Work Continues on East Side Community Grocery Store

By ANA ROMERO VIGIL

The Eastside Grocery store, a project of RMSER and Pueblo Food Project, released early sketches of the site plan. The site plan was released in August in their on-line newsletter.

The planned site is on the old Spann school lots, encompasses land from 10th Street to 12th Street and between York Street and Vinita Street. The property was purchased by RMSER in 2018. The address is 2300 E. 10th St.

Monique Marez, coordinator of the Pueblo Food Project. is inviting community input by asking people to Take this survey , as well as to organize a community meal to allow people to gather and talk about the store. The group will buy the dinner, provide sketches of the planned site and the list of suggested store features.

If community members would like to organize a meal or provide other input, the newsletter offered this form: https://forms.gle/ZUCxpmE64ZaHismu5  At the meetings, Marez said the food project can provide kids’ activities, dinner, gas cards.

The project, which consists of over 100 active community members and organizations from farmers, restaurants, non-profits, and community stakeholders — was formed in 2019 after Senator Michael Bennet, along with Walter Robb, former CEO of Whole Foods, convened a group of stakeholders to focus on Pueblo’s food systems.

In 2020, the group received a $200,000 planning grant from the Colorado Health Foundation The City of Pueblo is the fiscal agent for the Pueblo Food Project. The grant will help fund the planning project for the next two years.

According to Marez, “It is the community spirit that has led to early successes. We are eager to implement strategies that we developed in our community for our community. Anyone in Pueblo can participate and contribute to this process.”

The objective of the planning grant is to allow the design of a grocery store that community wants, then RMSER can apply for another grant with implementation funds to build it. According to Marez, they hope to gather as many people as are interested to give input on the design project. The group wants leaders in community to know what is being done, and to open dialogue with residents, then a monthly ongoing dinner meeting to gather input.

According to Marez, a grocery store can serve many different purposes besides selling groceries.  We want this grocery store to serve residents in the area in several ways.” Possible components of the store, or store features, according to the newsletter, could be a commercial kitchen for entrepreneurs, a greenhouse, a youth-driven enterprise like a café, and a classroom. Some of the possible store features were listed in the Newsletter:

• A place to hang out
• ATM
• Bakery
• Coffee Cafe
• Deli counter
• Greenhouse growing vegetables to be sold in the store
• Hot food service
• Job opportunities at the store
• Juice bar
• Local producers / local food
• Nutrition Education / Cooking Classes
• Other services, registering for benefits, help with EBT
• Outdoor seating
• Personal care products
• Recycling / place to drop off compost
• Shared kitchen for entrepreneurs