ST. LOUIS — Overalls. Ball cap. Dirty nails. Farmer Rusty Lee cuts a quintessentially rural figure, rounded out with a Southern twang. But the Georgia-raised farmer who grows vegetables on 80 acres west of St. Louis has a particularly urban mission.

Inside a homely brown building on North 13th Street, Lee unloads boxes of squash and Hungarian peppers destined for city dwellers.

"You're not going to have a stable neighborhood," Lee says, standing by the loading dock, "unless you have a stable food source."

So Lee is working with community developers and residents to create that stability by turning the old building, once a horseradish factory, into a cooperative grocery store.

In this neighborhood, residents have few options for fresh, healthy food. A recent trip to the closest market revealed a tired, lonely lemon and a head of lettuce. Next spring, the Old North Grocery Co-Op will offer vegetables, fruits and other products raised by Lee and other area farmers.

At the same time, organizers hope, the store will light an economic spark in the neighborhood by luring visitors and new residents who will join the co-op, thereby investing in the community as they buy their vegetables and bread.

"We want people who live in the area to spend their money here," said Kara Lubischer, a community development specialist with the University of Missouri Extension, who's helping the co-op get off the ground. "So we're modeling it based on the people we know are going to shop here. But we also want someone from Webster Groves, who wants to support the neighborhood and local farmers."

Traditionally, food co-ops are formed in response to a particular need or the absence of a type of product. In the 1930s, such co-ops formed to feed people during the Great Depression. In the 1960s and '70s — considered the golden age of modern co-ops — people formed co-ops because they wanted access to natural or organically grown food.

The need in the Old North neighborhood is different. The area is best known as home to Crown Candy Kitchen. Though a farmers market opened three years ago, the area is considered an urban "food desert," meaning residents have limited access to fresh food and have to resort to liquor and convenience stores or nearby fast-food restaurants.

Limited access to healthy food is found disproportionately in depressed urban areas across the country. It can lead to chronic health problems, malnutrition or, paradoxically, to obesity as low-income residents choose inexpensive, nutrient-poor foods.

"We found people who went 40 minutes on a bus, one way, to get to a grocery store," Lubischer explained. "With children, with shopping bags, or for older people, that's not easy."

For the Old North St. Louis Development Group, which is finishing its $35 million rehab of 27 buildings in the area, the lack of grocery access has posed a problem, too. In order to attract new and higher-income residents, to stimulate a vibrant community, food needs to be within easy reach.

"I try to lure people to the neighborhood, and they always ask me where I shop. That matters to people," said Tino Ochoa, a law student who has lived in the neighborhood for six years. "There's really slim grocery shopping on the north side of St. Louis. I think this would be huge."

In recent years, more co-ops have been launching in urban, low- or mixed-income areas.

"They certainly can work," said Stuart Reid, a co-op consultant with Food Co-Op 500, a group that aims to raise the number of co-ops in the country from its current, estimated 300. "Philly and New York both have successful ones, and they're not in high-end communities."

But there are challenges. Potential capital investors are often wary of low-income neighborhoods. Co-ops are like any other businesses and have to compete with larger grocery stores. Those stores can keep prices lower with economies of scale, and in low-income neighborhoods, shoppers may not be willing to pay higher prices for fresh food, even if it's close by.

A co-op that recently opened in a Philadelphia neighborhood similar to Old North is on the verge of failing. "The product looks good, it's fresh," said C.E. Pugh, national development director for the National Cooperative Grocers Association. "But people aren't shopping there. The [organizers] are working hard, they're having meetings, yet those habits haven't changed."

Part of the problem, Pugh and others say, is that eating habits are so entrenched. It takes a while for people to learn to eat healthy, fresh food. "It can be done, but one should expect it to take time," Pugh said. "Really, it's just education, education, education — a monthly newsletter to help preach the gospel, cooking classes, sampling."

The Old North Grocery Co-op organizers say they have done their due diligence. Last fall, they met with groups throughout the neighborhood, asking them what they want and expect. They talked to longtime residents and new ones, old and young.

"The high-income neighbors of the community were very insistent that we not just sell $6 tomatoes," Lubischer said.

The co-op also plans to accept federal food benefits for low-income people, and recent changes in federal law will allow qualifying mothers with young children to buy fruits and vegetables through a government assistance program.

Just last week, the co-op got a boost with a grant of nearly $300,000 to assist with startup costs and initial operations, but organizers are still looking for contributions to help with construction and equipment. They're hoping to open in the spring with at least 100 members. Already, the building is being used as a pickup site for a Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, program that supplies area residents with a weekly box of vegetables.

"The glimmer is there," Lee said, recently as he dropped off vegetables for the CSA subscribers. "And the fire's starting to burn a little brighter."

Walking across the building's tattered linoleum on a recent weekday, Lubischer and Sean Thomas, executive director of the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group, point out the room where they hope to have cooking demonstrations in a state-of-the-art kitchen. It's clear they have grand ambitions — to transform the neighborhood through food.

But for now they're just allowing themselves a modest goal.

"We don't want to make money," Lubischer said. "We want to stay open."