Harvest Supermarket will get a $400,000 dollar injection of funding from Peoria County government to help the new grocery store on Peoria's South Side get on its feet.
The money helps the start-up business meet its required $600,000 local match for a $1.7 million state grant.
The county will grant the business $200,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds and loan an additional $200,000 from its special Keystone economic development fund. The city is expected to make up the balance through tax-increment financing (TIF) funds that it can reimburse itself for over time.
The two county measures passed unanimously, but board member Brian Elsasser expressed some reluctance. He said that most of the rural mom-and-pop grocery stores closed as the big box stores began to pop up in Peoria. Elsasser said it will be a "monumental" task for Harvest Supermarket owner Chuck Brown to compete with grocery store giants like Walmart and Aldi.
"I don't feel real comfortable. I'm not going to vote against the time, but it is a huge, huge undertaking to try to to run a grocery store when there's so much competition around," he said.
Board member Eden Blair said she's confident Harvest Supermarket has a solid business plan behind it, and she feels comfortable supporting it as the chair of the county's loan review committee.
"Everyone deserves access to fresh food, and the people in this community do not have the ability to access fresh food other places because most of them don't have cars and can't get any other place," Blair said. "So in my mind, this is the best way to deal with food insecurity in this area that I've seen."
The South Side of Peoria became a food desert in early 2018 when Kroger closed its store at the Madison Park Shopping Center. Brown's store itself is located in a building on Western Ave. that used to be an Aldi and a Save-A-Lot.
County board chairman James Dillon added that most people on the South Side rarely venture far from home, let alone across the Illinois River. That leaves the options for obtaining food, let alone fresh food, limited.
"The only thing down there is the Family Dollars and the junk stores that are selling constant junk," he said. This is not what Pastor Brown's business model is going to look like. So I think finally, we should put our money where our mouth is, and if we can't support this, and I don't know what we could support."
Brown plans to open his store next year.
