After fire, Village Plaza’s future unknown

May 22--WILMINGTON -- Three weeks after flames tore through the aisles of Everybody's Supermarket, the store and its neighboring businesses are in limbo.

The May 2 fire at Village Plaza shopping center on Greenfield Street destroyed the home of half a dozen businesses, including the supermarket, World Beauty Supply, Spiro's restaurant, Quail's Quality Cuts barber shop, City Life Church and a Boost Mobile store.

Bill Baicy of Littleton, who owns the Village Plaza property, said in a message that the shopping center's future is still up in the air. Asked this week if he planned to rebuild or sell, Baicy said he's waiting on insurance estimates.

"I wish I had information that I could pass on to you, but it's all dependent on the insurance companies," he said. "Since I've never been through this before, I have no reference as far as how long it will take or what their decision process is."

Village Plaza's 3.2 acres were valued earlier this year at $907,000, according to New Hanover County tax records, with $549,800 coming from the buildings. Investigators with the Wilmington Fire Department said earlier this month that the building was like not salvagable, and would probably need to be demolished.

But even if the plaza and its tenants rebuild, neighbors are left without a grocery store in the interim.

Steve McCrossan, director of Nourish N.C., a hunger-focused non-profit headquartered on Greenfield Street, said the void left by Everybody's isn't likely to fill organically, with a major grocer deciding to open shop in the neighborhood. Instead, he predicts it will take a partership between neighbors, business, nonprofits and government.

"The thing I tell everybody is, 'Who's going to own this project?'," McCrossan asked. "Everyone's been talking about this fire and the issue it's caused in the neighborhood, but we need it to go from talking to action."

Food desert?

The neighborhood around Village Plaza has a high concentration of low-income families, many of whom frequented the walking-distance Everybody's Supermarket. In addition to the Village at Greenfield Apartments, several public housing complexes sit in the neighborhood: Houston Moore Terrace, Hillcrest and Jervay apartments.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture uses the term "food desert" to describe areas where people have a harder time accessing food. Food deserts are created by low incomes and low proximity to grocers.

Since the loss of Everybody's, the Greenfield Street neighborhood has both.

While a handful of stores like Dollar General and Rite Aid sell basic foodstuffs, the closest full-service grocer is now the Food Lion on Oleander, about a mile away. But even a mile is far for people who don't own a car -- compare the five-minute walk from Houston Moore to Everybody's with the 25-minute walk to Food Lion.

A short-term fix for residents could be a Nourish N.C. pop-up grocery store near the Everybody's location. McCrossan said he hopes to announce the details of the pop-up market this week.

The Good Shepherd Center, which sits just a block from Village Plaza, has also helped fill the gap left by Everybody's. Director Katrina Knight said the center has seen about 25 more people than average at its daily breakfasts, lunches and dinners -- free to anyone -- since the fire.

"I think we were kind of bracing ourselves for extra numbers, but it's been manageable," she said. "It's kind of ironic that it's our own neighborhood here, but if it's going to happen, I suppose better it happens in a neighborhood where folks can just walk to us."

Long-term solution

A seemingly endless stream of Aldis, Publix supermarkets and Lidls have poured into the Cape Fear region in the past two years. But it's unlikely that one will pop up on Greenfield Street.

"I think it'll be a long time till there's a grocery store there for real," McCrossan said. "Those big chains have formulas they go by. It's a certain amount of people, it's a certain level of income, it's a certain number of cars. And if you don't meet that, they don't come."

Instead, McCrossan said he hopes to see local groups take on the Greenfield food desert.

He pointed to Wilmington's Northside neighborhood, where New Hanover Regional Medical Center (NHRMC) is spearheading an initiative to tackle a long-time food desert. Last month NHRMC met with residents, city and schools officials and community groups to talk about bringing a grocery store to Northside.

"If we can find a model that works, we would like to replicate what we can in other parts of Wilmington or the region," Scott Whisnant, NHRMC's administrator of community relations, wrote in an email. "This is an effort to introduce healthy and affordable foods to these neighborhoods in an effort to raise the overall level of health."

But whatever grocer -- if any -- comes to Greenfield Street, the neighborhood won't be the same.

"People lost a place of worship, we lost a restaurant where people congregated, we lost a barber shop," McCrossan said. "It wasn't just a grocery store."

Reporter Cammie Bellamy can be reached at 910-343-2339 or [email protected].

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