Advancing Health Equity with Market on Melrose
To address food insecurity, Roanoke, Virginia dedicated $10 million of its $64.5 million ARPA recovery funds toward the Market on Melrose—a full-service grocery store that will bring healthy, affordable food and more than 50 local jobs to Northwest Roanoke. As the first Goodwill operated grocery store in the nation, at least half of the new employees are expected to be area residents and the market will be a part of a larger community hub that includes a wellness center, a bank, a library, and an adult high school. Aligned with the City’s equity goals, the flagship investment promises to deliver multiple community benefits in a way that embodies the culture and spirit of the historic African American neighborhood. Richmond Vincent, Chief Executive Officer of Goodwill Industries of the Valleys says, “By improving access to nutritious food, by improving access to employment for those who do not have a high school diploma, will allow us to reduce that life expectancy gap between those in 24017 and those in neighboring zip codes.”
Why this investment?
For more than a decade, residents in the Northwest Roanoke neighborhood have been advocating for a grocery store. Once the City’s Black cultural center with many thriving businesses, the Northwest area was decimated by urban renewal and the construction of Interstate 581. Since the full-sized Kroger’s closed its doors years ago, followed by the Save-a-Lot small-format store’s closing in 2019, the neighborhood has become a food desert. Beginning in 2017, the Northwest Roanoke Food Access Initiative has been researching the issue and working with residents and government leaders to find solutions.
When the City of Roanoke learned about incoming ARPA funds, the city council appointed an advisory panel of 36 community members to recommend equitable investments that aligned with the City’s 20-year comprehensive plan, which included “interwoven equity” as one of its six pillars. After the panel held community listening sessions, addressing the lack of healthy food access in Northwest Roanoke was identified as a top priority. As City Manager Bob Cowell told WDBJ News, “This project was number one. It was at the top both in priority and in dollars that they recommended the council commit.”
While the community demand was clear, a critical piece was missing: an operator. The City had unsuccessfully been seeking to attract a grocer to the area for several years. With the potential ARPA funding on the table, Goodwill Industries of the Valleys stepped forward, suggesting that it could open and operate a store on its expanding campus in the Northwest neighborhood. The nonprofit’s new strategic plan focused on eliminating poverty, starting with reimagining its campus, and it had already partnered with the City to develop a new library branch on the campus. A grocery store was a logical next step, and Goodwill committed $20 million to bring it to life. With the Goodwill partnership secured, Roanoke City Council allocated $10 million—its single largest ARPA investment—to the Market on Melrose project.
What is this investment?
Scheduled to open in late 2024, the Market on Melrose will be a full-service grocery store that offers fresh, nutritious foods at affordable prices in a clean, safe environment and is expected to create between 50 and 60 new, quality jobs with benefits.
The 25,000 square-foot store will be the anchor of a new community hub at Melrose Plaza. Three additional community-serving tenants will follow the grocery store, including a Bank of Botetourt branch, a wellness center, and a high school for adult learners. City and community leaders see it as a transformational project that will bring needed services, jobs, capital, and cultural opportunities to the neighborhood. “Not only is it going to be this dynamic market,” Vice Mayor Joseph Cobb explains. “But people can bank there, they can get mental health care, and adults can go back to school to finish their high school diploma and obtain industry-recognized credentials. So it's going to become a village center.”
Through the project, Goodwill aims to disrupt poverty and improve community health and well-being. Vincent says that a recent community health assessment revealing that residents of the 24017 zip code live six years fewer than residents of the neighboring zip code “really dropped the mic for us,” inspiring them to do something bold to address the health disparities. Aligned with Goodwill’s focus on improving community health, the store will not sell any tobacco products and have a very limited alcohol selection. It will offer online grocery options and provide shoppers using SNAP and WIC benefits with a 50 percent discount on fresh produce as part of the Virginia Fresh Match program.
Market on Melrose will be the first grocery store operated by Goodwill, but Vincent feels confident that the nonprofit’s retail experience, mission orientation, and community engagement efforts will drive success. Community reinvestment is their bottom line, Vincent explains. “As we begin to generate revenue, we're going to invest those funds back into the store, whether it's updating technology or increasing wages of the employees of the grocery.” Goodwill is working with MDI wholesale distributors to understand how to be an independent grocer and has been learning from another independent grocery store that opened in a food desert in Richmond, Virginia. They hope that the grocery store will be a viable business within three to five years.
Centering equity in the program
Goodwill has also approached the development through a lens of equity for the African American community. “Racial equity was part of the design,” Vincent says.
Hiring residents in the 24107 zip code to work in the store is one way Goodwill is aiming to ensure equitable implementation. Another is designing the inside and outside of the store to reflect the community’s identity, history, and aspirations. The Melrose Plaza and grocery store’s logo is African inspired, and the interior Melrose Plaza community space will include a timeline of the community showcasing when the area was Roanoke’s “Black Wall Street” before urban renewal.
Meaningful community engagement is central to the project’s equity approach, and Goodwill is working to embed community engagement throughout the development process. It established a Melrose Plaza Advisory Council made up of neighborhood and community leaders that meets on a regular basis to guide the project and identify opportunities to address inequities. Goodwill has also engaged neighborhood clergy in the project.
Through this project, along with several other investments in Northwest Roanoke, the City aims to build trust between the community and local government. One aspect of that is acknowledging and giving credit to the decades of community advocacy and leadership that paved the way for the City’s investment, notes Vice Mayor Cobb.
Building community trust is also a key goal of Goodwill, both because the nonprofit seeks to strengthen its own relationship with residents and because it is taking on a role that the private sector abandoned. Vincent describes how the community has been burned multiple times by grocery store operators that began engaging them in the development process and then pulled out of the project at the last minute. “Probably the most impactful piece of this entire process is for the community to trust that we have their best interests at hand.”
Outcomes to date
The planning and design phase is complete, and the groundbreaking ceremony for Melrose Plaza was held on November 14, 2023. The grocery store is expected to open in late 2024, and Goodwill is finalizing plans and raising resources for the other new developments in Melrose Plaza. They launched a capital campaign in May 2024, and are more than halfway toward their $3 million goal.
Toward transformative change
The Market on Melrose is a flagship investment and action the City of Roanoke is taking to implement its 20-year comprehensive plan and advance equity by redressing the negative consequences of discriminatory city policies that contributed to segregation in the city and racial inequities in Northwest Roanoke. Angie O’Brien, Assistant City Manager, explains that the City is proactively “working on healing and trying to overcome” the negative impacts of its urban renewal policies.
In addition to investing in the neighborhood’s physical infrastructure, the City is working to strengthen its institutional infrastructure. Formal neighborhood associations are the primary mechanism by which the City learns about neighborhood needs and desires, according to O’Brien. The pandemic decimated the neighborhood association leadership, and the City’s neighborhood services coordinator is working to build that up.