Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration passed on applying for state funding for a city-owned grocery store, raising questions about the future of the bold proposal the mayor floated more than a year ago.
Johnson first raised the idea of a publicly owned grocery store in September 2023. He framed the idea as a way to improve food access on the city’s South and West sides, where supermarket closures have left many residents with limited access to fresh groceries in their neighborhoods.
Activists who see groceries as a public good akin to a city water department or post office have long supported the concept. Still, the grocery business is notoriously tough, and critics have expressed skepticism that the city, lacking in-house grocery expertise, could pull off the project.
The public grocery stores that exist are in much smaller municipalities. Chicago could be the first major U.S. city to open a publicly owned grocery store if it does so, though the idea has attracted interest elsewhere, including in New York City and Atlanta.
In December, the city passed on applying for state funding for the project despite previously saying it would do so.
The $20 million Illinois Grocery Initiative, which Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law in 2023, was created to help open or fund grocery stores in “food deserts” statewide. Municipalities are among the entities that can apply for the funding for up to $2.4 million for each project — not nearly enough to fund the startup of a grocery store, but a place to start.
The Tribune filed a Freedom of Information Act request for applications filed by the city for funding under the state program but found no such records. The first round of state grocery grants were awarded in October, and the deadline to apply for the second round of funding was in early December.
A city spokesperson did not comment Monday on the decision not to apply for funding.
In a memo sent to top City Hall staffers Aug. 28, the mayor’s chief of staff, Cristina Pacione-Zayas, said she was coordinating efforts to apply for a state grant.
Staff would be expected to work on tasks like site evaluations and financial analysis to ready the city’s application for state funding, Pacione-Zayas wrote in the memo, which the Tribune obtained.
In the memo, Pacione-Zayas said HR&A Advisors, a consultancy that authored a feasibility study on the municipally owned grocery project for the city, would lead and support city departments in the application effort.
HR&A had highlighted the state grocery program as a possible source of funding in its study, which found a public grocery store to be “necessary, feasible and implementable” in Chicago. The city has not released the feasibility study despite previously saying it would. The Tribune and Sun-Times reported on the study in early August.
The HR&A consultants were hired by the nonprofit Economic Security Project, a longstanding proponent of public grocery stores that was an initial partner of Johnson’s on the grocery project.
In a statement, Sarah Saheb, director of the Economic Security Project’s Illinois affiliate, said the organization “urge[s] leaders across Illinois to take advantage of state resources to help support access to groceries in their communities.”
“As corporations have consolidated power in almost every industry, including grocery store operations, they’ve put profits over people, leaving families with chronic diseases and shorter life spans,” Saheb said in the statement, adding that the state program “gives municipalities the tools they need to create viable public options.”
Supermarket closings have plagued the city’s South and West sides for years, making it difficult for many residents, especially those who don’t have cars or are elderly, to buy fresh groceries.
City leaders throughout multiple mayoral administrations have struggled to address grocery store closings, in some cases doling out public funds to bring in private grocers that later close stores in the city’s underserved neighborhoods.
Under Rahm Emanuel, for example, the city spent more than $10 million to bring a Whole Foods to Englewood that the company closed six years later.
Proponents of a city-owned grocery store have argued that while opening such a store could be logistically challenging, it would alleviate some of the issues Chicago has faced by making the city less reliant on the goodwill of for-profit grocery companies.
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