CINCINNATI — When Aldi closed at the Avondale Town Center in 2008, residents like Rico Battle were left without a walkable place to get groceries.
“We need another store here,” Battle said while standing on the sidewalk along Reading Road, looking up at the Avondale Town Center.
The Avondale resident of 24 years said he currently has to take the bus to Norwood, roughly 15 minutes, to get to the grocery store.
That’s why he’s been so curious about the opening date for a new grocer in the Avondale Town Center, directly across the street from his apartment.
The Country Meat Co. Market Place would be a solution to the neighborhood’s food desert and has been in the works for years.
In 2019, Reggie Harris spoke to WCPO about the idea for a grocery store as construction was underway at the Avondale Town Center. At the time, Harris was the community life senior manager at The Community Builders. He would later serve on Cincinnati City Council.
“We see this absolutely as a promise that we need to fulfill and that is a part of our vision,” Harris said at the time.
In 2021, WCPO highlighted Tennel and Chanel Bryant’s concept for bringing The Country Meat Co. from Findlay Market to the Avondale Town Center.
“It’s going to be unlike any other store," Tennel Bryant, CEO of The Country Meat Co., said at the time. "It’s not going to be just a basic store where you have basic build."
“We want to break that cycle, where people have the choice to have a choice of fresh meat, choice of fresh produce,” said Chanel Bryant.
The Bryants said they anticipated the store opening in early 2022.
In 2021, the City of Cincinnati approved allocating $500,000 for tenant improvements to Avondale Town Center retail spaces, but that funding went into the Urban League Social Justice Center to address their funding gap. The grocery store did not end up receiving that money.
Three years later in April 2024, the business was celebrated in the Avondale Town Center’s grand opening celebration.
At that event, Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval highlighted the grocery store as a potential model for solving food deserts in other communities:
“It can provide the blueprint for policy leaders, elected leaders, funders, to say that this has worked in Avondale and this can work in other places in this city and other places in this country,” he said.
Thursday, the doors of the Country Meat Co. remained closed, covered with black paper.
WCPO 9 spoke with the owner who said she wasn’t ready to talk until closer to the opening. She wouldn’t share a potential date but said training was going on inside.
Meanwhile, city council approved $250,000 for the store in its Capital Project Reserve from last year’s carryover budget. In a text, council member Jeff Cramerding said it was to “get them over the top to open.”
At the committee meeting on Oct. 28, Cramerding highlighted the neighborhood’s food desert and said the grocery store is “essential to the ongoing revitalization of Avondale.”
The grocery store’s landlord, The Community Builders, shared a statement after being contacted about an opening date for the grocery store.
On Oct. 22, a spokesperson said in a statement, “TCB is proud to have invested $3.5 million to build and fully equip the grocery store space with everything from HVAC to cash registers to get the space ready to open by the end of 2023.
“It is now urgent the current grocery store tenant open their store and deliver fresh, healthy food to Avondale shoppers,” the statement continued. “We are encouraged by reports of the store opening between Oct. 26 and Nov. 2 and hope it will be the soonest date possible.”
That’s the hope from residents like Battle.
“It’s gonna be my new store. They’re going to have everything in there,” said Battle. “I can’t wait for this to open up.”
