Transforming what was traditionally known as a “food desert,” Save A Lot was the first grocery store to open in the area in more than 40 years. Its closing also meant that local residents including those residing in a nearby senior citizen home would have to travel miles for groceries or fresh food.
“Pretty much everyone here goes there,” Willie Alexander, one of the seniors at the home, sadly told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2011.
More than a year after Save A Lot closed, Chris Krehmeyer, CEO of the nonprofit Beyond Housing, the discount grocery store’s landlord, made a major public announcement. A new store, Fields Food, will open this month on the southwest corner of Page Boulevard and Ferguson.
“The community was resilient,” Krehmeyer said, explaining their action plan after Save A Lot closed. “We stayed after it. We knew folk would buy groceries, a good product with good prices and good customer service. So, we kept scouring the landscape to see how we could bring another good grocery store back and we were lucky enough to find Chris Goodson and the folks at Fields.”
Fields Foods was founded in 2014 by local entrepreneur, real estate developer, and former president of the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners Chris Goodson. The company has steadily grown stores in the region that include one downtown on Washington Blvd., another in the Central West End on Euclid and its first location in Lafayette Square on 14th Street.
Save A Lot owners didn’t cite specific reasons for closing the store but when it closed Krehmeyer cited lagging sales brought on by limited store hours and a decline in in-person shopping during the pandemic. Still, he added, those weren’t sufficient reasons to close the store.
“We know that for the first 7 or 8 years they were open, they had consistently higher sales year-over-year,” Krehmeyer explained, adding: “We also know that this community will support a good product with good customer service at a good price. That appeared to have changed at Save A Lot over the years and unfortunately they believed the sales weren’t good enough. We don’t know if that’s true or not.”
He believes Fields Foods will be a much better fit for the community and Beyond Housing’s overall mission for surrounding neighborhoods.
“It’s going to be a fantastic upgrade in stores because, quite frankly, Fields is a much better operator than Save A Lot and will provide a much better opportunity for folk in Pasadena Hills, Bel-Nor, Greendale, Vanita Park and other places close by who historically did not shop at that Save A Lot. Fields will provide all the things they could get wherever they went shopping.”
The goal, Krehmeyer said, is to replicate Fields’ Lafayette Square model. “There’s a balance of customers; the folks in Lafayette Square shop there but so do the people in public housing,” Krehmeyer said.
Pagedale Mayor Ernest “G.” Shields said he’s quite excited about the new grocery store. He said he’s been fielding calls from concerned constituents ever since Save A Lot closed. “People have been calling wanting to know what will happen with the building,” Shields said, adding: “Now that they’ve seen the Fields Food sign, they’re excited and ready to go shopping and I’m looking forward to cutting the ribbon soon.”
Pagedale resident, Mel Lovings, who’s been frequenting the Save A Lot on St. Charles Rock Rd., lately welcomes the news of a grocer near his home but he’s also skeptical.
“I don’t know if it’s going to work,” Lovings said. “I think the prices at Fields are a bit higher than your regular grocers.”
Krehmeyer was prepared for that response.
“The reality is that our community is not monolithically poor. There are pockets of poverty where we need to have affordable food; obviously, we need a store that has access to SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits but we also need to have items for folks who have options,” Krehmeyer stressed. “I know they have discount brands and house brands. It won’t be perfect for some folk in our community, but it will be great for others.”
Beyond Housing describes itself as “a nationally recognized community development organization dedicated to strengthening families and transforming 'under-resourced' communities to create a stronger, more equitable, and prosperous St. Louis, once and for all.”
The opening of Save A Lot in 2010 was a great addition to the agency’s extensive economic development work which includes a movie theater, retirement center, Midwest BankCentre, Affinia Healthcare and BJC HealthCare facilities, a senior living center, and most recently, several other Black-owned businesses and the $6.5 million, 20,0000-sq-foot development, Carter Commons with a food hall and retail space.
Krehmeyer said Beyond Housing’s work through the “24:1 Municipal Partnership Initiative” seems to have paid off. In the past 10 years, he said the average sales price for homes in Pagedale has risen 338% per square foot. Additionally, according to recent data the agency received from the Pagedale Police Department, crime has gone down 42% within the last 10 years.
Beyond Housing works under the premise that “Thriving communities need an adequate supply of housing that people can afford, economic development to provide jobs and access to essential goods and services.” Fields Food, Krehmeyer insist, is a part of that ever-expanding mission:
“At the end of the day, if we can’t make the entire community healthier and stronger, it doesn’t matter if you live on an island in Pasadena Hills or someplace else, your neighborhood is going to struggle if everything around you doesn’t get stronger. We can’t just attract one segment of our community; we have to attract everybody in order for this to be successful.”
