The Aldi on Lowry and Penn avenues in north Minneapolis closed on Feb. 12, leaving the neighborhood with only one major and two independent grocery stores.
The remaining stores aren’t in locations as accessible as Aldi, which was right on the bus line. They are also not at the same price point, something the community will definitely notice.
What was already a food desert with four grocery stores for 70,000 people has now been exacerbated. Access to basic needs are now more pronounced with the Walgreens at West Broadway and North Lyndale avenues closing on Feb. 22.
The north Minneapolis Aldi was uniquely accessible because of its location close to public transit, said Eric Moran, an eight-year resident of the Northside and frequent shopper of that Aldi.
“The bus stop there on Penn and Lowry is always full of people that have just visited there, and it’s something that always like four or five people are getting on the bus with Aldi bags or other grocery bags in their hands,” he said. “Anybody that lived in that immediate vicinity now no longer has a grocery store in their neighborhood. It’s gonna be devastating to the people that don’t have transportation.”
The company cited “the inability to renovate the store to accommodate larger product range and current lease term expiring,” as a reason for the closure, an Aldi spokesperson wrote in an email to MinnPost.
Community upheaval
Aldi tweeted just two days after announcing the Northside closure, writing, “If we were looking for new store locations, any suggestions on where we should go next?”
Minnesotans have taken to social media to advocate for Aldi to either not leave that location or open another location in that area. People online showed up for north Minneapolis, including Sen. Tina Smith who replied to the company and offered a suggestion.
“In some neighborhoods, this could just be a grocery store. But this is needed,” said Minneapolis Ward 4 Councilmember LaTrisha Vetaw. “It’s just been devastating. It’s a huge loss.”
Many community members have reached out to her asking if the city could step in, which is not possible, she said. But based on conversations with the property owner, David Wellington, she thinks he wants another grocery store to come in its place.
Officials operating one remaining grocery store on the Northside is also upset about Aldi leaving. North Market, located in the Camden neighborhood, is operated by the non-profit, Pillsbury United Communities. The store was created after community conversations in 2014 that identified a lack of grocery stores in north Minneapolis.
“(North Market) exists because we wanted to increase access to fresh foods and healthy produce in north Minneapolis. So we are not happy that we have one less business that’s doing this because the community needs it,” said Vanan Murugesan, chief transformation officer with Pillsbury United Communities.
Because North Market is not a part of a chain and purchasing for a single store, many of its products are at a higher price point than Aldi’s or Cub, Murugesan said.
That can make the product less accessible to people, said Amy Koopman, a resident of north Minneapolis’ Jordan neighborhood.
“Even though it’s a really good model (North Market), it’s not meeting the needs of the community. If we had more of those, that would be fantastic,” Koopman said.
Koopman has lived half a mile from the former Aldi location for 12 and a half years. When she heard the news of its closing, she was outraged. She was one of the people who replied to the company’s tweet.
“Aldi has been our go-to grocer. We’ll make big trips to Hy-Vee or to Cub when we need to, but Aldi is the constant grocery to go pick up a load of groceries,” she said.
At one point, when her family’s household income was slashed in half, they could only shop at Aldi. She says the difference in their prices could change the lives of people living in poverty.
“The big impact is people having to choose between putting food on their table or paying rent or paying utilities. People having to work longer hours, having to work more jobs, third jobs, fourth jobs, sending their kids to work to cover that gap,” Koopman said. “For a lot of people who don’t and who have never lived in poverty, the difference between a $4 gallon of milk and a $7 gallon of milk is like ‘that’s expensive,’ but you still pay for it because you have the padding in your budget to do that. People here don’t, and so that $3 extra for milk is astronomical. And that $3 over the course of however long it takes to get another grocery store here adds up.”
Moran observed most people who shopped at the Aldi were people of color.
“When I do take the bus, most of the people that are stopping at that location and stopping at the Aldi are people of color,” Moran said. “It’s definitely going to be impacting them a lot more than any other group.”
Hearing about the Walgreens closure furthered his concerns for Northside residents.
“I’m fairly privileged in that I can go and take my car to go get medicine where I need to. But anybody that was reliant on having something in the neighborhood is going to be in rough shape, he said. “One pharmacy in all of north Minneapolis; it’s pretty ridiculous.”
Health implications
Aldi was an affordable option in the area for healthy foods, many community members expressed.
