Past and Present: Broadway Market and Lexington Co-Op
News Editorial Writer
Updated: 09/15/09 6:49 PM
Call it a tale of two markets. One in the best of neighborhoods, one in, well, a part of town that is not exactly thriving.
The contrast between the thriving Lexington Cooperative Market in Elmwood Village, nationally recognized as one of the best neighborhoods in the country, and the troubled Broadway Market in the Broadway/Fillmore area, a part of town that has seen much better days, is an example of how, even when it comes to getting something good to eat, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
The divergent paths of the two markets is even more serious than the normal story of businesses on the way up and on the way down. If there is anything that a low-income urban neighborhood needs it is an oasis in what experts are coming to call the "food desert," or a neighborhood that offers little in the way of healthy fruits and vegetables, groceries made from whole grains and low in fat and sweeteners.
The Lexington Co-op was founded on the Village's Lexington Avenue in 1971 as the Lexington Real Foods Community Co-Op, a buying club that made it possible for neighbors to buy whole grains and other natural foods in more affordable bulk quantities that they could share around.
It evolved into a shop, outgrew its birthplace and, about three years ago, moved around the corner to a modern store at 807 Elmwood Ave. There it serves more than 4,000 member/owners and the larger community, with many customers coming from as far away as Rochester and Jamestown.
The Broadway Market is older, tracing its history back to 1888. The building at 999 Broadway belongs to the city and is leased to a nonprofit corporation to operate. It is home to more than a dozen small meat, fish and poultry markets, restaurants, bakeries and produce stands, among them offering a healthy selection of fresh and locally grown foods.
As such, it is just what many low-income urban neighborhoods would be stunningly lucky to have, an alternative to the small stores that often have little to offer beyond high-sugar processed foods shelved among the cigarettes and malt liquor.
But times are not good at the Broadway Market. Stalls are empty, business is slow and two businesses — a poultry market and a bank branch — recently abandoned their slots. Just about everyone involved is quick to say that if it were not for the heavy influx of customers in the Easter and Christmas seasons, many of them former neighborhood residents or the descendants of former residents who come in search of the Polish and other ethnic delicacies of their youth, the remaining businesses would not be viable.
If location — or, as they say in real estate, location, location, location — were destiny, then it might be that the Broadway Market would have nothing to learn from the Lexington Co-op. If you are stuck in a poverty-stricken census tract, then the success of a rival ensconced in what the American Planning Association has named one of the top 10 neighborhoods in the country might not provide anything but jealousy.
But public markets featuring locally grown foods and locally baked goods can be a draw for just about any neighborhood if they are aggressively marketed as such.
What the Lexington Co-op can teach its down-at-the-heels counterpart is the lure not just of swanky and expensive organic foods from a long way away, but of foods from nearby. When the food is available in season, general manager Tim Bartlett says, the Co-op favors food grown nearby, on small-scale farms that Co-Op managers have satisfied themselves operate in ways that, if not strictly organic, at least qualify as respectful of nature, using little or no pesticides or other chemicals.
It's not that the Broadway Market is devoid of those things. It has them. But too few people know it. And those who have heard are unlikely to check out a store that not only is in a neighborhood that has no other draw, but that also keeps hours (8 to 5, Monday to Saturday) not conducive to a visit from anyone interested in checking out something new.
Public markets, from Boston to Rochester to Seattle, have proven strong seeds for revitalizing urban neighborhoods. The Broadway Market could be one of those. And the Lexington Co-op, which has noticed that its own business increases as mainstream supermarkets talk up their organic and local foods, wouldn't mind one bit if the Broadway Market claimed some of the growing market for good things to eat.
