KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Adriana Rentie has been threatened by customers and cited for activity that takes place in the parking lot of the Sun Fresh Market near East 31st Street and Prospect Avenue, where she’s worked for three years.
Rentie currently serves as the grocery store’s interim manager because her two predecessors quit, unable or unwilling to cope with the chaos of the neighborhood and the inaction to stop it.
“Having somebody that wants to put up with the fight of the violence every day, of the guns, of the knives, of the drugs — just of the every-day thieves,” Rentie said. “It’s so hard for the people to feel safe who want to work here and want to come here.”
When police responded after she was threatened with a box cutter, she says responding officers were dismissive and said they were there for another crime — a man with a machete in the parking lot.
On another occasion, Sun Fresh was cited for allowing drinking in the parking lot, even though it has no enforcement authority after a customer leaves the store.
Kansas City, Missouri, poured millions of dollars into revitalizing the retail spaces around the intersection, creating an East Side shopping corridor anchored by a grocery store.
The Sun Fresh alleviated a food desert and brought fresh produce to a neighborhood where access to nutritious food hadn’t been readily available.
It changed ownership in February 2022, turning a profit that first year, but business dried up in the last 18 months.
The parking lot, which is adjacent to cross-crossing bus lines, has become a magnet for drug use and prostitution.
That crime keeps people from navigating the parking lot to get to nearby businesses, including the Sun Fresh, which has seen a spike in theft.
Emmet Pierson — the CEO of Community Builders of Kansas City, which operates the Sun Fresh on Prospect and another along Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard — said the store lost $1.3 million in its second year under new ownership.
“People have to feel safe to come inside the doors,” Rentie said. “And if they don’t feel safe to come in, then it means we may not have a job here in the next 90 days. We might not make it to Thanksgiving if we cannot stop the crime outside these doors.”
Mayor Quinton Lucas and KCPD Chief of Police Stacey Graves walked through the shopping district Sunday, discussing the issues with various community leaders — including Pierson, Rentie and Don Maxwell, who manages the complex of city-owned properties on three of the four corners of the 31st-and-Prospect intersection.
“I was a city councilman when we put $20-plus million into this project of city revenue,” Lucas said. “We’re not trying to have it fail after five years — just straight up, that’s a basic. Nobody wants to walk by a shuttered shopping center that we just put all this money in. It makes us look like fools.”
The city and police recognize that the neighborhood has become plagued by crime, substance abuse and prostitution, attracting an influx of people who are often unhoused and battling untreated mental illness.
“That’s great that we have everybody’s attention,” Pierson said. “Now, let’s turn that attention into some action. We’ve been talking about this for over a year, and it has been a challenge.”
Lucas and Graves have vowed to foster a more collaborative approach to improving the neighborhood.
He wants city services, including the health and housing departments, to work together efficiently to address issues as they come up and get the Kansas City Public Library, which has a branch on the northwest corner of the intersection, involved.
“Everybody’s doing a hands-off sort of thing, and that’s clearly not working,” Lucas said. “I think you need that level of cooperation here on this corner and, frankly, that’s a model for other parts of the city, too.”
Graves promised to ramp up KCPD’s presence in the area.
“This is an urgent issue for us,” she said. “We’re here 24 hours a day until further notice.”
Lucas and Graves also promised better “bedside manner,” as Lucas termed it, from police in dealing with community members, who want enforcement to make the area safe for residents and families.
“We’re also getting beyond excuses,” Lucas said. “There are a lot of issues that confront our city — a lot of shopping centers, a lot of crimes, don’t have enough officers, don’t have enough detention beds. After a while, that starts to sound like an excuse. What we’re saying, there really can’t be excuses.”
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KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County. Share your story idea with Tod.