SunFresh Linwood was supposed to revive business in east KC. The store is now in crisis
Teenage grocery store shelf stockers have taken to carrying tasers in their pockets in case they have to defend themselves from customers at the SunFresh Linwood at 31st Street and Prospect Avenue in East Kansas City.
The SunFresh, which anchors the Linwood Shopping Plaza along Prospect, has changed hands several times in the past few years as city leaders and organizations tried to keep East Kansas City from becoming an urban food desert. Current owner Community Builders of Kansas City (CBKC) acquired the store in 2022.
But today, it’s common for unhoused residents to sleep outside the SunFresh, and reports of fighting, drug use and public sex lead to frequent 911 calls from the plaza, according to residents and CBKC, a Black-owned development agency
Two managers have quit in the last year, citing hazardous working conditions. The store is now managed by assistant manager Adriana Rentie, who said at an August meeting with Mayor Quinton Lucas and Kansas City Police Department Chief Stacey Graves that her short tenure has been far from easy.
Sales are so low that the store cannot afford to repair its broken front door, developer and CBKC CEO Emmet Pierson Jr. said in August. Pierson estimated that last year, CBKC paid around $150,000 for security inside the store. He also said that 85% of the proceeds from the Community Improvement District tax goes to pay for shopping center security.
Meanwhile, Rentie and other SunFresh staff have begun calling 911 frequently, often reporting limited success. On one recent occasion, Rentie said, a Kansas City police officer declined to intervene with a SunFresh customer accused of theft because the officer was busy responding to another customer wielding a machete.
Another time, Rentie said an officer refused to arrest a man threatening to kill Rentie and other customers, instructing Rentie to instead “talk it out.”
Five years ago, city officials put more than $20 million into businesses along the Prospect Avenue commercial corridor, including $17 million into SunFresh, hoping to get ahead of blight and make the area a more attractive gathering place for residents — and their dollars.
Now, CBKC wants Kansas City officials to know that evidence of the city’s investment has all but vanished along Prospect Avenue — and Pierson is considering shutting down the store if conditions continue.
“[Adriana] is young and fearless, but I don’t want her putting her life at risk to sell groceries,” Pierson said. “That’s what’s happening.”
Problems at SunFresh
The Sunday meeting with the mayor was one of several similar events in the last week as community leaders work to draw attention to deteriorating conditions at the grocery store.
Urban Summit of KCMO, a nonprofit dedicated to advocacy in east Kansas City, hosted a meeting to discuss the problem Friday at Morningstar Family Life at 27th and Prospect, while third district Councilmembers Melissa Patterson Hazley and Melissa Robinson scheduled a news conference at the SunFresh on Tuesday.
At the first meeting on Aug. 24, about twenty residents walked with Lucas and Chief Graves from 30th and Prospect to the Linwood Square shopping center. Lucas spent most of the walk conferring with Rentie, who pointed out areas along the street where loitering has escalated into incidents of crime in recent months.
“I can’t bring my kids here,” one neighbor told Lucas. “It’s unthinkable.”
Before the recent five-year, multi-million dollar revitalization plan funded by the city, the plaza had been vacant for several years. At the time, local developers and supporters of the plan said it was necessary and would bring food security to the neighborhood for good.
“It’s a big deal,” Pierson told The Star in 2022. “First of all, it’s a grocery store in an urban community. It’s in a food desert. But it’s a bigger deal because it’s owned by a minority led organization. There’s not that many African-American grocers in the country.”
But grocery is an industry with tight profit margins, Pierson said. With fewer safety concerns consuming profits, other SunFresh locations have more to spend on security and cleanliness.
Pierson noted that a nearby store just off Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard generally has a clean parking lot with fresh plants outside, visual improvements which he says SunFresh Linwood cannot afford to make.
Along with theft and vandalism, store owners and workers near Linwood Square said they frequently witness people soliciting prostitution.
“This is an emergency,” Patterson Hazley said on that Sunday. “I ain’t never seen this many people outside before… Just outside, I slowed down and counted 20-some-odd folks, most of them being some women that look like it’s unsafe for them to be in that atmosphere.”
