New York mayor names East Harlem as first site for city-run grocery store

By Maria Tsvetkova

NEW YORK, April 14 (Reuters) – New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday named East Harlem as the first site for a city-run grocery store, choosing a neighborhood where the median household income is below half the Manhattan average, in line with his affordability agenda that was central to his campaign.

The selection of one of the five locations for a municipal grocery store is one in a series of small moves made by Mamdani since taking office in January designed to fulfill key campaign promises. Other planks on his agenda – which will be more difficult to accomplish – included free buses, a rent freeze and universal child care.

City Hall allocated $70 million to launch five stores, one in each city borough, with the first expected to open next year. The city will own the land and subsidize basic staples, while private operators selected by officials will run the stores.

“We will use government to respond to rising prices and unaffordable groceries. Since the pandemic, grocery prices have gone up and they have not come back down,” Mamdani, a democratic socialist, told reporters when introducing the location in East Harlem.

It will take years for Mamdani to complete his agenda, and some to-do items are threatened by lack of funding as New York State’s governor resists proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy.  Of the key campaign promises, the pilot program for municipal stores is the easiest to implement because it falls within City Hall’s responsibilities.

The East Harlem store will be built at the site of a local retail market whose history dates to 1936, and which became known as La Marqueta after World War Two, when Spanish-speaking immigrants replaced Italians in the neighborhood. The grocery store will occupy 9,000 square feet (836 square meters) and is planned to open in 2029.

Mamdani is cooperating with Governor Kathy Hochul on universal childcare, which is expanding to add 12,000 seats for roughly 100,000 two-year-old New Yorkers next year. No further plans have been announced yet. 

Funding concerns are an obstacle to cancelling bus fares, as the city looks for replacement revenue for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the New York State-run ​network that operates public transit.

The prices for rent-stabilized apartments that Mamdani ​promised to ⁠freeze will be discussed later this year at a meeting of the Rent Guidelines Board in charge of rent adjustments for the city’s roughly 1 million regulated units. Earlier this year, Mamdani appointed a majority of the board’s members, including ​its chair.

(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova; editing by Donna Bryson and David Gaffen)