Skip navigation

STUDENTS' NONPROFIT SUPERMARKET IDEA TO BECOME REALITY

PITTSBURGH -- The Hill District neighborhood here could soon witness construction of a unique, not-for-profit supermarket -- the first full-service food retail outlet in the area in 20 years.Eight Carnegie Mellon University students designed the store for the JP Morgan Chase Community Development Competition. The students' first-place win provided the $25,000 in seed money to pursue their project

PITTSBURGH -- The Hill District neighborhood here could soon witness construction of a unique, not-for-profit supermarket -- the first full-service food retail outlet in the area in 20 years.

Eight Carnegie Mellon University students designed the store for the JP Morgan Chase Community Development Competition. The students' first-place win provided the $25,000 in seed money to pursue their project in a partnership with the Hill House, a nonprofit organization here providing health, welfare and recreation programs to the area.

Now in its planning stages, the goal of the project is to provide residents with a locally owned and operated business that directs profit back into the community, ultimately becoming a hub of activity and making the area a magnet for new investment.

"We do think that there's a really great market for development," said Evan Frazier, executive director of the Hill House Association and president and chief executive officer of the Hill House Economic Development Corp. "We are looking at it as an opportunity to renegotiate all the possibilities that might exist for bringing a full-service supermarket to the Hill District because of its proximity to downtown Pittsburgh and its relationship to other communities in the East End [area]."

The project is still without an owner-operator, but Frazier said potential candidates to run the store include a company well-versed in urban markets, a major chain or some combination of those entities.

In the students' initial plan, the operator is Inner City Grocers, a nonprofit working with Minneapolis-based Supervalu to operate a nonprofit grocery store in Spring Garden, another underserved Pittsburgh neighborhood.

"We put together this proposal as an academic exercise for the competition, and now we're turning it over to the Hill House to make it real," project manager Lena Andrews said.

One unique aspect of the project is the grocery store's "green" design. The store will be environmentally friendly, with large windows, recycled materials and a grass-covered roof to absorb rainfall.

"In Pittsburgh, there are a number of facilities that have been known for being wonderful green buildings and for their environmentally friendly design," Frazier said. "I think there are a number of resources we have locally that we can turn to to make sure this part of the project is properly designed and implemented."

The store will support local farming by working with the Urban Farming Initiative, a Pittsburgh-based program that converts vacant lots into urban farms. Produce from UFI will be offered in the store.

In addition to traditional grocery store functions, the students' plans call for offering free healthy cooking and nutrition classes at the store.