People in the urban core were hungry for a grocery store, and the parking lot filled this morning shortly after one opened at 39th and Prospect.
Some shoppers toted food from the new Aldi to their cars. A few carried shopping bags on sidewalks as they went home or to bus stops.
They waited a long time for this oasis in the food desert. The store opened a decade after people started planning for it.
Margaret May, executive director of the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council, has long said that about 35 percent of people in that area don’t have transportation. Until today, they lived several miles from full service grocery stores.
The problem has been nationwide as urban planners struggle to bring grocery stores to urban cores.
City Councilman Jermaine Reed told the Kansas City Star of local plans for more such stores.
The city is trying to get funding for a big grocery store at the Linwood Shopping Center, he said, and Truman Medical Center is raising money for a large market at 27th Street and Troost Avenue.
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