Food truck to make stop at former grocery store

A mobile farmers market will make its first stop at the site of the closed Shop ‘n Save in the Hill District on Tuesday even as the city works to bring a new grocer into the neighborhood.

The Green Grocer is moving its weekly location from the Thelma Lovette YMCA at 2114 Centre Ave. to the Centre Heldman Plaza at 1850 Centre, several blocks east. The plaza housed a Shop ‘n Save until it closed last March, leaving the Hill without a grocery store for the first time since 2013.

Diamonte Walker, deputy director of the Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority, which now owns the plaza and the old store, said the change in locations is occurring to make it easier for elderly residents to get to the food truck.

She said the hilly terrain near the Y was tough to negotiate for some residents. The plaza is on a flatter stretch of Centre and should be easier for people to access. Ms. Walker noted that many residents rely

on Green Grocer now that the Shop ‘n Save has closed.

“This is an opportunity to do something in the short term to alleviate that pain point,” she said.

The food truck will stop at the plaza on Tuesdays from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

It is one of 17 stops that the Green Grocer, a Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank program, makes weekly to 17 neighborhoods that are considered “food deserts” — meaning residents don’t have access to fresh, healthy, affordable food from groceries, farmers markets or other options.

From the truck, Hill residents are able to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, frozen meats, bread and dry goods like rice and beans.

The URA paid $1.6 million to acquire the 2.57-acre plaza last fall. Ms. Walker said one reason it did so was to give it the flexibility to help residents in situations like this.

However, Ms. Walker stressed that while the move of the truck from the Y to the plaza provides a “much better mobility solution, it’s not a permanent solution to the fresh food issue.”

“This should not be looked at as a suitable longterm replacement,” she said. “This is a creative solution to try to do something in the short term.”

The ultimate goal, Ms. Walker added, is to work with the community to find a new grocer to serve the neighborhood.

Toward that end, the URA is planning to issue a request later this month for entities that might be interested in opening a store in the Hill.

The request for interested parties, as it is called, is designed to gauge how much of an appetite there is for such a project.

“We had folks who may have been interested. This gives them an opportunity to re-engage in a very transparent manner and have the neighborhood understand who wants to do a grocery,” Ms. Walker said.

The plaza became available after the Hill House Association, once a hub of social services and cultural activities, decided to dissolve and sell off all of its real estate holdings because of a mounting debt load. Its largest holding was the plaza.