Federal officials visited Salem’s Market in the Hill District Monday, hailing efforts by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help the local grocer take root in a long-neglected community — efforts that may help the store branch out beyond the neighborhood itself.
“The historic Hill District is a community that has been systematically divested. It’s a community that has faced so many setbacks and broken promises,” said Congresswoman Summer Lee, whose office worked with Pittsburgh officials at the Urban Redevelopment Authority to secure $200,000 in federal aid for the store. ”It’s so important that we continue to fight for these investments.”
“This is a community that deserves to have everything that you can have to be healthy and safe, and that comes from food,” said USDA Senior Advisor Cindy Axne.
Though the store isn’t completely built out yet, Salem’s had its “soft launch” in February, and its operations have been boosted by the $200,000 grant under the USDA’s Healthy Food Financing Initiative. The effort subsidizes investments to improve access to fresh food in “food deserts” that otherwise lack places to find it.
Store owner Abdullah Salem led Axne, Lee and other officials through the store's produce and meat departments where Salem pointed out sausage-stuffing and vacuum-packaging equipment the federal dollars helped secure.
That equipment makes it possible for the store to handle packaging in-house, and Salem said that with the necessary approvals, he hoped to sell to markets outside the Hill.
“We’ll be able to sell to a lot more businesses, and hopefully you’ll see Salem’s-branded meat maybe in a Target one day,” he said.
The money also allowed the store to package produce, ensuring a supply of fresh greens and other products.
“Help from all of our partners,” Salem said, made possible by “our produce department that’s here for the Hill District and the entire Pittsburgh [area] to enjoy.”
Axne said the federal financing was part of a broader effort “to revitalize America and make sure that it has a food system that works for us, because for far too long we’ve seen food deserts in places like the Hill here, we’ve seen farmers go out of business.”
The problems were related, she told reporters. “We need to focus on the rural [farmers] but without the opportunity for folks to get access to that [food], we’re not fulfilling our mission.” Smaller grocers like Salem’s have more local supply chains than big-box stores, officials pointed out: Salem’s works with over two-dozen local food providers, and Axne said having food produced and distributed by local businesses means “we’re keeping money in the pockets of the people in the communities that they live in.”
Lee added that addressing such problems was also a matter of social equity. “We deserve grocery stores and grocers who care about our community. We deserve to have the best quality of foods, and we don’t always see that. “
Lee said she herself shopped at the store in part because it had “some of the freshest meat that you’re going to get in town,” but also because “it’s important to me that this works, that the people in the Hill District are able to keep their grocery store.”
The neighborhood was without one for decades, and an all-too-brief respite with a Shop ’n Save ended several years ago. Salem’s occupies the space now, offering halal meat and a wide range of produce.
Axne’s visit was the latest of a series of such events in which administration staffers have come to the region so they could tout Biden’s investments. First Lady Jill Biden and other officials have hailed federal support of a $1.4 billion renovation of the Pittsburgh International Airport; Lee herself has hosted a number of such events, such as chaperoning the head of the government’s General Services Administration to see investments in the federal courthouse Downtown.
These have been official White House visits rather than campaign events, but in an election year it’s hard not to hear political overtones when officials celebrate the impact of an administration initiative.
Axne herself made a separate stop elsewhere in the region on Monday, visiting a Natrona Heights farm in the congressional district of Chris Deluzio next door. There too, USDA grant money helped pay for equipment needed to support operations: In this case, Blackberry Meadows Farm used a $13,285 grant to purchase a freezer for storing organic pork.
In a statement issued by Deluzio’s office, Axne said that investing in such capacity “not only provides additional income for the farmer, but it also drives down food costs in the local economy because transportation and refrigeration costs are reduced.”