Minnesota ranks seventh worst in the nation with groceries close to residents’ homes, according to a 2019 Wilder Research report.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Harry Colbert, Jr.[/image_credit][image_caption]Access to basic needs are now more pronounced with the Walgreens at West Broadway and North Lyndale avenues closing on Feb. 22.[/image_caption]
“When it comes to health, we want people to be able to afford to buy healthy foods: the fruits, the veggies, the lean proteins and whole grains. Affordability is particularly important when it comes to ensuring folks have the ability to buy and eat healthy foods,” Sosnowchik said.
The store’s closure also puts a dent in the food rescue programs that Second Harvest Heartland helps with. Each week, the organization takes food from grocery stores, which is distributed to food shelves. Aldi contributed 800 pounds of food a month for the program, Sosnowchik said.
In an earlier version of this story we incorrectly referred to Sen. Tina Smith as state Sen. Tina Smith.
Add Aldi to a long list of businesses leaving Minneapolis. According to USPS, 1,400 businesses have left the Minneapolis zip code past few years. Until folks (many here at Minnpost deny the exodus) stop to look at what is causing businesses to leave, things will get worse. Minneapolis had better start getting more business friendly or more businesses will pack up and leave.
The same as his sources are for all his information, the white supremacists on Fox. This is where they get lines like “BLM burned down whole cities!”
For all the folks who idolize Seattle, San Fran, and Portland, this is what you get.
This same thing is happening in those cities. You get what you vote for.
Really, Aldi’s is closing locations in all those cities too, must be a conspiracy.
I know that folks can vote for a bunch of thing on a ballot, but I never knew you could vote on whether a store remains open or not – thanks for that very enlightening and educational sentence.
Curious, that there be no discussion here of why these stores on the North side have closed. There’s reference to a lease being up for renewal, but nothing else.
In general and even in the North neighborhood unemployment is low and wages are up.
Aldi had real concerns about theft and physical limitations. There has not been an explanation about the remodeling issue. The reporter should have investigated.
If the City code restrictions affected Aldi, that might be negotiable. If it is the property owner, the City might offer tax incentives or offer the owner incentives to sell the property.
Good reporting wolf address this instead of just publicizing personal complaints or meaningless statements by politicians.
They all have their reasons. You announce closings when you don’t renew leases of have to make large capital improvements.
The stores are not profitable. Crime, shoplifting, and difficulty in keeping good employees all make stores lose money.
Couple points:
1. We were/are Adli’s shoppers, their store in Crystal is ~ 5-6X the size of the 1 that was on Penn & Lowry, the 1 in NE ~ 4-5X. The folks that worked at Penn. and Lowry were good folks, friendly, conscientious etc. so why they closed guess you need to ask them. Big thing I noticed, the local Aldies, folks came in and got some of this some of that, 1 trip to Brooklyn center, major shopping baskets filled, suspect revenue per customer may have some impact.
2. Would be interesting to know how far the average rural folks have to travel for a good stock of groceries, suspect 5-6 miles ++ and significantly higher prices are prominent! When we go to western Wisconsin, the good grocery store is a minimum of 4-6 miles, and the prices ares 30-40% higher than Aldi’s. And of course, how many small towns have been gutted of any hardware, grocery etc. etc. etc. by a Walmart located 10-15 miles away.
3. The city county, etc. continue to concentrate poverty, low income, minorities, slumlord rental, etc,. etc, etc. (yeah we got numbers to support it), into this section of the city, whether by accident, by neglect, systemically, or on purpose, or by default, it happens.
Being poor is expensive and continues to get more so. Areas with concentrations of lower-income residents will attract fewer services. Those services will also tend to be more expensive so that the companies can pay off their investments more quickly and reduce risk. That is before any considerations of crime. Those macroeconomic factors are what keep the number of options limited and make each subsequent loss more noticeable.
Conservatives revel in this loss because it reinforces their fundamental belief that poor people deserve to be in pain. After all, for them, all poverty is self-imposed. They state that with pride since it allows them to feel superior to an entire category of people since they all live in a constructed reality where the country is 100% merit-based.
But when you point out the massive economic disparities between white and BIPOC people they have no answer. They don’t believe systemic racism exists but their explanations as to why those disparities exist in a merit-based system would all be right at home on The Daily Stormer. Meanwhile, they come down with the vapors when anyone points out how they are all basically white supremacists.
