Come October, Patten Towers may be the go-to place for breakfast and coffee, and it all started with a game of bingo.
Bingo’s Market at Patten Towers will be a small corner store on the ground floor of the 11-story downtown apartment building home to many disabled, low-income residents. Its goal is to offer fresh produce, grocery staples, healthy grab-and-go breakfast and lunch items, coffee and other things at affordable prices.
Bonita Bishop, one of the about 200 residents who live there, said she hopes the market can help change the stigma surrounding Patten Towers, located at 1 E. 11th St.
“I don’t know what kind of bad thoughts they have, but I can tell by the way they look,” she said of the people who walk by the building each day. “If they have children, they’re grabbing their children or they’re almost out in the street.”
Bishop sits outside the building almost every day and sees that kind of reaction two or more times a week. She said it offends her sometimes, but she hopes the store “will improve that relationship and show them that everyone is not the same.”