Public Radio for the Piedmont and High Country
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

New Hope For Troubled Liberty Street Market

Council Member Vivian Burke (in white) joins other Winston-Salem city officials in a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Liberty Street Market in 2014. Burke, who died in May 2020, was a supporter of the market as a way to help the people of the neighborhood. Photo courtesy of City of Winston-Salem.

Winston-Salem's Liberty Street Market opened more than five years ago with big plans to provide food for area residents. But there's been difficulties reaching that goal. Now an effort is in the works to change that.

The hope is to open in July with a fairly small number of vendors, about eight or so, providing meat and produce to people within a short radius of the market off of U.S. 52.

Megan Regan is chair of the city's Urban Food Policy Council advisory group and an economist. She says there are few grocery stores in the area and the ones that are there can have higher prices than similar stores in higher-income neighborhoods.

She says the new market is being funded by a grant that is targeted to the growing demand for locally produced food as people respond to the COVID-19 outbreak.

“The farmers in that space during the pandemic need a market opportunity to profit from their livelihood,” she says. “The grant was very specific that the farmers who vend there must produce within a five-mile radius.”

Regan says some of the producers in the area are urban farmers with smaller offerings than a full-sized farm and may struggle to meet the demands of larger farmers markets. The grant also includes money for safety measures to minimize the risk of spreading the virus as people shop.

The market opened to much hype in 2014 but hasn't filled the need for the area, which is considered a food desert. It was built with support from the City of Winston-Salem and the Housing Authority of Winston-Salem.

The market was a priority for longtime city councilwoman Vivian Burke, who died this month. Regan says she's hoping Burke's legacy will encourage people to help the market thrive.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

Support quality journalism, like the story above,
with your gift right now.

Donate