City Councilwoman Gale Brewer is calling on the owner of the land under Food City, the supermarket on 94th street and Columbus Avenue, to offer the market a new lease and save it from closing at the end of the month.
Real estate company The LeFrak Organization apparently owns the land, and Brewer says that the organization chose not to renew Food City’s lease. Deeds filed with the city do show that a company at the same address as LeFrak owns the land, but we didn’t hear back from the LeFrak Organization’s spokesman to confirm.
Update: Brewer has announced a rally to save Food City on Sunday at 1 p.m.
Brewer says Food City should be saved because it’s an important market for local seniors, and some locals have told us that it served a lower-middle-class clientele that doesn’t have other options (some of our commenters disagree with that assessment). We have also heard from several neighbors that Food City is likely to be replaced by a large new residential development.
I shop at a variety of supermarkets and believe that there will be a big hole for many residents if the supermarket is closed. For many, it has good sales and serves many low to middle income middle class residents as well as many elderly in the neighborhood. While there is associated it is very tight and crowded and does not offer everything that food city does. For every day food this is the best that we have in the neighborhood right now.
Good luck with that. My landlord could care less if his raising my rent disappoints my clients by causing my closure. Investors own land and real assets to maximize their profits. That is why they are in business. It’s not pretty, but it’s true.
Give me a break. There are tons of markets in he area and this one is no cheaper then the others. It is a total eyesore for the block and the plaza is a waste of space covered in pigeon and pigeon crap. Good riddance. Looking forward the development. It will only help the area.
When rent stabilized seniors act in busybody fashion to exclude new housing development to replace a single story lot with many hundreds of new income earning citizens, and they vote for business-bashing “you didn’t build that” candidates, the whole area degenerates into an adult dead zone full of shopping mall mega franchises, bank outlets as billboards and no visitors or young professionals to support a local economy.
Nik –
Food City is an eyesore. Putting the Food City aside, I don’t know what planet you are living on but new developments have gone up all over the UWS and we are still being inundated with chain store mega merchants. The hundreds of new income earning residents in Ariel East and West, the Melar, the developments by the 97th St. Whole Foods, The Laureate, and on and on have not stemmed the tide on the mallification of the UWS.
Here here Nik and Steve. 100% agree! The whole neighborhood is geared toward “middle-class.” We could really use a good restaurant or bar or two. Decent store, etc. Wouldn’t be the worst thing to have some economic and retail DIVERSITY in this hood
That area may well have the highest concentration of pigeons and pigeon dung per square foot of any other UWS location. One literally had to remember not to walk under the Columbus Avenue sidewalk trees because you would get nailed for sure. The whole space is a mess. Buh bye.
This is actually going to impact a lot of people’s lives, so some of the comments here disappoint me. I shop at Food City and see a lot of old and infirm customers. Their monthly grocery costs will doubtlessly go up after Food City closes and I’m not sure all of them can bear that increase. Associated is the next best bet nearby, but they still cost more and their sales aren’t as good. Forget about Dag’s or Food Emporium or Gristedes. Key Food on 85th and Amsterdam is almost comparable, but that’s a long walk if you have a cane and are carrying home groceries. Food City may be run down, but it gives a whole lot of people access to affordable food, pigeons or not (and actually, the real bad pigeon block is two blocks south).
FYI- Did a price check today (I was bored). Eggs, Milk, Chicken, Apples and cheese (staples that I checked) cost the sample at Dag as it did at Food City.
Well, a half gallon of milk at Food City is currently $2.49, if memory serves (up from $2.29 a few months ago.) Dag’s is $2.79. I get my eggs at Barzini’s and my apples at Manny’s, which are cheaper than the grocery stores. I buy chicken legs on sale at Food City for 69 cents a pound. The same sale is $1 a pound at Dag’s.
I suppose you or I could go back, pen and paper in hand, and get all these prices. Or you could trust that people who do count every nickel actually know what the prices are on the food that they buy.
Good show — Ms. Brewer. You go girl!! Nice to see that you still have that old fire in the belly even though you may soon be moving on to a new job.
We really need food markets on the UWS. Especially, since Food Emporium is going, going, gone.