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SCHENECTADY
Greenmarket to debut in ‘food desert’ Bellevue
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

    The Schenectady Greenmarket is taking its first steps toward expansion into one of the many city neighborhoods without access to a grocery store.
    But it’s not moving into Hamilton Hill, which is often described as a “food desert” because of the distance from there to a grocery. It’s expanding into a neighborhood that’s even farther from a grocery store: Bellevue.
    It’s two miles from there to the nearest grocery. (It’s 1.5 miles from Hamilton Hill.)
    “They talk about Hamilton Hill and Central State being food deserts. Well, that’s Bellevue,” said former neighborhood association President Jacquie Hurd.
    The Bellevue Preservation Association ran an extensive survey, interviewing residents outside banks and stores, to determine whether they would buy fresh produce. The answer: if it was close enough to walk to, residents would come.
    “There is nothing within walking distance. We think there’s a need for it,” Hurd said, noting that many low-income residents have moved to the neighborhood in recent years.
    The Greenmarket board voted Wednesday night to submit a state grant to start a market in Bellevue, and board members plan to have it running by June if they get the grant.
    Member and City Councilwoman Barbara Blanchard said the board was impressed by Bellevue’s survey, which even determined the most popular time for a market: Thursday afternoons.
    But this isn’t the beginning of a series of expansions, she said. No other markets are in the works yet.
    “We want to go slowly,” she said.
    Hamilton Hill residents have lobbied for a market for many years, most recently trying to band together to buy a building to host their own market. The building was destroyed in a fi re instead. ..................>>>>......................>>>>..........................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00903&AppName=1

Yeah...Don't put your own money up, use taxpayer money in the form of a 'grant' so when the damn thing fails you can just go 'Welp, that didn't work'

Hum....Greenmarket move into the Hill or into Bellevue??? Noticed MP wasn't on that list.

It's like asking Morris if he'll hold a free DEM rally at Key Hall or give free Proctors tickets to City school children.

Let's call it what it is, the Green Market people wouldn't step foot onto the Hill or MP and this is very blatantly discriminatory.

Do you notice that anything to do with CITIES or THE CITY has to be funded by a "grant?" Because of the inefficiency and laziness of many modern city-dwellers who are largly uneducated and uneducatable peasants, the entire model is one that cannot survive with out a communistic element and a redistributist approach that steals money from the working people in suburbs and funds all of their nice things (that they ultimately destroy and pollute) that they WON'T pay for themselves. A super market can't build every 1/2 mile apart. They are moaning that it is 1.5 miles to the nearest market! HOW AWFUL! HOW SAD!

What a load. When you live in the country you have to go long distances as well. Often you have your own well, and septic and don't need sidewalks (which the peasants REFUSE TO USE instead walking down the middle of the roadway) and streetlights. The police don't need to be there constantly and the country dweller expects little in the way of government largesse. Yet THEY ARE THE BAD GUYS AND THE NOBLE, HUMBLE WONDERFUL PEASANTS OF THE CITIES ARE THE GREAT ONES!

Screw the prevailing, politically correct script. It is a lie, like everything else is a lie today. I am so sick of lies being truth and truth being lies. This country and its elite class are screwing the middle class to glorify the peasants. I am sick of it. This is the elites war on the middle class, over and over. And when we are destroyed, we will all be peasants that the elite can control like puppets.

Grants? you mean that "free money" that's available for anything under the sun? that magic money that appears out of nowhere and doesn't cost anybody anything?................ya know just hire someone to write the grant to get the "free money" those grants? or the one that used to be on Curry Rd...........

Kudos to Bellevue's Neighborhood Association for "taking the bull by the horn", doing a survey and making the effort to draw the Greenmarket into their neighborhood.   This is the kind of effort that every neighborhood association and every community should be doing --- determine a need/set a goal, gather the data to support your proposal and work to get it accomplished.

JOB WELL DONE ---- KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK.

City=Fail.

Quoted from GrahamBonnet

Do you notice that anything to do with CITIES or THE CITY has to be funded by a "grant?" Because of the inefficiency and laziness of many modern city-dwellers who are largly uneducated and uneducatable peasants, the entire model is one that cannot survive with out a communistic element and a redistributist approach that steals money from the working people in suburbs and funds all of their nice things (that they ultimately destroy and pollute) that they WON'T pay for themselves. A super market can't build every 1/2 mile apart. They are moaning that it is 1.5 miles to the nearest market! HOW AWFUL! HOW SAD!

What a load. When you live in the country you have to go long distances as well. Often you have your own well, and septic and don't need sidewalks (which the peasants REFUSE TO USE instead walking down the middle of the roadway) and streetlights. The police don't need to be there constantly and the country dweller expects little in the way of government largesse. Yet THEY ARE THE BAD GUYS AND THE NOBLE, HUMBLE WONDERFUL PEASANTS OF THE CITIES ARE THE GREAT ONES!

