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OKLAHOMA CITY \u2014<\/p>\nResidents rally to save grocery store, keeping northeast OKC from becoming food desert again<\/p>\n
The Northeast Oklahoma City community is rallying to save a Homeland grocery store from closure, aiming to prevent the area from becoming a food desert.<\/p>\n
OKLAHOMA CITY \u2014<\/p>\n
Residents in northeast Oklahoma City are rallying to save a Homeland grocery store from closure, which would prevent the area from becoming a food desert once again. <\/p>\n
Homeland announced plans to close multiple locations in Oklahoma, including the store at NE 36th and Lincoln, which opened in 2021 to address a critical food desert in the area.<\/p>\n
“We saw an opportunity and thought why not step in and be a part of that,” Jonathan Veal, director of Restore OKC, said.<\/p>\n
>> Download the KOCO 5 App | Subscribe to KOCO 5\u2019s YouTube channel | Sign up for KOCO 5\u2019s Morning Newsletter<\/p>\n
Homeland’s decision to close stores has caused significant concern among residents.<\/p>\n
“We’ve faced some serious financial pressure. It started to affect and impact the experience of our shoppers and our shelves,” Christin King, vice president of brand digital and communications for HAC, Inc., said.<\/p>\n
>> Video Below: Multiple Homeland stores in Oklahoma City metro closing; others statewide consolidating<\/p>\n
Caylee Dodson, director of Restore OKC, emphasized the importance of keeping the store open. <\/p>\n
“We really don\u2019t want to see a major investment like that that\u2019s 5 years old, barely, go under. That really does start to impact economics and investment of the community in the long haul in ways that we know just can’t happen,” Dodson said.<\/p>\n
Restore OKC, a nonprofit organization in Northeast Oklahoma City, has partnered with Homeland to ensure the store remains open. <\/p>\n
“Opportunity presented itself that an asset in the community was about to kind of go offline. As a community development agency, we want to make sure we contribute to the flourishing of the community,” Veal said. <\/p>\n
>> Video from 2021 shows when Homeland opened northeast OKC store. <\/p>\n
Homeland has agreed to operate the store until the end of the year, giving Restore OKC enough time to secure the necessary funding. <\/p>\n
“To allow us time to step in with a similar partnership that we\u2019ve had with them over the last 5 years with the Market at East Point and see if we can raise the money to see if we can pull the same sort of operating partnership and community ownership,” Dodson said. “We would obviously want to engage the community voice and say, ‘What do we want this store to look like?’ Then we would try to pull the right funding partners, community partners, right? Everybody is going to have to push together to see this become what we know it can be for our community.”<\/p>\n
>> Get the latest news stories of interest by clicking here.<\/p>\n
While there is no plan yet for a name or what the store will look like, Restore OKC has confirmed that Homeland will continue to assist with back-end operations, making it a community-owned store.<\/p>\n
Top Headlines<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Residents rally to save grocery store, keeping northeast OKC from becoming food desert again The Northeast Oklahoma City community is rallying to save a Homeland grocery store from closure, aiming to prevent the area from becoming a food desert. OKLAHOMA CITY \u2014 Residents in northeast Oklahoma City are rallying to save a Homeland grocery store<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[17394,1505,17391,3179,2744,17390,17393,16003,17392,4598,4596,4594,4597,4595,4286,17389,3803,10846,126],"class_list":["post-17798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oklahoma","tag-brand-digital","tag-community","tag-consolidatingcaylee-dodson","tag-director","tag-food-desert","tag-homeland","tag-jonathan-veal","tag-koco","tag-northeast-okc-grocery-store","tag-oklahoma","tag-oklahoma-dining","tag-oklahoma-food","tag-oklahoma-grocery-stores","tag-oklahoma-restaurants","tag-resident","tag-restore-okc","tag-store","tag-video-below","tag-year"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/vive.im\/@dc\/117291630217528247","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}