What began as a conversation after a neighborhood meeting became an unexpected partnership between the Grant Street Community and Duke University's Edible Atlas Lab—and just four months later, that collaboration was featured in The New York Times. This is the story behind the headlines, and why our neighbors' decades-long vision for a grocery store in the historic Hayti District remains at the center of it all.

National attention was never the goal. Our hope is that this moment helps amplify what residents have been advocating for all along: healthy food access, equitable investment, and a future shaped by the people who have faithfully called Hayti home for generations.

Lately, I’ve been sitting with the idea that our well-being is deeply tied to the well-being of our neighborhoods—not just in theory, but in our bodies, our mental health, our dreams. If my neighbors aren’t okay, then I’m not okay. That simple truth has been shaping how I think about our work at BLK South.

The neighborhood isn’t just a space where we do things—it’s the ground from which we live. It invites us into a deeper kind of solidarity, one that isn’t only project-based but life-based. It calls us not only to ask, What do we want to build here? but How do we want to live here—together?