Screw the prevailing, politically correct script. It is a lie, like everything else is a lie today. I am so sick of lies being truth and truth being lies. This country and its elite class are screwing the middle class to glorify the peasants. I am sick of it. This is the elites war on the middle class, over and over. And when we are destroyed, we will all be peasants that the elite can control like puppets.

Well alteast the peasants will stop walking through rotterdam neighborhoods to grocery shop when their is somewhere closer.  Now if we could just tear down walmart.

Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason

Kudos to Bellevue's Neighborhood Association for "taking the bull by the horn", doing a survey and making the effort to draw the Greenmarket into their neighborhood.   This is the kind of effort that every neighborhood association and every community should be doing --- determine a need/set a goal, gather the data to support your proposal and work to get it accomplished.

JOB WELL DONE ---- KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK.

So, are you saying that every neighborhood should have such a market?  

Who should pay for it?   Where do YOU, DV, where do YOU think the money for such markets should come from?

If there is no private funding to make it successful, do you then believe that taxes should be increased on the homeowners to pay for it?


Of course, DV claims he blocked me, he doesn't want to respond to the tough questions.   He can't come out saying he favors the taxpayers to pay for everything, I mean, he doesn't want to actually use those words, instead he just says these projects should go forth, but he REFUSES to explain where the money should come from if there is not enough private funding.  


.

Im thinking if aunties are "ok" with the taxes they pay, perhaps they should forfeit their star exemption and pay their fair share.

Every neighborhood use to have a market until people decided that they needed to have 150 different flavors of cerealand chips to choose from. It's really not that radical of an idea. Now that markets require a stadium sized building andacres of parking it's really not possible to have one in every neighborhood.
Better access to fresh fruits and vegetables is a good thing though...I hope that it us successful.

Is there something wrong with this statement?

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The Schenectady Greenmarket is taking its first steps toward expansion into one of the many city neighborhoods without access to a grocery store.

Is there a locked wall that prevents people from accessing a grocery store?   No car, you have no feet?  There are no buses or cabs?   According to CDTA schedules, buses go directly to Walmart Supercenter Glenville, Price Chopper on Altamont, Hannaford on Altamont, Shop-Rite Niskayuna, all the grocery stores along State St/Central Avenue.

Shop Rite and Price Chopper will deliver.

Funny, even those without cars manage to get to many other places.  

Not opposed to vegetable markets by any means, as long as it's not on the taxpayers' dole



.

Quoted from mikechristine1

Is there something wrong with this statement?



Is there a locked wall that prevents people from accessing a grocery store?   No car, you have no feet?  There are no buses or cabs?   According to CDTA schedules, buses go directly to Walmart Supercenter Glenville, Price Chopper on Altamont, Hannaford on Altamont, Shop-Rite Niskayuna, all the grocery stores along State St/Central Avenue.

Shop Rite and Price Chopper will deliver.

Funny, even those without cars manage to get to many other places.  

Not opposed to vegetable markets by any means, as long as it's not on the taxpayers' dole
.

I agree!
Looks like those CDTA buses and cabs are driving around for no reason. And don't the markets carry locally grown fresh produce when available?

Not sayin that Green Markets are not a good idea. It's just the rational that doesn't make any sense.

I don't see how anybody could oppose the Green Market coming to Bellevue.  Green Markets are a great way to SUPPORT LOCAL FARMERS AND PRODUCERS and to promote healthier eating in general and it even helps reduce energy use and helps the environment  (by helping keep farm lands as farm lands).

Quoted from bumblethru

I agree!
Looks like those CDTA buses and cabs are driving around for no reason. And don't the markets carry locally grown fresh produce when available?

Not sayin that Green Markets are not a good idea. It's just the rational that doesn't make any sense.

Have you ever tried to carry home a weeks worth of groceries on a bus? Do you realize how long some of those trips can take? It can be longer than it takes for items to start defrosting. Cabs can be costly-especially for some ofthe residents in these areas. Inaccessibility to grocery stores in low income urban areas is one of the factors in obesity among the poor. You can spend half of your food money on transportation or you can walk to the corner convent store and spend a few dollars on chips, frozen pizza, and soda. I have seen people in the dollar store buying their groceries.

I'm not saying that government grants for the green market is the answer, but it is easy to think that 1.5 miles is no big deal when you have the means not to be a resident of that particular 1.5 miles.

I think it is also important to remember that part of the greenmarket's mission is to promote locally grown items. The box stores don't have that primary mission, so instead of having local items available within walking distance there is a situation of the excessive use of gas to transport produce and people from greater distances. Ultimately though I doubt it will be able to maintain itself. Last summer I tried to buy two chicken breasts from a vendor infront of City Hall. When he told me $58 I thought he was joking- he was not.  People who not not afford cabs or busses are not going to be able to afford the prices for most of the stands I have seen.