Is Grounds a food desert?

Across communities in the United States, millions of Americans struggle with access to affordable, nutritious food, and the University is no exception. Long distances to supermarkets, coupled with unaffordable options on and around Grounds, make healthy eating a difficult task for some students.

A Food Access Atlas curated by the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service marked areas surrounding Jefferson Park Avenue, areas north of University Avenue and some parts of Grounds near Scott Stadium as “low-income and low-access using vehicle access.” This description has replaced the term “food desert,” which refers to an area where over 100 households both do not have a personal vehicle and are more than 0.5 miles from the nearest supermarket or large grocery store.

For a student living on or near Grounds, the nearest grocery stores are at the Barracks Road Shopping Center, which houses two — a Harris Teeter and a Kroger. For students with a car, Google Maps estimates that the 1.1 mile drive takes only five minutes. However, students without personal vehicles — including the vast majority of first years — need to find different ways to get to the grocery store. 

According to Google Maps, walking to the Barracks Road Shopping Center takes 25 minutes and cycling takes nine. This trip involves traveling down Emmett Street, a four-lane arterial road that starts at Jefferson Park Avenue and runs all the way to Seminole Trail. Buses are also an option, but that alternative comes with another set of variables that can impact travel time and convenience.

Though the distance to walk or bike on the road to get to Barracks is minimal, according to Andrew Mondschein — associate professor of Urban and Environmental Planning and associate dean of research at the School of Architecture — the length of the route is not the only factor that determines accessibility. Other important aspects in access include how easy and comfortable the trip is.

“It's not all about distance and time,” Mondschein said. “It's still [a long trip], but even if you get past that, there's still a lot of friction in terms of the comfort. When we plan for walking — or biking for that matter — we have to think about more than just raw distance or raw time, we also have to think about if it is something people are going to feel comfortable doing [a second time].”

Mondschein also said that travel down Emmet Street is dangerous for pedestrians and bikers alike. For pedestrians, he said the road’s crosswalks feel unsafe, the sidewalks do not provide ample shade and street lights point towards the road rather than on the sidewalks, making it inconvenient and uncomfortable to be a pedestrian. Further, Mondschein said Emmet Street is not built for bikers, as it has no bike lanes.

Third-year Architecture student Adam Stievater said that concerns over safety and comfort make the options of walking or biking functionally impossible.

“You can't walk and you definitely can't bike,” Stievater said. “Which makes it very challenging, especially because first years cannot have a car, and then many upperclassmen who live on Grounds still avoid getting one because of how inconvenient it is.”

For students without personal vehicles, another option beyond walking or biking is taking University or Charlottesville public transit systems. While both the University Transit Service and Charlottesville Area Transit connect the shopping center to Grounds, taking transit comes with a new set of concerns around reliability and consistency — notably whether or not it makes running errands any quicker. 

Only two routes can take a student from Grounds to Barracks — CAT’s Seven Route and the UTS Gold Line. Both can significantly reduce the effort to get to Barracks, but they might not reduce the time needed to get there and back.

“By the time you walk to a bus stop, get on a bus to Barracks Road and then shop and then get back, that could be a two hour trip,” Mondschein said. “That could be a huge amount of time that you could be doing schoolwork or working or whatever else. And so it's a big time sink right now — transit is not really geared towards access for students, especially around U.Va.”

Third-year Engineering student Brennen Muller also said that the time required to get to Barracks via public transit can be too long, noting that buses do not always arrive on time. Muller, who tries to take the bus to get groceries at Barracks every two weeks, said that in his opinion, buses need to be more reliable and predictable to avoid having a long journey.

“I don't think the bus itself is a bad option, but I do think that something that would make it more appealing is if the bus was more consistent,” Muller said. “I don't mean to say that the bus is particularly inconsistent, but as with anything where you're using public transportation, the more I can count on it, the more I can decrease the time I spend [getting groceries].”

The USDA food atlas that classifies certain areas on and around Grounds as having low access to food only measures distance from supermarkets and large grocery stores, so dining halls, restaurants and convenience stores are not taken into account. The metric is limited in this regard — it does not account for the nuances of college campuses or small food stores, but small food stores are often more expensive than supermarkets, and dining halls do have entry restrictions, meaning that neither directly addresses the issue of access to fresh, healthy and affordable food that the USDA seeks to delineate.

The University has three dining halls and a number of other food options on Grounds, including convenience stores and fast food locations. The Corner on University Avenue also has multiple convenience stores and several restaurants providing quick meals and snacks for students.

However, Muller said these options are often more limited and expensive than surrounding grocery stores.  

“Anything on Grounds, or close to Grounds, is more expensive,” Muller said. “I would love for that not to be the case. I think that's part of the reason that Bodo’s [Bagels] is so popular. Not only is it good, but it's actually quite affordable.”

Muller acknowledged that locations on Grounds, as well as nearby shops like CVS or Corner Grocery are dubbed “convenience” stores for a reason — customers pay a bit more for each product in exchange for not having to deal with the same hassle large food stores bring.

But how high is the cost of convenience?

