Much of southern Dallas is a food desert with no stores for miles around. Now there’s a deal to reopen a store in one of those food desert areas that’s up for a Dallas City Council vote this week. It’s on Simpson Stuart Road near Bonnie View. Ken Kalthoff explains.
Some parts of North Texas have a grocery store on every major corner. Other areas, especially portions of southern Dallas, are food deserts with fresh food miles away.
The only grocery store in a food desert around Simpson Stuart Road and Bonnie View Road in southern Dallas closed more than a year ago. Now, a new owner wants to reopen the store, pending a Dallas City Council vote this week.
It was a big deal when the Sav-A-Lot store opened in 2016. It brought fresh produce and meat to the neighborhood. But it closed in 2021 after struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic.
The neighborhood is a food desert again.
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“Had to go way down on Lancaster and Loop 12 just to get food. That should be a nice store up there if somebody can buy it and keep it open,” neighbor Winston Riden said.
In the meantime, neighbors rely on a Family Dollar store on Bonnie View Road for basics, but that store is often closed lately with management and technical problems. Customers Monday were told the Family Dollar’s Wi-Fi was not working and it could not accept cash, only credit or debit cards, which some customers did not have.
It is a modest neighborhood of older apartments where some tenants without cars need a place to walk for food. But there are also single-family homes where some customers have more money to spend. And a new apartment complex is under construction on Simpson Stuart Road just west of the closed grocery store. Hundreds of new potential customers will soon live there.
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Wednesday, the Dallas City Council will be asked to approve a transfer of the deal that helped open the grocery store to a new owner that wants to reopen it.
“We need to let them. They came to us and said we want to put a grocery store here, and that's the difference, they came here,” neighborhood City Councilman Tennell Atkins said.
The City of Dallas first invested $2.8 million to open the place in a food desert in return for keeping it open for 10 years. Atkins said the new buyer must abide by the same deal and keep the store open for the remaining six years with no additional city money.
“They've still got an obligation for 5.9 years. So, The city of Dallas did not lose anything,” Atkins said.
The store would be within walking distance for neighbor Artemio Renteria and his family.
“For us, that would be good because it's close to my house. My wife stays all day here. She doesn't go far to the store. She stays inside because we've got a baby,” he said.
In 2020, before the store closed, some neighbors complained about talk of selling to some other operator and spending any more city money. The current plan calls for no additional city investment.
A community activist had an alternate plan for the store in 2021, partnering with Dallas Police but that is not the plan that has advanced to the Dallas City Council now.
The City of Dallas has also been promoting Dollar Stores as an alternative for places that are far from full-service grocery stores.
And, H-E-B which is opening new North Texas stores in Frisco and Plano, has purchased a closed Albertson’s store building on Wheatland Road in southern Dallas, but the company has disclosed no plans for that site.
