Spring Garden is celebrating what most neighborhoods take for granted -- having a full-service grocery store. It is not a typical Shop 'n Save, however, and the business did not arrive conventionally.

The neighborhood pulled together a coalition, from the state level to the guy next door, to restore a grocery in what had become a listless strip mall. A Shop 'n Save on that site closed more than two years ago. The new one, at 1930 Spring Garden Ave., is holding its grand opening at 1 p.m. today.

So valuable are grocery stores to a neighborhood -- for nutrition, employment and investment incentives -- that the state has dedicated $20 million in starter financing to establish groceries, from super to small, in low-income and under-served communities statewide. Another $60 million will be leveraged from private and public investors.

The Fresh Food Financing Initiative is a project of the Food Trust and The Reinvestment Fund of Philadelphia. Its support of the Spring Garden store is its first in Pittsburgh -- $200,000 in grants and $50,000 in loans. The total cost of $1.1 million includes financing from Dollar Bank and the city's Urban Redevelopment Authority.

Plans for a Hill District supermarket -- for so long a dream of that neighborhood -- are in the pipeline, said Hannah Burton of the Food Trust.

"We've been trying to get major groceries to locate in the inner city and they don't believe the market is there," said Jerry Dettore, executive director of the URA. "The initiative is a state intervention to encourage grocers to invest."

The Hill District Community Development Corp. invites Hill residents' input at a meeting at 6 p.m. Oct. 20 at the Weil Technology Center, Centre Avenue and Soho Street. Said Marimba Milliones of the community group:

"Whoever the trailblazer is will not only be contributing to the renewal of the Hill but will also be part of a national model."

State Rep. Jake Wheatley, who represents part of Spring Garden and the Hill, said a URA property at 1800 Centre Ave. has been considered.

"We're looking at all locations," he said. "It'll come down to what best suits the needs of the people and the business we attract."

The Hill District project has the disadvantage of having to build; Spring Garden's old Shop 'n Save just needed cosmetic improvements.

The North Side neighborhood of 1,200 people sits in the valley below Troy Hill. Its main artery, Spring Garden Avenue, leads from East Allegheny to Reserve, a thin stretch that delivers little commerce and whose good housing stock is spotted with dilapidation.

A well-lighted, gleaming, fully-stocked new grocery store offers more than hope that change is on the way. It is the cornerstone of a cooperative web of businesses that have sprung up in conjunction with the store to plow revenues back into the neighborhood, said Jeff Dzamko, president of the Spring Garden Neighborhood Council.

As the council started making plans for the supermarket, it created the nonprofit Neighborhood Enterprises, to spawn small companies. They include a restaurant group and construction and landscaping companies.

"They are all there to generate revenues, and revenues will go to the nonprofit to rebuild our community," said Dzamko, who also is president of Neighborhood Enterprises.

He donated the pizza shop he owned, Father and Son Pizzeria, to Neighborhood Enterprises, he said, "which enabled me to jump start everything else." Now with six companies and 101 employees, Enterprises is projected to earn $7 million to $8 million by the end of 2006, he said.

After the initial grants, the store will be on its own, which was another incentive to incubate businesses, he said.

"The city is broke. Foundations are all being tapped," he said. "You have to look at yourself and say, 'You can't rely on other people to sustain you. How can you help yourself?' "Further, he said, "it was important for us to help other North Side companies" including Reinhold's, Sabio Springs and the Urban Gardener.

Lee Brody, a Shop 'n Save spokesman, said the community wanted options to make local decisions and that Shop 'n Save's wholesaler has been working with it to achieve that. Dazmko has an agreement to sell Reinhold's ice cream and Sabio Springs water, which he gave a prominent place at the end of a row. In the spring, he said, the store will sell hanging baskets and flats from the Brighton Road nursery.

Dzamko said some representatives of well-known products are aggressive, "but we don't have to do what they tell us to do. This is our store."

"I like having it back," said Cathy Beeson, who works at the Tobacco Outlet at the end of the strip mall.

Greg Bauers, who remembered going to the store when it was a Thorofare market when he was 5, is now 50 and has walked into the Shop 'n Save almost every day since its soft opening. He lives next door.

"When this place closed, you didn't have contact with other neighbors. Since it reopened, it's the place to see them," he said. "The only thing is, there's no music. I kind of miss that. I guess you know you're getting old when you like supermarket music."