Residents have started moving into a recently completed $97M project in Denver's Montbello neighborhood that was developed using a community-focused model expected to bring a grocery store to an area considered a food desert.

FreshLo Hub is a 97-unit apartment building at 12444 E. Albrook Drive with a ground-floor space that will house a nonprofit grocery store beginning in 2025, The Denver Post reported. A cultural center, health services and other commercial space are also included in the project.

Montbello’s only major grocery store closed in 2015, turning the neighborhood into what the Department of Agriculture describes as a food desert, a lower-income area where at least a third of the population lives more than a mile from a supermarket or grocery store.

According to Montbello’s Food Access Community Team website, 26% of low-income adults and 48% of children in the area have little to no access to healthy food within 1 mile.

The Montbello community set out to fix that, the Post reported.

Donna Garnett, CEO of the Montbello Organizing Committee, told the Post that MOC met with national grocery chains about opening a supermarket in the area but was informed that the neighborhood “didn’t meet their criteria.”

MOC purchased the neighborhood’s former RTD Park-n-Ride lot, a 1.4-acre space, in February 2020, according to Denverite.

The Denver Post reported the lot was purchased for $750K. Garnett said her organization then made an offer for an adjacent strip mall, and after some negotiation, MOC paid $5.6M.

The grocery store will reportedly open early next year in the adjacent strip mall, while a groundbreaking for a 16K SF on-site cultural center is expected in late 2025.

MOC still needs to raise another $10M for the development.

“We always say that everything takes longer than you thought it would,” Garnett said. “You can’t do it by yourself, and in the end it will be worth it.”

The lack of accessible food in Montbello was one factor in Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser’s lawsuit against the proposed merger of Kroger and Alberstons, the Post reported.