The impoverished Delaware County city hasn't had a full-service grocery since 2001, and plans to build a new supermarket there have been on the horizon for almost as long.
Aided by $47 million in state funding, construction of a $115 million professional-soccer stadium is under way on the Chester waterfront. It is unclear, however, whether state money for the supermarket - which lawmakers say was part of the stadium deal - will be released.
Up to $4 million was earmarked for the store last year, at the insistence of state Rep. Thaddeus Kirkland.
"That was part of the deal," said Johnna Pro, spokeswoman for state House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dwight Evans. "The supermarket [funding] was part of the whole soccer-stadium deal."
I'm not sure precisely how the supermarket subsidy is intended to spent, but subsidizing supermarkets in low income neighborhoods which lack them is one money-for-private-companies scheme I can get behind.
Stadium won't do anything for the area, a supermarket would.