Kansas City’s government-funded grocery store, which became an international symbol of officialdom’s incompetence in private-sector business, has closed.
Even KC’s liberal public radio station KCUR had to admit KC Sun Fresh Midtown failed “despite almost $18 million of dollars in taxpayer investment over the past ten years.”
In truth, “the store, which has had two different operators, one for-profit and one nonprofit, has received nearly $29 million in taxpayer investment through bonds, loans, ordinances and subsidies,” reports KMBC.
The world already knew the store at 31st and Prospect Avenue was failing, as it became a cautionary tale for New Yorkers who’ve nominated the socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani amid promises of government-run grocery stores there.
But the Kansas City store closed Tuesday without notice, except for a sign on the locked doors saying, “Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances beyond our control, we are no longer, at this time, able to serve the residents of this important community.”
Actually, the circumstances were quite foreseen – even across the Atlantic. The ill-fated store was “filled with empty shelves and rotten smells,” London’s Daily Mail wrote in July.
“It’s a rancid odor. I think something is dead or something’s gone bad,” one shopper told KMBC. “All that money is just going to waste.”
“The other two Sun Freshes have food. Why does this one not?” said another shopper.
A Washington Post reporter recently visited the store, where she found “a single tomato is all that’s left in one section of produce at KC Sun Fresh.”
A shopper shadowed by the reporter “left the lonely [tomato] in the bin for someone else and moved on to ingredients for nachos – a Friday night treat for her and her husband. The chip aisle was bare, shelf after shelf empty. She finally found a few bags of tortilla chips nearby.”
Kansas City Councilman Nathan Willett, who wasn’t on the council when the store was created by the city, noted that free municipal bus fares facilitated the trafficking of criminals to the area, exacerbating the store’s woes and the neighborhood’s ambience and safety.
“Prior to the supermarket’s closure, many community members said the store had been plagued with problems,” Fox4KC reported. “They specifically said enough wasn’t being done to fight drug deals and prostitution there.”
“I thought I was coming to the store today,” one shopper told Fox4KC Tuesday, “but apparently, I guess they’re closed, and they told us they were not going to close.”
Community Builders of Kansas City, the nonprofit that ran the store for its landlord, the city, issued an ambiguous statement Tuesday saying it “has been vocal for years about our concerns and fears regarding the increasingly insurmountable challenges of the KC Sun Fresh Midtown location – they are well documented and well known to the community, the media and the City of Kansas City, Missouri.”
But Fox4KC reports Community Builders President/CEO Emmet Pierson as recently as April had “said there wasn’t enough being done to discourage prostitution and drug deals nearby.”
