On Monday, The New York Post posted an article about New York City’s first city-owned grocery store.
The article reports:
Zo’s cheap groceries will cost taxpayers a pretty penny.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first-unveiled city-owned grocery store will cost a staggering $30 million to build from the ground up at East Harlem’s longstanding La Marqueta, officials confirmed – as local grocers worried it’d gobble up their business.
The new grocery at the longstanding city-owned La Marqueta marketplace will run with a yet-to-be-picked operator reaping the benefits of a rent- and tax-free deal, City Hall officials told The Post on Monday.
Mamdani envisions that the low-cost deal — which he anounced during a Sunday celebration of his first 100 days in office -– will allow the grocery’s operator to pass on savings to hardscrabble New Yorkers reeling from foodstuff sticker shock, but neighboring grocer Abdul Shaher had doubts about its efficiency based on the exorbitant $30 million upfront cost.
“How can they manage something like that? A small supermarket?” said Shaher, who owns and manages Healthy Choice near La Marqueta, laughing with disbelief.
The article notes:
Opening five city-owned grocery stores in each borough was one of Mamdani’s marquee affordability promises during his successful run for mayor.
His proposal drew dire warnings of “Soviet”-style markets forcing private businesses to shutter, with billionaire owner John Catsimatidis threatening to close or sell his Gristedes chain if Mamdani was elected.
Other critics argued that municipal markets in other places – notably a barren city-owned grocery in Kansas City, Missouri – had struggled and closed.
An undaunted Mamdani pointed to toward several successful government-owned groceries, such as one in St. Paul, Kansas, a community of roughly 600 people.
New York City arguably has a similar effort already in effect: six public retail markets, including La Marqueta.
When the privately-owned grocery stores and markets leave New York City because they can’t compete with the city-owned grocery, that will be one more section of the tax base that New York City loses. At one point all businesses will leave the city due to the cost of doing business. How long will it take for the voters to wake up? Will they wake up before the city fails?