Monthly market launching in Hill District
Concern about the Hill District once again becoming a food desert has prompted community leaders to organize a monthly market that will feature fresh produce, organic items and other goods.
Soko Community Market will debut from 9 a. m. to 1 p. m. on July 20 and is scheduled to be held the third Saturday of every month in the courtyard and driveway of the Hill House Association main building on Centre Avenue.
The Shop’n Save supermarket in the Centre- Heldman Plaza closed in March, leaving the neighborhood without a full- service grocery store.
“We just want to fill in the gap for people to get fresh vegetables and fruit and come together as partners to provide this service,” said Carol Hardeman of the Hill District Consensus Group, one of the organizations involved.
“It’s only a short- term solution” to providing the neighborhood with fresh food, said Qiyam Ansari, communications and operations manager at the Pittsburgh Food Policy Council, a Garfield agency that also helped organize the market.
Plans for a permanent food cooperative in the Hill District are being discussed but are very preliminary, he said.
Soko is a Swahili word that means market, fair or bazaar, according to a posting for the event by the Hill Community Development Corp., which convened groups to plan the market.
Vendors signed on for the July 20 kickoff include Ann’s Market of the Hill District and Braddock Farms, both of which will supply fresh produce.
Artists and small businesses are also expected to participate, including Ujamaa Collective, a Hill District nonprofit that supports black female artists and entrepreneurs.
The market is across the street from the Centre- Heldman Plaza,
where the shuttered Shop ’n Save store is located along with a Crazy Mocha coffeehouse that closed in May.
The shopping strip was owned by the financially troubled Hill House, a social services agency that is in the process of selling off its real estate assets and winding down its affairs.
The plaza is in mortgage foreclosure.
The Shop ’n Save, developed by an affiliate of Hill House, opened in 2013 but failed to generate expected foot traffic and meet financial projections.
Elected officials and others in the Hill have been working on finding another grocery store operator for the site but have been hampered by the property’s foreclosure status.
The Soko market would like to continue into the fall and winter but would need an indoor space. Although the former Shop ’n Save would be an ideal location, “We don’t know about access because of the ownership issues,” said Vernard Alexander of the Minority Networking Exchange, a Homewood firm that is helping recruit and train market vendors.
He and others noted that the neighborhood lacked a full- service grocery store for three decades before the Shop’n Save opened and lasted only 5 ½ years.
“We came together to come up with market ideas … because of the problem of no food.”