Drug use has also been a concern in store parking lots, which Rentie and Pierson say is underpoliced when it occurs outside of SunFresh.
“People use drugs and then they go straight to the grocery store and steal,” Pierson said.
Building a business district
Patterson Hazley said she and Robinson have been alerting city leaders about growing safety concerns in their district for months. She also said she has noticed an increase in residents sleeping and panhandling along Prospect.
“I’m begging my colleagues to take this seriously,” Patterson Hazley said. “...This is a place we want to be safe. I love Popeyes, but I can’t go through that drive-thru anymore because of the mayhem that is going on in this neighborhood, and it’s true that anyplace else in the city, this would not be tolerated.”
The location where the SunFresh Linwood now stands stood vacant in the Linwood Shopping Center on Prospect Avenue from 2007 until 2014, prior to the city purchasing the shopping center. Despite hopes of a two-year turnaround, the store reopened after four years, in 2018, to high hopes from neighbors.
The project represented a fresh start for businesses in predominantly Black and historically marginalized neighborhoods east of Troost Avenue, developer Don Maxwell, former owner of the shopping center, told The Star in 2019.
Nestled between 31st Street and Linwood Boulevard, the Linwood Shopping Center also includes a tax preparation office, a beauty supply store, a T-Mobile cell phone store and a Pizza Hut, as well as at least one empty retail space. Across the street, a Popeye’s, a Wingstop, an Arvest Bank, a health center and several other clothing stores and cell phone retailers fill out Linwood Square.
CBKC took over operations at SunFresh between 2020 and 2022, though the nonprofit did not officially acquire the building until 2022. Pierson said the move was meant to keep the store open in the absence of interest from larger developers. The store currently operates as a for-profit subsidiary managed by CBKC.
After several infusions of cash from the city in 2019, CBKC believed SunFresh was close to stabilizing, expecting developers to break even that year.
Now, Pierson said he’s had to chip in his own money to keep the store running. According to a third-party audit, SunFresh at Linwood lost $1.3 million in its second year under new ownership.
“If we send the message that no one cares, that message gets around the community,” Pierson said of the Linwood business corridor, bordering the Santa Fe and Oak Park neighborhood’s in Kansas City’s third district.
Though the city has continued to invest financially in the area in some capacity, high rates of blight and crime near Prospect and Linwood essentially cancel out the last five years of work and funding, Lucas said.
“We have spent money on the east side over the years, but if we’re just going to spend a bunch of money and then not have the follow-up, it’s not worth anything,” Lucas said.
‘My staff is in jeopardy’
Pierson laid out a stark message for community leaders at an Urban Summit meeting Friday: “If this continues we will shut down the store,” he said, after the images of problems in the parking lot and inside the store flashed up on a screen.
“My staff is in jeopardy every single day,” he said. “I’ve been saying this now for a year. For a year.”
At the same meeting, Graves said the police department would have a two-person patrol in the area of 31st Street and Prospect Avenue 24 hours a day until further notice.
“We’re going to get this under control,” she said. “I do not want the grocery store at 31st and Prospect to leave.”
Graves said officers are frustrated when they arrest people and then they “are staring us right in the face 12 hours later.”
“We’re dealing with the same people over and over again,” she said.
At Sunday’s event, Lucas said he believes that the absence of a jail in Kansas City has been contributing to crime trends near SunFresh, as well as citywide. Officials are planning to reopen a temporary detention center on the eighth floor of city hall, he said.
Still, SunFresh staff are not confident that Kansas City police officers and Jackson County prosecutors always follow through with arresting and charging people after 911 calls, especially for non-violent offenses.
At Sunday’s event, neighbors said they don’t have the same concern when shopping at other grocery stores in Kansas City.
“I guarantee you I could not go to the Brookside Stop & Shop and make a threat…and [only] get a ticket,” one resident said.
One contributing factor that city officials have seen, Lucas said, is a rise in juvenile crime across Kansas City. The mayor noted that increasing police presence may no longer be an effective long-term solution.
