EAST HARLEM, NY — A new city-owned grocery store will open in East Harlem next year, Mayor Zohran Mamdani told a crowd at a celebration marking his 100th day in office on Sunday night.
The new supermarket, which will open at La Marqueta under the Metro-North tracks between 111th Street and 116th Street on Park Avenue, will be the first of five city-owned grocery stores to open, Mamdani said.
The announcement marks the first step toward fulfilling one of Mamdani’s key campaign promises: making food shopping more affordable by opening a city-owned grocery store in each borough, he said.
“At our stores, eggs will be cheaper, bread will be cheaper. Grocery shopping will no longer be an unsolvable equation,” Mamdani said during his speech, which was at the Knockdown Center in Maspeth, Queens.
The stores would operate without profit and subsidize costs with public funds, Mamdani explained during a mayoral forum on the Upper West Side while on the campaign trail in January 2025.
On Sunday night, the mayor said that all five of these stores would open on existing city-owned property by the end of his four-year term in 2029.
“We are building a brand new store on city-owned land currently sitting empty in East Harlem, a neighborhood where nearly 40 percent of households received public assistance or SNAP in the past year,” Mamdani told Sunday’s crowd.
During Mamdani’s campaign for mayor, some critics said city-owned grocery stores wouldn’t make a big enough price difference and could hurt existing businesses.
“Now, some will insist that city-owned businesses do not work, that government cannot keep up with corporations,” Mamdani said. “My answer to them is simple. I look forward to the competition. May the most affordable grocery store win.”
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