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Looking to expand access to affordable food, the City of Eureka is taking a page from New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s playbook and exploring the possibility of setting up a municipal-owned grocery store.

At last night’s Eureka City Council meeting, City Manager Miles Slattery said the idea for a city-run grocery store came up during a recent strategic visioning meeting with the mayor and council as a means to address local food insecurity.

Slattery | Screenshot

“The main location that was discussed was in Henderson Center at the old Rite Aid,” Slattery said. “Staff reached out to the property owner, Ms. Slack, [who] has had the same idea as [the] council of having a grocery store there. Unfortunately, Food Mart used to be there, [which] was bought by Safeway, and when Safeway sold that property, they put a deed restriction on it that … would [prevent] any commercial facility that had more than 30 percent grocery in it.”

The property owner will be held to the deed restriction for another 28 years, but they’re working with their attorney to find a way out of the agreement, Slattery said, noting that previous efforts to lift the deed restriction have failed.

“We also discussed whether or not they’d be interested in selling the property, and they were not,” he added.

Proponents of government-run grocery stores, including Mayor-elect Mamdani, claim municipal ownership would guarantee cheaper prices for consumers by saving on rent and property taxes. Opponents, on the other hand, say it would be virtually impossible for a municipality — even one as big as New York City — to compete with affordable supermarkets like Walmart that have taken over global supply chains.

Before closing out last night’s meeting, he noted that there’s a market in the works next to Ramone’s in Old Town, in the storefront previously occupied by Adams Commercial General Contracting. 

“We haven’t received any development plans or anything yet, but there [have] been people in the community discussing that that is potentially going to happen,” he said, adding that staff will keep looking into both topics and concentrate on communities seeing a food deficit.

“We’re going to be adding a lot of density into Eureka in the next several years, and folks are going to need affordable food, hopefully within walking distance,” said Councilmember Kati Moulton.

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Check back a little later for more coverage of last night’s Eureka City Council meeting!