Primarily a residential neighborhood along the Ohio River, Sayler Park has a quaint and charming appearance, with a mix of historic homes situated on large lots. Annexed 1911, Sayler Park is the Western gateway to the City of Cincinnati, only 15 minutes from downtown, but a world away. Here we find one of the City’s highest home-ownership rates, streets lined with beautiful mature trees, and five city parks plus a 63-acre Hamilton County park, Fernbank, which meanders along the Ohio River for more than a mile. At the center of the neighborhood is Sayler Park School, serving the 3,600 residents of the neighborhood as well as children from Riverside and Sedamsville.

With abundant greenspace, many long-term home-owning residents, and rich topsoil, Sayler Park has attracted many folks who tend home vegetable gardens, raise chickens, and plant fruit trees. We also have a community garden, with plots available for any interested neighbor. But like some neighborhoods, access to fresh food can be a challenge. Long-time residents remember when several independent grocery stores operated within walking distance, but that luxury evaporated with changing business models. Now, the closest major grocery store is 6 miles away, and bus service is sporadic. If you don’t have transportation, a convenience store, several local gas stations, and fast food were the only retail outlets available.

Things started to change in the spring of 2019, when Produce Perks Midwest (PPM) launched nutrition incentive programming in the neighborhood in partnership with Mercy Health and the Sayler Park School-based Health Center. This partnership offered food insecure students experiencing nutrition-related illness and chronic disease, the financial resources to purchase fresh, healthy fruits & vegetables at Gracely Food Mart (a local convenience store) and the Healthy Harvest Mobile Market (also began serving the neighborhood in 2019).

Specifically, PPM worked to strengthen low-income (SNAP) purchasing power and diversify affordable access to healthy, local produce food access; including working directly with Gracely Food Mart, which had recently changed ownership. This partnership provided access to fresh foods for Sayler Park residents, a service that is much appreciated and utilized by residents at all income levels. Prior to the partnership with PPM, Gracely's produce offerings were minimal, with an average of $0-$100 in monthly produce sales. In the first six months of Produce Perks implementation, the average monthly produce sales were $1,870 and Produce Perks redeemed $1,149. In the last six months of 2020, average monthly produce sales were $6,542 Produce Perks redeemed were $2,951! Produce Perks redemptions averaged 70% of produce sales throughout 2020 – meaning the availability of produce at the corner store substantially benefited low-income individuals, and that higher income shoppers also supported the store by purchasing produce.

Gracely Food Mart Produce Sales

PPM’s ongoing investment into the store supported trust building between the new store owners and the community.

“Trust means a lot in my store. People are happy with me. My store is very nice, clean and everything. If [produce is] out, customers tell me. I get it the next day, or whatever they need, and I talk to any customer for special orders... I try to have happy customers.”
– Mitesh Patel, owner, Gracely Food Mart

Building on the success of the partnership with PPM and with financial support from Mercy Health to strengthen Gracely Food Mart’s infrastructure and capacity to offer fresh produce, Sayler Park residents undertook a community asset assessment - focused on food and healthy living. PPM and the community worked with Alan Wight, one of our local Food Mappers to facilitate the process. Food Maps and the food mapping process are forms of creative place-making that help stakeholders see and act on the potential to transform their own communities.

The Sayler Park Food Mapping Project began in February of 2020, with several well-attended meetings seeking to lay foundational information about current food access in the neighborhood, and defining a future vision. Residents were excited about the possibilities and eagerly participated in the vision process. Some momentum was lost with the onset of Covid-19, but the asset mapping was able to continue as a socially-distanced activity. Using data from the initial meetings as well as a year’s worth of ground truthing and crowd sourced information, the team generated two maps. These infographics focused on food access, fruit and nut tree locations, farms, fast food, gathering places, gardens, golf courses, green space, grocery stores, little libraries, parks, restaurants, recreation centers and trails, neighborhood organizations and groups, schools, and breweries. These maps show Sayler Park’s foodscape. The team also worked to identify future food access and beautification projects.

The first actionable project to come out of the mapping exercise is based on one of the most popular suggestions from the vision process - a Community Orchard. The project will be tackled in two phases with generous funding from Giving Trees and consultation assistance from Alan Edwards of Groundwork Ohio River Valley. The first phase will be a small fruit tree installation in front of Sayler Park School, a publicly visible location and a way to engage community interest. A teacher at the school has agreed to adopt this small orchard into their classroom, as part of their Place Based Learning curriculum. The second phase seeks a much larger installation of fruit trees behind the school, or on similarly accessible public land. The neighborhood would like to integrate a small park into this installation to encourage regular use of the space, and to educate residents on the process of caring for the trees and harvesting fruit. This larger project is currently in review, but when presented as a potential idea in the Sayler Park Village Council public meetings, it gathered widespread support.

The residents of Sayler Park look forward to continuing these and other partnerships to increase access to food in their community for years to come.

Adelyn Hall, MCP, LEED AP is the Director of School-Centered Neighborhood Development for the Community Learning Center Institute, where she assists in creating the conditions for learning and catalyzing the revitalization of the neighborhoods through the model of community schools. She received her B.A. in Political Science from the University of Washington and then joined the United States Peace Corps, where she served two years as a Community Development Volunteer in eSwatini, Africa. Now, with a Master of Community Planning degree from the University of Cincinnati, Adelyn has strong interests in the linkage between education and planning.

Alan Wight is an Assistant Professor at The Christ College of Nursing and Health Sciences and the School and Community Forest Garden Liaison for the University of Cincinnati. Alan works with communities and schools to map their food resources and plant edible forest gardens. Current projects include Food Maps, Mt. Auburn Gardens Initiative and Collaborative, & Edible City: An Art Atlas.

Jen Langdon is an 11-year resident of Sayler Park and the Vice President of the Sayler Park Village Council. An avid home cook, garden enthusiast and local food evangelist, Jen loves engaging with her neighbors through food. She is also the Product Marketing Manager at the Greenacres Foundation, where she manages the Farmstore.

Tevis Foreman serves as the Executive Director of Produce Perks Midwest, working at regional, state and national levels addressing issues of food insecurity, population health and public policy - with a focus on healthy, equitable food system development.