And, for the sake of those in South City, officials hope he can deliver.

"Our hope is that what happens in Union Row will still be able to serve the South City market," Young said.

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Desiree Stennett covers economic development and business at The Commercial Appeal. She can be reached at desiree.stennett@commercialappeal.com, 901-529-2738 or on Twitter: @desi_stennett.