“We see an interesting set of assailants,” Lucas said. “Younger, and a bunch of people who don’t care if there are 15 cops standing at the grocery store, they’re still going to roll up with their guns and do whatever they’re trying to do.”
Lucas acknowledged that some residents feel Jackson County prosecutors are not effective enough at following through, particularly on charges for property crimes. But he said that’s out of his hands.
“That’s not my spot,” Lucas said on that Sunday as he toured the area.
About 80% of cases delegated to the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office are fully prosecuted, including property crime charges, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said earlier this month. However, Peters Baker said, one police report is often not enough to build a successful case against someone accused of causing damage to public or private property.
To Missouri state Senator Barbara Anne Washington, more community policing could be one solution.
“If [officers are] living out in Harrisonville and you get to drive up to work, it’s a paycheck for you, it’s not an investment,” Washington said. “It’s not to protect and serve, it’s to protect and get paid.”
“It’s an unfortunate misconception to believe that the Black community does not want the protection of policing,” Washington added. “...We want to get that protection, and we want to get that service, and, by the way, we’re paying lots of money for that to happen.”
Meanwhile, conditions at the SunFresh keep getting worse, cutting into store profit. The supermarket had to close its profitable liquor department recently after receiving a citation for a patron drinking outside.
Without a long-term solution, attracting additional commercial tenants to the area could be difficult, Pierson said. At the same time, he noted, residents of nearby Hyde Park and Beacon Hill generally don’t spend their dollars at the SunFresh despite its close proximity.
“We can’t be community builders and not be for the community,” Pierson said. “But we need help.”
‘A place we want to be safe’
Just across the street from SunFresh sits the Lucile H. Bluford branch of the Kansas City Public Library, which has turned into a de facto overnight shelter for unhoused residents, Lucas said. He said this incentivizes people to return to the area, and the Linwood Shopping Center, even if they have been previously arrested or asked to leave the parking lot.
“When you have people fornicating on a bus stop, or you have some of the substance abuse issues, that’s a person where even if arrested and cited, they’re going to come back,” Lucas said. “We need to do more with that… there are people that need help for real that are showing up.”
Similarly, some residents feel criminal activity near the SunFresh is harder to control when store management can’t discourage repeat offenders from staying at the bus stop at 30th and Prospect. Rentie also said she has seen multiple people “jump on a bus” to evade police.
Graves said that Kansas City police officers continue to track suspects who utilize public transit after officers are called.
“Just because someone gets on the bus doesn’t mean they got away,” Graves said.
For Robinson, improving public safety near 31st and Prospect would instead mean redefining and expanding what types of aid and programming the city is willing to provide with their public safety dollars.
At Tuesday’s press conference, Robinson proposed putting city dollars toward harm-reduction programs, a low-barrier shelter or transitional housing programs, rather than just constructing a new city jail.
Residents also called for the city to fence in the SunFresh parking lot, drawing comparisons to existing fencing near Kansas City Hall.
“We should not be treated differently just because our zip code happens to be 64128,” Patterson Hazley said.
Lucas said he was surprised at the number of people who raised concerns at recent events.
Rentie, on the other hand, witnesses the decline of the business corridor daily. Most recently, Rentie alleges she was punched in the face by a SunFresh customer after she tried to confront them about stealing merchandise.
“I don’t like this trend for the city,” Lucas said. “If we spend $20 million somewhere, then five years later we just jump to somewhere else because we couldn’t focus on actually making something quality and good, that’s what we need to try to address and fix.”
The Star’s Nathan Pilling contributed reporting.
This story was originally published September 4, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story did not correctly attribute a quote about community policing from Missouri state Senator Barbara Anne Washington. The story incorrectly described the ownership of the Linwood Shopping Center, which is owned by the city, and the Linwood Square shopping area, which is not owned by Community Builders of Kansas City. The story also incorrectly described how much the store spends on security. The owner said 85% of the proceeds from the Community Improvement District tax go to security.
