Atlanta’s Fresh Start

& the Politics of Food Equity

Azalea Fresh Market, September 2025

For nearly a century, the Five Points intersection’s Olympia Building has told the story of Atlanta. The building rose during the city's early commercial boom, emptied as businesses fled to the suburbs, and endured decades of vacancy and disrepair. Across the street, a bronze Phoenix statue, the symbol of Atlanta’s rebirth, overlooks the site. In August 2025, beneath the iconic Coca-Cola sign, Mayor Andre Dickens stood before a crowd gathered for the opening of Atlanta’s first city-owned grocery store: Azalea Fresh Market. Lauding the project as a model for equitable access to healthy food, he framed it as both a practical investment and a statement about the kind of city Atlanta wants to become. 

Mayor Dickens’ proclamation highlighted the city’s intention to address the downtown food desert, a term frequently used to refer to neighborhoods with limited or zero access to affordable, nutritious food. Many people living in food deserts must substitute the fresh food they would otherwise purchase from a supermarket with options from corner delis and convenience stores, which are often heavily processed and lack key nutrients. In addition to proximity, high costs can be just as much of a barrier to healthy food. The cost of fruits and vegetables increased by almost 75% between 1989 and 2005, while the cost of fatty foods fell by over 25% in the same period. Food deserts pose serious health risks, as diets of primarily or exclusively fatty and processed foods elevate the risk of heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. 

Unequal food access in Atlanta stems from a long history of uneven development that traces back to the evolution of Five Points, which was once the city’s primary crossroads of commerce and transit. As the commercial life of downtown dwindled in the mid-twentieth century, businesses moved north to the suburbs, aided by white flight and federally funded suburban growth. Urban renewal efforts remade the downtown core, demolishing neighborhoods to clear land for highways and parking lots while isolating communities such as the predominantly minority and immigrant Summerhill and Mechanicsville from jobs and retail.

In just decades, the effects of this disinvestment were visible. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Access Research Atlas, more than one in four Atlantans currently live in census tracts where low-income residents are over a mile from a supermarket. A 2023 Emory University study found that only 36 percent of stores in majority-Black neighborhoods offered fresh produce, compared to 61 percent in non-majority-Black areas. When Walgreens closed its Five Points location in 2024, downtown lost its only grocery store. Decades of public and private investment favored northern neighborhoods, disproportionately neglecting the city’s south side and urban core. Like housing and transit, access to food has followed the racial and economic boundaries defining Atlanta’s modern landscape. 

When an unequal food landscape is paired with long-standing inequalities along racial lines in a city like Atlanta, disadvantaged neighborhoods face higher food costs, fewer grocery options, and greater exposure to diet-related health risks. Recent studies have found that the consequences of food deserts are magnified by the rising cost of living, time concerns, and the cultural appropriateness of available options. In fact, the same study found that predominantly white neighborhoods in America contain, on average, four times as many supermarkets when compared to predominantly Black neighborhoods. Even when there are supermarkets, fewer and more unhealthy options are available. The impact of these factors is undeniable and particularly prevalent in Atlanta. 

Developed through a partnership between the City of Atlanta, Savi Provisions, Invest Atlanta, and students from the Savannah College of Art and Design’s (SCAD) Atlanta campus, Azalea Fresh Market builds on the city’s broader downtown revitalization strategy. The 8,000-square-foot grocery aims to bring consistent access to fresh produce, prepared meals, and household goods to an area that has long lacked them. The project’s stated goals extend beyond convenience: to make healthy food accessible to downtown residents and students, reduce reliance on corner stores, and demonstrate how public-private collaboration can address urban food insecurity sustainably.

The city owns the space and has provided startup funding while Savi Provisions manages operations. Emory students may recognize Savi Provisions from its location in Emory Village, which charges above-market prices for basic goods. This partnership with a profit-first, high-end retailer like Savi has raised concerns about affordability for residents of nearby low-income housing. The store’s upper level, designed by SCAD students, includes a café and community seating area intended to create a public gathering space. To its supporters, Azalea represents a practical solution to the dangerous cycle of food accessibility and health inequality. Still, the project raises important questions of whether a privately managed, city-owned grocery can truly serve those vulnerable to food insecurity.

Sandwich Prices at Azalea Fresh Market, September 2025 

Azalea’s opening coincides with a new wave of downtown redevelopment. Projects like Centennial Yards, the renovation of Underground Atlanta, and the expansion of Georgia State University are reshaping Atlanta’s economic base. While the projects aim to bring people back to the city center, the question of who benefits from these investments remains.

Nationwide, cities have experimented with ways to bring healthy food within reach. In small towns across Kansas and Texas, local governments stepped in when major grocery chains left, creating city-run markets that operate on thin margins and rely on subsidies to stay afloat. These stores act less like businesses and more like utilities, built to serve rather than profit. In New York City, mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 proposal for publicly owned groceries offered a similar idea on a larger scale, positioning food access as a civic responsibility rather than a private one. 

In America’s heartland, city-run grocery stores operate as public utilities. Azalea, by contrast, combines public ownership with private branding. Its partnership with Savi Provisions positions the market less as a public service and perhaps more as a statement of reinvestment. Prices at neighboring Savi locations suggest that the project may be as much about attracting new residents as it is about giving people who already live downtown affordable options. In this way, Azalea aligns itself with a broader development strategy that seeks to stimulate economic growth and draw in newcomers rather than directly confront the city’s long-standing inequities.

Atlanta’s Azalea Fresh Market restores a basic necessity to an area that had been without one for years, but it also raises questions about who truly benefits from Atlanta’s resurgence. Whether Azalea becomes a tool for equity or another emblem of selective renewal will depend on how it serves the people who have lived through the city’s cycles of change. Ultimately, the project’s legacy will reveal whether Mayor Dickens’ idea of progress includes long-excluded populations, or if this part of the city’s history will, once again, help some while leaving others behind.