ATLANTA — Residents in southwest Atlanta will have a lot to chew on when it comes to finding fresh food options. Atlanta City Council passed new legislation Tuesday, which will invest $1.5 million in a new grocery store development along the Campbellton Road corridor.
Reginald Rushin, a southwest Atlanta resident and chair of the Neighborhood Planning Unit P, said the investment comes as welcome news for an area that does not have a lot of places to find fresh fruits and vegetables.
"There's a great need. You know we have a food desert in some of those areas," Rushin said. "People should have options to be able to have access to fresh fruits and vegetables and have a grocery store within close proximity to their home."
Rushin said concerns grow each day, with people left to eat fast food and other long-term unhealthy options. That can lead to obesity and health issues common in areas with little to no fresh food.
"The people who live in this community deserve the same quality of grocery retail as anywhere else in the city," Rushin said. “They want to live in nice, safe communities. They want to have nice, decent retail stores and groceries so they don’t have to drive clean across the other side of town to get those services.”
Already few grocery options on the southside of Atlanta are dwindling, at least temporarily. Over the weekend, a crane truck caused an Atlanta Publix parking deck to partially collapse, shutting down the store to residents in the area who waited for years for the store to open. It's unclear how long the Publix will remain closed as crews clean up the mess, make repairs and investigate what went wrong.
Atlanta City Councilwoman Marci Collier Overstreet, who spearheaded the grocery investment legislation alongside Councilwoman Andrea Boone, is praising the council's vote to pass the $1.5 million investment.
"Everyone takes for granted that we have fresh food available to us all over Atlanta, when the truth is we don’t. Not everywhere," Overstreet said. "We're making sure the City of Atlanta is putting skin in the game and making sure we have fresh food access in Southwest Atlanta. Any type of development is an opportunity for growth, for jobs as well as the fresh food itself. We need all of that.”
The new legislation is expected to bring new grocery options, fresh food and jobs to the Southside. It will funnel the money to Invest Atlanta, the city's economic development authority, to disburse to developers.
“$1.5 million is really a drop in the bucket, so we’re going to need more funds in this fund," Overstreet said. "That’s the only pushback. The only negative to this is that it’s just not enough.”
The hope is that the investment leads to other development in parts of the city eager to see growth and change. Rushin, a retired Marine, said the mission to bring more fresh food to southwest Atlanta will get a renewed push and transform his community.
"By having those new developments, it would attract different retailers, grocery stores and retailers to do so," Rushin said.