A former grocery store building that once served Tucson’s vibrant Chinese community is on the market with a $3 million asking price.
Located at 600 S. Meyer Avenue, the structure measures just over 11,400 square feet, and is designated as a Class B building.
Extensively renovated in 2009 at a cost of nearly $4 million, the two-story structure features a solar panel roof, elevator, exposed brick walls, and vaulted ceilings.
The structure started out as the Jerry Lee Ho’s Market, a vital grocery store providing foodstuffs and goods to Tucson’s Chinese community.
According to scholar Li Yang, writing in the Journal of Arizona History, “The Chinese operated sixty grocery stores, ten restaurants, and two laundries” in south Tucson.
Many of those businesses also had a thriving Hispanic clientele, but largely went by the wayside as a result of urban renewal efforts in the 1960s that marginalized the neighborhoods populated by those businesses.
The Jerry Lee Ho building was closed some two decades ago, before a renovation effort was undertaken, resulting in the creation of a new heating and cooling system and modern office space.
The structure is being listed for sale by the Tucson offices of NAI Horizon realtors.
By Garry Boulard
