In our spotlight on Business report, Atlantic City will continue to be a food desert for the people who live there.

After four more proposals to build a full service supermarket was unanimously rejected this week by the state's Casino Reinvestment Development Authority.

With no next steps or other plans discussed, a senior correspondent Joanna Gagis reports.

The seaside resort town has been without a grocery store for nearly two decades, and it looks like residents will have a while before the wait is over.

I have a sign on my door in City Hall.

That says Atlantic City must not be a food desert.

And yet, in spite of Councilman Kaleem Shabazz's mantra, the Third Ward in Atlantic City today remains a food desert.

It lost its only grocery store in 2004.

And just this week, the latest attempts to bring a supermarket back failed once again.

The C RDA, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, has rejected four proposals that was submitted to have a supermarket in the city of Atlantic City.

The four proposals were rejected this week after the C RDA said each one required a financial subsidy from the authority which was not in the best interests of the authority.

But this is not the first go at it.

In November of 2021, a groundbreaking was held at the site where the store would go for Shoprite, owned by village supermarket, to come in and run a grocery store there.

The village supermarket proposal, the CRDA was building them an $18.7 million supermarket and leasing it to them for $1.

$1 a year.

But after two years of an agreement to develop, their Shoprite pulled out.

The reason?

Crime and theft in the area, says Michael Busler.

Shoprite said.

I can't go into a venture where I'm going to lose money, even if you're giving me the store at a dollar with the kind of theft that we're seeing in Atlantic City.

And I anticipate saying, he said, I simply can't do it.

It isn't profitable.

Shoprite wanted a subsidy of about a half million dollars.

And so the CRDA went out for proposals, again offering the same lease and building deal, only to hear the same subsidy requests from the four new applicants.

The answer no.

Given the subsidy is you're just, you know, giving them money without getting anything necessarily for it.

So how do you end up resolving this?

It's a very difficult situation.

You might call it a chicken and egg dilemma.

Residents in the area say they can't afford healthy food because they have to travel too far to get it.

Stores say they can't offer healthy food because as in other areas with high poverty, the rates of crime make the venture unprofitable.

And any store that comes in wants that subsidy from the CRDA.

So what now?

I don't think the CRDA nor the city is in a position to give them additional money at this point.

Senator Vince Polestina does think there can be some public money invested, but with limits.

He'd like to see state and local officials sit down with Save-A-Lot, which currently runs a grocery store across town and was one of the applicants just rejected for the new site.

He's on the ground there.

He's got the most information of anyone as to the finances of operating a supermarket in the city.

And so let's bring him in.

Let's sit him down and talk to him and figure out what we can do, because we can expand his operations and improve the situation.

Atlantic City, I think that's the direction we should be going, not just go back to another RFP.

I don't that's not going to really produce anything.

Governor Murphy's pushed for this supermarket.

He said in a statement.

He's incredibly frustrated by this delay and believes the people of Atlantic City deserve a grocery store in their community.

Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small says we are willing to wait until this is done right.

Wait is not the answer Shabazz wants to hear.

This is more than a financial undertaking.

This is a public health situation if we don't have healthy food.

But for now, wait seems to be the only option.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Joanna Gagis.