Very well said!
I guess we need more government programs to solve these problems.
How about we start by fully funding the ones we already have?
We could start with a “war on poverty” since your guy (POTUS) is so good at fighting endless wars.
Maybe – just maybe- the situation in this section of the city is the result of government action?
Are you suggesting it is the result of systemic racism? If so, that would officially make you “woke” based on the new conservative idol DeSantis. Conservatives are so willing to contort logic to fit their ideology that they can’t even tell when that ideology is immediately self-contradictory.
Well, solving problems is easier when people can acknowledge basic facts rather than tucking themselves back into their conservative fantasy world where they believe the wealthiest 5% of the population do 62% of the work while the 40% of the population with the least wealth contribute less than 1%. A simple acknowledgment of reality might allow fundamental services like national defense, courts, and roads to be funded proportionately based on the wealth individuals have gained in the environment those services created. Or maybe, just maybe, there would be an acknowledgment that the entire nature of corporations is to protect their wealthy owners from liability and that expecting protection to come with an understanding that they provide some common good isn’t unreasonable.
But more that will likely be difficult since conservatives find it easier to lie to themselves at the same time they lie to everyone else.
Not to get out of sorts or off topic, sounds like you are saying let Norfolk Southern take care of East Palestine? No government involvement required.
What? “Conservatives revel in this loss because it reinforces their fundamental belief that poor people deserve to be in pain.” I think you need to go talk to actual conservatives (I’m not one) instead of imagining what they think in your bubble.
I don’t know any conservatives who are happy people are poor. They have different ideas about the best way to help poor people, but it is rather rude to accuse them of being uncaring.
Maybe if we all actually talked and respected each other, the better ideas from both sides could be tried out?
I have grown up with and know plenty of conservatives and when push comes to shove, what I said is 100% true. They just word it differently. They simply say that we live in a completely merit-based and help makes people dependent and weak. There is no way to view that other than as an admission that all pain due to poverty is deserved. Stop respecting ideas that don’t deserve it because you aren’t comfortable making waves.
“Stop respecting ideas that don’t deserve it because you aren’t comfortable making waves.”
So I guess I’ll ruffle some feathers by saying I don’t think that giving power and money to bureaucrats to “fix” poverty is going to work. Especially since if they actually fixed it, they’d be out of a job.
So you were lying about not being a conservative, which is not surprising. The idea that any attempt at equity is simply a way for progressive politicians to maintain power is the flip side to one that states that since conservatives believe the government is incompetent they elect people that will make that statement true. They are pointless arguments meant to sling mud and avoid the real issues.
But more to the point, your repetition of a sophomoric conservative talking point doesn’t address the truth of my statements. Actually, it simply shows that it applies to you as well.
Perhaps the Trifecta can just mandate that nobody leaves.
Okay, here is my question.
After watching Minneapolis businesses being looted and burned down in the summer of 2020, what sense does it make for me to make new investments in stores or other businesses? Why not just quietly take my money elsewhere?
Because Minneapolis has a large population base of consumers and you’d be a really bad business-person to neglect that based on something that happened almost three years ago and didn’t physically affect the vast, VAST majority of businesses in the city.
Yet businesses continue to close or leave despite that huge base of consumers. Who WERE affected by something that happened almost three years ago. And haven’t forgotten.
If you’re referring to Walgreens and Aldis from the article, closing these single stores hardly reduces their access to the consumer base considering they have other stores people can go to.
Frankly, it is foolish to think that businesses are making these decisions based on what happened after George Floyd was murdered almost three years ago. In fact, Cub and Target, who took the brunt of the outrage, rebuilt their stores almost immediately, and even invested more to improve those stores. Raising Cane even opened a new store right across the street from a police station that was burned down because they know there is money to be made in that market.
Exactly!
Lake and Minnehaha was ground zero. A food desert was predicted and it did not happen. Maybe some reporting on Lake St. vs. Broadway?
Foolish reasons are still reasons. In looking at the comments, I see a number of them present different views of what’s happening in Minnesota. The headline of the article suggests that Minneapolis is losing key grocery and pharmacy stores. But in the comments, I see it at least suggested that in fact, these stores are simply being replaced. I have seen reporting to the effect that one store is leaving because it lost its lease. Very well, capitalism and markets being what they are, we can anticipate that these stores will be replaced by others, hopefully with longer leases,
Areas like North Minneapolis have lacked grocery, financial, medical, and pharmaceutical services (we usually refer to them as “deserts” of sorts) for decades. No, these kinds of services and retail don’t just change hands or close and open like they do in other neighborhoods, this is why Aldi’s and Walgreens were such assets.
