Chatham, Englewood, Little Village, and Kenwood: in just one year each of these Chicago neighborhoods lost major grocery stores. Without these stores, many residents must choose to either trek out of their neighborhood for groceries, or pay a premium for boxed goods at a local convenience store. With large grocery stores making an exodus from Chicago communities, neighborhood residents face increasing instability in food access. The city has an opportunity to reverse this trend with the creation of city-owned grocery stores.

The benefits of nearby grocery stores are clear. Grocery stores offer critical access to a variety of foods, such as fresh fruit and produce, needed for a healthy life. Additionally, the reduced prices offered by grocery stores, relative to convenience stores, alleviate unnecessary economic pressure for low-income residents. Further, grocery stores improve neighborhood economic outcomes by creating local jobs and attracting private investment. For example, a subsidized Jewel-Osco in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood helped revitalize parts of Woodlawn by attracting new apartments and businesses. City-owned grocery stores promise to maintain and further extend these benefits.

While no major US city owns a grocery store, city-owned stores exist in rural communities like Baldwin, Florida and illustrate the impact such a store can have. Baldwin only has 1,400 people but it runs a successful grocery store. The store is like a public utility, where the town paid the initial start-up costs, but the residents pay for the ongoing operations. Conducting business in this fashion, the store has continuously served a low-income town.

For Baldwin, a city-owned store offered more benefits than a city-subsidized grocery store. Baldwin found the city-owned option was less costly than a large up-front subsidy (paired with possible, smaller operating subsidies) for a private venture. Further, standard private grocery stores have strict requirements for opening new locations, such as high minimum floorspace and scale, which make operating costs too high for profit in “neighborhoods” like Baldwin. While the model employed by national chain stores works in many locations, this operational rigidity does not fit every area that needs a store.

One advantage of city-owned stores, then, is the flexibility for cities to customize stores to fit specific communities – a flexibility that has enabled the Baldwin store’s success. With its city-owned store, Baldwin has reaped the broad benefits offered by private grocery stores and can even recoup some start-up costs through the profitable sale of items. If translated to Chicago, Baldwin-style city-owned grocery stores could save the city money compared to subsidized operations, while offering better adaption to local communities than what might be achieved with private grocery stores.

Concerns over city-owned grocery stores are understandable, but largely unfounded. Some have suggested that bringing a city-owned store into an area would not benefit (and perhaps even harm) residents. A Chicago Tribune op-ed argued that new neighborhood stores would raise local housing rents – though this “cost” would only arise in the event that the city-owned store succeeds in making the neighborhood more attractive! The critique based on raising rents potentially could be used to scuttle any policy initiative for local improvements. Further, a successful grocery store can increase the housing supply in a neighborhood – as seen with Woodlawn’s subsidized Jewel-Osco. Additionally, there are well-known methods for offering additional housing protections in rapidly gentrifying areas that face higher rents. Indeed, such protections are in place in Woodlawn, where 30% of new units on city-owned vacant lots are reserved for “very low-income renters.” City-owned grocery stores, as with any policy initiative, must consistently be re-evaluated to address unintended consequences. But such consequences are not a reason to accept current conditions, where neighborhood residents must rely primarily on high-priced convenience stores for food access.

City-owned grocery stores could become a major innovation in successfully addressing a lack of grocery options, providing stable food access, and promoting neighborhood investment. Opening a Chicago-owned store would be an affordable investment, and one with substantial upside potential. The innovation also would allow Chicago to join the tiny town of Baldwin as a valuable case-study for future use, even if the initial efforts aren’t as successful as hoped. The evidence-based lessons, pro and con, will help lead to better policies far beyond the city boundaries. Chicago should embrace its tradition of making no little plans, planting a policy seed that contains the promise of growing something big.