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Jeanne Pinado, CEO, Madison Park Development Corp.
Challenge: Historically, access to healthy food has been a challenge in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood, where 54 percent of its 56,000 residents live at or below the poverty line. The community has some of the city's highest rates of heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Until 2015, this historic center of Boston's African-American community had no supermarket, only high-priced convenience stores and bodegas carrying little fresh produce, meats and dairy. Venturing beyond this food desert was a cost of time and money, a significant hurdle for Roxbury residents with limited resources.
The seeds of this success story were planted a half-century ago. In 1966, community activists challenged the city's urban renewal plans that called for razing homes and businesses in the low-income neighborhood. They formed Madison Park Development Corporation (MPDC), one of the nation's first resident-led community development organizations. Today, MPDC provides affordable homes to more than 3,000 families and continues to work to revitalize Roxbury's Dudley Square commercial district. At the same time that MPDC was established in the 1960's, Cuban immigrant Pastor Medina arrived and opened Tropical Foods in Dudley Square. The grocery store catered mostly to shoppers seeking Caribbean and South American foods, but Medina's grandsons, Ronn and Randy Garry, eventually wanted to expand the store beyond its tight quarters and limited selection.
MPDC saw the Garry's intentions as opportunity to collaborate on a redevelopment project
that would prove highly important for Dudley Square, and in 2012 the two joined forces to secure funding and approval to develop a city-owned lot for multiple purposes.
As the lead developer of the venture, MPDC worked with the Boston Redevelopment Authority on the design for the new store, which boasts large windows overlooking a tree-lined boulevard and a strikingly modern exterior. Now triple its former size, Tropical Foods has expanded to include a deli, fish market and bakery.
The project has made an important impact on the local economy. The rebuilt Tropical Foods created 30 new, permanent jobs; buys many of its products from local vendors; and supports local charities and other nonprofits.
The new supermarket, opened in 2015, is the centerpiece for MPDC's three-acre redevelopment plan for the Roxbury site. The renovation of the former Tropical Foods store to provide mixed-income housing and retail space is under construction and will open in 2017. Construction of a 59,000-square foot commercial building is the third and final phase.
This first privately-led development of city land in the neighborhood is a striking example of effective cross-sector collaboration. The project expands local business opportunities and employment, it revitalizes a commercial district formerly in decline and, it serves as a key part of the remedy for the community's food insecurity.
Meanwhile, the venture has prompted improvements within the MPDC organization as well. Early in the construction, protesters picketed the site over concerns that some workers were not paid a fair wage. Though those wages were paid by a subcontractor, MPDC stepped in and forged a policy ensuring a $15-per-hour minimum wage for all workers for all of its projects. The intense scrutiny played a role in spurring MPDC and Tropical Foods to increase the number of local residents and people of color in its construction workforce. Eventually, the project's workforce included 41 percent Boston residents and 55 percent people of color.
The Tropical Foods partnership enhances MPDC's community building and engagement activities, in particular its Health Equity and Wellness initiative, which works to address health disparities in the neighborhood. An MPDC food-access project now includes nutrition workshops and cooking classes that offer participants tours of the supermarket. People learn how to read nutrition labels and bring home ingredients for trying new recipes provided by MPDC's health and wellness partner, Cooking Matters. The store's co-owner Ronn Garry hosts the tours and says: "We felt it was important to invest in the community that has given us so much."
Today the "Gateway to Dudley Square," once a blighted vacant lot at the intersection of two busy roadways in a dense residential neighborhood, is a welcoming entryway to the neighborhood, offering its residents affordable access to healthy food. Financing for the $15.5 million project was provided by Bank of America, a MassWorks grant, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Healthy Food Initiative and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development.
The project imparts three important lessons:
Challenge: Historically, access to healthy food has been a challenge in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood, where 54 percent of its 56,000 residents live at or below the poverty line. The community has some of the city's highest rates of heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Until 2015, this historic center of Boston's African-American community had no supermarket, only high-priced convenience stores and bodegas carrying little fresh produce, meats and dairy. Venturing beyond this food desert was a cost of time and money, a significant hurdle for Roxbury residents with limited resources.
The seeds of this success story were planted a half-century ago. In 1966, community activists challenged the city's urban renewal plans that called for razing homes and businesses in the low-income neighborhood. They formed Madison Park Development Corporation (MPDC), one of the nation's first resident-led community development organizations. Today, MPDC provides affordable homes to more than 3,000 families and continues to work to revitalize Roxbury's Dudley Square commercial district. At the same time that MPDC was established in the 1960's, Cuban immigrant Pastor Medina arrived and opened Tropical Foods in Dudley Square. The grocery store catered mostly to shoppers seeking Caribbean and South American foods, but Medina's grandsons, Ronn and Randy Garry, eventually wanted to expand the store beyond its tight quarters and limited selection.
MPDC saw the Garry's intentions as opportunity to collaborate on a redevelopment project
that would prove highly important for Dudley Square, and in 2012 the two joined forces to secure funding and approval to develop a city-owned lot for multiple purposes.
As the lead developer of the venture, MPDC worked with the Boston Redevelopment Authority on the design for the new store, which boasts large windows overlooking a tree-lined boulevard and a strikingly modern exterior. Now triple its former size, Tropical Foods has expanded to include a deli, fish market and bakery.
The project has made an important impact on the local economy. The rebuilt Tropical Foods created 30 new, permanent jobs; buys many of its products from local vendors; and supports local charities and other nonprofits.
The new supermarket, opened in 2015, is the centerpiece for MPDC's three-acre redevelopment plan for the Roxbury site. The renovation of the former Tropical Foods store to provide mixed-income housing and retail space is under construction and will open in 2017. Construction of a 59,000-square foot commercial building is the third and final phase.
This first privately-led development of city land in the neighborhood is a striking example of effective cross-sector collaboration. The project expands local business opportunities and employment, it revitalizes a commercial district formerly in decline and, it serves as a key part of the remedy for the community's food insecurity.
Meanwhile, the venture has prompted improvements within the MPDC organization as well. Early in the construction, protesters picketed the site over concerns that some workers were not paid a fair wage. Though those wages were paid by a subcontractor, MPDC stepped in and forged a policy ensuring a $15-per-hour minimum wage for all workers for all of its projects. The intense scrutiny played a role in spurring MPDC and Tropical Foods to increase the number of local residents and people of color in its construction workforce. Eventually, the project's workforce included 41 percent Boston residents and 55 percent people of color.The Tropical Foods partnership enhances MPDC's community building and engagement activities, in particular its Health Equity and Wellness initiative, which works to address health disparities in the neighborhood. An MPDC food-access project now includes nutrition workshops and cooking classes that offer participants tours of the supermarket. People learn how to read nutrition labels and bring home ingredients for trying new recipes provided by MPDC's health and wellness partner, Cooking Matters. The store's co-owner Ronn Garry hosts the tours and says: "We felt it was important to invest in the community that has given us so much."
Today the "Gateway to Dudley Square," once a blighted vacant lot at the intersection of two busy roadways in a dense residential neighborhood, is a welcoming entryway to the neighborhood, offering its residents affordable access to healthy food. Financing for the $15.5 million project was provided by Bank of America, a MassWorks grant, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Healthy Food Initiative and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development.
The project imparts three important lessons:
- Local business can benefit greatly by partnering with a committed CDC to achieve mutual objectives.
- Partnerships require compromise and attention to trust-building.
- When intense scrutiny is met by transparently addressing community concerns, everyone benefits.
