Battles, theft, drug use, public sex: The Sun Fresh Grocery Store on 31st Street and Prospect Avenue has been struggling with these problems on the edge of the crisis in the last few years.
Now it seems that the sun is drawn from food. On Thursday morning the shelves through wide layers of the store – the snack path, the soup path, the whole walls of refrigerated meats – were almost completely naked.
One of the two employees that the star managed to find in the building said she reported to work every day, uncertain whether the place would even be in the business when she arrived.
“We do not fulfill big orders,” Emet Pearson, President of Public Builders KC, a non -profit goal that owns the store, confirmed to the star at the end of Thursday. “The store makes orders to fulfill our WIC requirements.” (WIC is a federal program to support foods for pregnant women and children with low-incomes under 5 years of age)
The blank meat refrigerators are expecting customers at Sun Fresh ownership of 31st Street and Prospect Avenue.
The grocery store with an area of 38,000 square meters is an anchor tenant at the Linwood mall, which the city bought in 2014. Sun Fresh opened in the summer of 2018 under the work of John and Pam Lipari. CBKC took over the store in 2022
As the store is fighting – it lost $ 1.3 million in 2023 – the city continues to invest in the shopping center. In November, the City Council approved an additional $ 750,000 for the CID of the Shopping Center to cover additional security and improved lighting. This has been at the top of millions more since the city bought the shopping mall in 2014.
Pearson says it’s not enough. Asked what can be done to improve the worsening situation, he said the city could “manage the mall in a” first -class “manner as stated in our KCMO lease agreement.
“Take control of the crime at their shopping center,” Pearson said. “Ask for police pedestrian patrols during work hours to increase existing private security for the summer months.”
Phil Dimartino of the Kansas Police Department said they had already taken these steps.
“We continue to increase the patrols to the 31st and promising,” Dimartino said. “And we (often) have patrols for saturation in the area.”
Mayor Quinton Lucas noted to the star on Friday that only last year the city opened a community action center, KCPD staff and city officials, on the other side of the store; collaborates with the transport body of Kansas and the Kansas City Public Library to increase safety in the area; and works with KCPD to increase patrol activity there.
“During my nine years of service, including as an area adviser, we proudly invested tens of millions of dollars to restore the mall, nearby infrastructure and to attract more economic development to the 31st and perspective,” Lucas said. “We will continue to do our best to return to a long-term positive perspective (there), assessing all the options, including reasonable participation in the city and further investments in the future of the store.”
He added: “Grocery stores working one mile south to the 39th and perspective and one mile to the east on the 31st street show that the grocery operator can succeed in our urban core.”
Pearson said he wasn’t taking the store at the moment. Asked about the rumor that the Cosentino or Ball food market has made offers for the store, Pearson said, “Neither buy it nor consider the idea.”
The member of the Council of the Third County Melissa Patterson Hazli, who represents the area, and previously described the situation at the Linwood mall as an “emergency”, told The Star on Friday that she was not ready to comment on the situation, stating that she had been waiting to hear more information regarding the finance, and a security committee.