The problem with neoliberal assumptions regarding “markets” is that they’re organized around pseudo-ecological narratives that treat economies as if they’re natural phenomena, like the weather… things just happen. The truth is that capitalists “markets” are motivated and designed to create unnatural disparities rather than systemic equity. This is why “markets” have created the affordable housing crises for instance. The assumption that markets will naturally deliver equity to North MPLS is based on the fantasy/fallacy that markets are “naturally” occurring scenarios.
Would be curious on how far all the commenters are from their favorite or local grocery? This Aldi was ~ 1 Mi. the replacement is 5 Mi, but we have a Hy-vee ~ 1.5-2 miles, and a pair of Cubs ~ 3-3.5 Mi. and a Buy-Low ~ 1.5 Miles, a Walmart ~ 3.5-4 Mi, a target ~ 5 Mi.
I have two Aldi’s, two Cubs, a Costco, and a Lund’s Byerlys all within 3-4 miles. The closest is one of the Cub’s or Costco roughly a mile away. I have a Walgreens 1/4 mile away and or I could get meds at the Costco Pharmacy. And I have at 8 or 9 banks to choose from all within 1-5 miles.
I forgot, here in St. Louis Park I also have two Targets with grocery’s AND a Trader Joe’s.
Ya know, the fact that low income and black neighborhoods are/have been financial, medical, food, and pharmacy deserts has been on ongoing nationwide crises for decades. The idea this is tied to recent riots, or “liberal” politics is simply absurd. When anyone is serious about discussing this issue, please let us know.
It has cause and effect backwards. Low income black people were intentionally concentrated by redlining into neighborhoods that don’t have any services. Riots are the result.
Liberals are not without blame for redlining.
We call it “institutional racism” for a reason… it’s a bi-partisan form of segregation and economic discrimination. Obviously there has been liberal participation, but that doesn’t mean liberal politics created the problem in North MPLS, you’ll find the same scenario in any sizeable (and even some small) American city regardless of partisan heritage. By the way, critical race theory is a great tool for exploring problems like this… that is if you’re allowed to talk about it.
Name calling has it’s limits as a political strategy. How long should we wait to ask someone for their vote after we have called them a fascist? In this case, when is it okay to ask someone to invest in Minneapolis after we have accused them of systemic racism?
Accurately describing something isn’t name-calling. Also, being nice to terrible people and organizations has never made them behave better.
Oh the poor victims… Why don’t you bleeding heart liberals invest YOUR money in these areas and become rich on all these customers that are being discriminated against??? Talk is cheap and so are liberals with their own money, but watch them spend taxpayers dollars…
Well… it’s just a matter of time before one our conservative/libertarian moral guardians who didn’t get the Jesus memo shows weighs in eh? Sure, when they’re not accusing liberals of fetal genocide they’re whining about all of our excessive compassion.
Look: As a society and a nation we CAN live with sociopaths. As a general rule human civilizations are resilient enough to continue functioning despite a certain number of sociopaths without functioning moral compasses. The problem is that in the last few decades we’ve decided that such people are just “Republicans” and we’ve given them power and influence… it never ends well when you give people with no moral compasses significant power and authority.
Here have a group of people who predictably and routinely complain about anyone who cares about other human beings or life on the planet as being excessively compassionate. They expect if not actually demand more suffering, and they routinely make these demands while standing behind banners of religious and moral superiority. When they’re not whining about our “culture” war they’re promoting human suffering. They wear their cruelty and disregard for life and suffering as a badge of honor while claiming to be the champions of our “freedom”. Whatever.
The point is we’ve been tolerating this crap for way too long. This isn’t merely hypocrisy, it’s moral degeneracy masquerading as politics and morality. I don’t know anything about this particular individual, but I have no trouble believing that guys like Trump and Giuliani not only promote human suffering but actually get off on watching it. And we put these guys in the White House!
By the way Joe, you DO realize that conservatives and libertarians spend tax dollars as well right? Who do you think pays for your military, police, air traffic control, and highways?
Generally, liberal tax dollars are used to prop up the red states and red rural counties that depend on them.