(The Center Square) – Multiple government-owned grocery stores are coming to the five boroughs of New York City if legislation proposed by Councilwoman Jennifer Gutiérrez and several other Democrats passes.
New York City Council members want to expand Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plans with five stores in each of the city’s boroughs. The legislation would amend the city’s administrative code to require the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx to establish at least five government-owned grocery stores.
If approved, the bill would dramatically expand a key Mamdani campaign pledge to build one store in each borough during his first term in office, and effectively allow the network of government-run grocery stores to saturate the local food market.
“Lets make sure it’s not something that just our current mayor invests in, but something we can codify into in perpetuity,” Gutiérrez, D-Brooklyn, told The City Reporter. “The more we invest in it, the more sustainable we can count these markets being.”
But critics have questioned the claims and the hefty price tag for taxpayers for setting up the government-run stores, which would have to compete with local and national grocery chains for market share to keep prices down for consumers.
Mamdani’s push to open city-run grocery stores was a campaign promise for the democratic socialist, whose lefty agenda also includes plans for universal childcare, tuition-free community colleges, and free bus service.
Many of those plans have yet to come to fruition as the new mayor has wrestled with budget shortfalls that prompted Albany lawmakers to bail the city out as part of the annual state budget.
Under the mayor’s government-owned grocery plans, which will ultimately require City Council approval, the stores wouldn’t pay rent or property taxes, allowing them to keep their overhead costs down and pass on savings to shoppers, according to the Mamdani administration. The $70 million initiative calls for hiring a private operator to run the stores under the city’s pricing rules.
Mamdani recently announced the proposed location of the first two stores – a 20,000-square-foot store, located in the Bronx’s Hunts Point neighborhood, and a 9,000-square foot store at La Marqueta in East Harlem.
He said the stores will help “level the playing field” for shoppers who are struggling to make ends meet in the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
“The city-owned grocery initiative is designed to lower costs on everyday staples by using public ownership to eliminate costs that are currently passed on to consumers,” the Mamdani administration said in a recent statement.
New York City’s looming foray into the grocery store business has plenty of detractors, including the United Bodegas of America, which says it will hurt small businesses and the city’s economy.
John Catsimatidis, CEO of New York City grocery chain Gristedes, has threatened to pull out of the market if Mamdani moves ahead with the plans, saying he couldn’t compete with city-run supermarkets.
