Mayor Rahm Emanuel will cut the ribbon Wednesday on his highest-profile project to combat Chicago's food deserts: a taxpayer-subsidized Whole Foods Market in Englewood.

But the mayor's much-publicized effort to provide greater access to fresh meat and produce in South Side and West Side neighborhoods lacking grocery stores has fallen short of his goals — even after he changed the definition of what constitutes a food desert to make it easier to show progress, records show.

While Whole Foods will give Englewood shoppers a new quality option, it doesn't get Emanuel any closer to cutting the size of Chicago's food deserts. The new store isn't located in one. For years, an Aldi has been open a couple of blocks away.

Still, the grand opening at the corner of 63rd and Halsted streets serves as an important political moment for the mayor. At a time when he's working to rebuild support among African-American voters, Emanuel can point to having lured a high-end grocer to one of the city's most violent and economically challenged neighborhoods. He can also claim credit for challenging Whole Foods to tweak its pricing, agree to give shelf space to local vendors and hire students from City Colleges of Chicago.

The mayor has taken many bites at this particular organic apple, mentioning the project frequently when the issue of creating more private-sector investment in black neighborhoods has come up. That included an appearance nearly two weeks ago with London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

"Food deserts are not only a Chicago phenomenon," Emanuel said. "I think this is going to be an incredible role model for other cities across the country and across the world, who will look at what Whole Foods has done, our community colleges have done, to give people economic opportunity, but also have the opportunity for parents to make sure their kids have access to high-quality food."

The store has been a long time in the making, and Emanuel set aside $10.7 million to make it happen.

The mayor unveiled the deal three years ago, days after the Chicago Tribune detailed how — despite declaring "great progress" in the war on food deserts — his announcements on building new grocery stores and getting convenience stores to carry fresh produce had fallen short.

Ald. Leslie Hairston said not much has changed since Emanuel first ran on the issue in 2011. Several swaths of the West Side and South Side, including her ward centered in the South Shore neighborhood, still struggle with access to fresh food.

A new grocery store, Whole Foods, opens in the Englewood neighborhood on Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2016. (Jose Osorio/Chicago Tribune)

"He's broken his campaign promise. We're still a food desert," said Hairston, 5th. "It's been 51/2 years. You can't count the opening of one grocery store on the whole South Side as a victory."

But then-Englewood Ald. JoAnn Thompson considered the new store a big win. At the 2014 groundbreaking, Thompson recalled visiting a 2008 retail merchants convention in Las Vegas.

"Everything was fine until they said, 'Where you from?' I said, 'Chicago.' They said, 'OK. Well, what neighborhood are you from?' When I said, 'Englewood,' nobody wanted to be bothered by us," Thompson said. "It was such a sad day. Everyone did not want to come to Englewood."

Thompson credited Emanuel with pushing past that reputation.

"I told the mayor I desperately need a grocery store in my ward. He said, 'Jo, I'm going to help you,'" Thompson, who died of heart failure last year, said at the groundbreaking. "Today is a testament to him keeping his word."

Changing the numbers

Emanuel made reducing the city's food deserts a major plank of his first-term platform, one of the nine top issues facing Chicago that he outlined on his campaign website.

After winning election, Emanuel's transition plan listed "eliminate food deserts in Chicago" as a top initiative, noting the more than 600,000 Chicagoans lacking access to fresh fruits and vegetables — or at least 22 percent of the city's 2.7 million residents.

About a month after taking office in 2011, the number had fallen to 450,000 as the mayor held a "food desert summit" with grocery store executives and unveiled maps illustrating the problem. To reach that figure, the Emanuel administration tallied the number of people living more than a half-mile from a grocery store of at least 2,500 square feet.

But two years later, Emanuel changed the math again as the Tribune inquired about what the mayor had called "great progress" on the issue. Aides acknowledged they had changed how City Hall measured food deserts: instead of counting everyone, it was now only low-income Chicagoans. Instead of a half-mile, it was now a mile. And instead of a 2,500-square-foot store selling produce, it was now 10,000 square feet.

The practical effect? Emanuel made the size of the food desert problem more than four times smaller — his count of 450,000 people had dropped to just 100,159. Suddenly, instead of shrinking the city's food deserts by only 4 percent, the mayor was able to claim he'd reduced it by more than 20 percent.

A splashy announcement followed, one that he's been frequently pointing to ever since.

"Whole Foods could have continued building on the North and Near West sides, but it chose Englewood," Emanuel said in a 2015 address in which he portrayed himself as having played hardball with grocery chains. "If you're going to call yourself a Chicago store, you have to serve all of Chicago."

It was during that campaign speech that Emanuel mentioned a goal of eliminating the city's food deserts by 2020, but records show he has considerable work to do.

The mayor missed his first-term goal of cutting the size of food deserts in half. Even using his more limited criteria, Emanuel has cut it by 28 percent since he took office, according to figures the Tribune obtained through an open-records request. The number of low-income Chicagoans living in a food desert dropped from 100,159 in 2011 to 72,075.

It's unclear how Emanuel would have fared under his original criteria. The administration no longer will run the numbers using that measurement, the one that three years ago showed the mayor making only minimal gains.