Take a fairly simple grocery list — one composed of a random selection of commonly purchased items. The list contains no produce or raw meat, which Muller said convenience stores mostly do not sell. Instead, it includes a few common food items and cooking ingredients, a couple of easy-to-prepare quick meals and some household items. Its 10 entries are milk, eggs, white bread, peanut butter, cooking oil, salad mix, boxed macaroni and cheese, instant oatmeal, toilet paper and laundry detergent pods. 

It is worth noting that in this comparison not all locations had the same brands or sizes of items. For example, none of the stores had the same bread, milk or egg brands and Corner Grocery’s cooking oils came only in 16 oz bottles. As a result, not all comparisons are one to one. 

In instances where the only item a store held was a smaller amount than what was needed, the price was multiplied to match the desired quantity. This was done both for Corner Grocery and 1819 Supply at Crossroads for cooking oil — as both only held 16 oz bottles priced at $3.79 and $6.29 respectively — as well as for 1819 Supply for milk and toilet paper, as the store only held half gallon bottles and packets of four rolls, which priced at $4.99 and $2.79 respectively.

Additionally, Harris Teeter had store brand items that were regularly cheaper than name brand alternatives. By and large, everything was cheaper at the supermarket compared to at convenience stores, but items from the store’s own brand were on average 50 cents to a dollar cheaper than the cheapest name brand items.

The 1819 Supply convenience store at Crossroads — located below the Observatory Hill dining hall — was the lowest in terms of affordability, being the most expensive of the four while also only having eight of the needed items in inventory. However, with a dining hall upstairs and three meal exchange fast food restaurants at Crossroads as well, there are still other ways for students, especially those with meal plans, to eat around this location.

But while many students do have a meal plan, Muller said that the lack of diverse healthy options at dining halls, as well as smaller portion sizes for meal exchanges, are other reasons that food access can be a concern on Grounds. Muller also noted that no location on Grounds sells fresh produce.

Stievater and Muller both said that dining options on Grounds do not necessarily address the issue of access to healthy and affordable food, and that the lack of options at dining halls can disincentivize healthy eating. 

“You can eat healthy at the dining hall if you make an effort,” Muller said. “The allergen station food is generally quite healthy. It's just that it's often really dry meat. It's often very plain, unseasoned stuff.”

Additionally, eating at one of the University’s dining halls is not always affordable relative to eating elsewhere, regardless of whether one has a dining plan. The cheapest possible meal plan for an upperclassman who lives off-Grounds is $960, providing 50 meal swipes for the semester and 300 flex dollars — currency that can be used to purchase food at locations across Grounds. All first-year students are required to have an all-access meal plan, which provides unlimited meal swipes for a minimum semesterly price of $3,300. 

For students without a meal plan, eating at one of the University’s dining halls costs $11 for breakfast, $13 for brunch and lunch and $13.50 for dinner — prices comparable to restaurants on the Corner, albeit with larger portion sizes, as dining halls offer all-you-can-eat meals. 

However, while Monschein expressed concern over food access on Grounds, he was hesitant to fully classify the University as a food desert for all students. 

While he said that food access is a legitimate issue for many people, he also said that many students who technically qualify as low-income by virtue of not having a job, might not be financially limited due to still being dependent on their parents. 

The USDA classifies a neighborhood as low-income if the area’s poverty rate is at 20 percent or higher or if the median family income is less than or equal to 80 percent of the State or metropolitan area’s median family income. As such, in a neighborhood populated heavily by students — a majority of whom either do not work or work part-time jobs — the median income will generally be fairly low, but with many students having money saved or receiving financial support from their parents, Mondschein said their lack of income does not reflect the same financial barrier as non-students with similar incomes.

“Is it a classic food desert?” Mondschein said. “Not for everyone, but I think there are people living in these neighborhoods, including some students, for whom it really is.”

So, what needs to change in order to make food access less of a concern? 

Stievater and Mondschein both said that a grocery store on or in close proximity to Grounds, even if not a full-sized supermarket, would immediately address many problems with food access that students face. Mondschein said that as more apartment buildings are constructed down West Main Street, it would be nice to see one that makes space for a grocery store on its street level, instead of another restaurant or a large lobby area.

Stievater also said that the new Gaston House dining locations that opened earlier this semester, which include four restaurants and a self-serve checkout retail store, would have been a strong location for a grocery store.

“I think the new meal service in Gaston house was a missed opportunity,” Stievater said. “Sure, they have that self-serve convenience store, but there was an opportunity to expand that and make it a full grocery store.”

Improving Emmet Street’s accessibility for pedestrians and cyclists, as well as the convenience of taking transit to Barracks would also help make getting groceries a more reasonable time commitment that more students would feel comfortable doing, according to Mondschein. 

Mondschien also listed a series of smaller fixes that would make the trip more convenient, saying that shading the sidewalks with trees, adding bike lanes and improving Emmet Street’s intersections with Massie Road would all help make the trip safer and more comfortable. 

“If we make those improvements, the idea would be [that] those are improvements for everyone,” Mondschein said. “Whether you're a student, whether you have access to a car or whether you don't, those improvements should be beneficial to everyone across the income spectrum.”

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