By Wendy Wesley, RDN
If a picture speaks 1,000 words this one tells a mini-novel about St. Petersburg and our priorities.
Eve Borden, a long time southeast St. Petersburg resident sent me these photos with the attached message:
“I am worried that our only grocery store may be on its way out based on how the shopping center’s owner repaired the sign,” she wrote to me through Facebook. “See attached photo, before and after, she said.”
The photos, from October 2020, were taken at Coquina Key Plaza located at 4350 6th Street South, in southeast St. Petersburg, and show a broken sign supported by a Bobcat front loader in the “before” photo and by a piece of scrap metal in the “after” photo.
This is “fixed” according to the plaza’s owner and presumably good enough by city standards. Four pages of code violations accompany this plaza; a loud and clear statement as to how St. Petersburg leadership views areas that face health inequities, crime, nutrition insecurity, unstable housing due to gentrification and the maintenance of buildings.
With no food options other than Dollar General, Family Dollar and gas station food, residents who are transportation challenged, living at or below the poverty level and struggling with the effects of COVID-19 have every right to be worried.
This Save-a-Lot is located on the easternmost border of a 42-block area of south St. Petersburg where there are no grocery stores. It serves an economically challenged area of St. Petersburg that faces increasing nutrition insecurity due to COVID-19 hardships. Within that 42-block area and elsewhere in St. Petersburg exist several “food deserts” as designated by the USDA.
Councilwoman Gina Driscoll, whose district serves Coquina Key Plaza and the shuttered Tangerine Plaza in Midtown, said City leadership and Council are aware of this plaza, its problems with car racing in the parking lot and its code violations. The plaza is for sale to the highest bidder and the owner is well within his rights to sell at the highest cost.
The owner is not within his rights to let the plaza fall into disrepair and to languish to the detriment of its neighbors. Most-importantly the city should be held accountable and responsible for ignoring pages and pages of code violations.
This photo speaks volumes about inactivity on the code violations while COVID-19 brings to a hot-white light the health inequities under the watch of city staff, our mayor and our city council.
I agree with my friend: if the owner’s repair of this sign is any indication of longevity in this neighborhood it does not bode well for the city’s ongoing and long-ignored issues with nutrition insecurity.
Pre-pandemic my patients could not access the foods they needed to manage their chronic diseases of diabetes, congestive heart failure and kidney disease.
Large populations of our city do not have access to nutrient-dense foods.
Contrary to popular belief there is not a Publix across the street from another Publix in many areas of our city.
