[Photo by Bayou]
The Associated Supermarket at 255 W. 14th St. between Seventh Avenue and Eighth Avenue closed after business on Sunday, per the notice on the door.
Landlord Pan Am Equities reportedly served the 27-year-old store with an exorbitant rent increase. (According to Gothamist, the rent is going from $32,000/month to $200,000/month.)
In March, "an impressively large crowd and a full slate of politicians rallied outside the Associated" to try to save the market. (There was another protest outside Pan Am's offices.) The lease was up this month.
The owners of the Chelsea location also run the Associated in Stuy Town on East 14th Street between Avenue A and First Avenue (as well as the location on Avenue C at Eighth Street).
The sign at the former Chelsea store points shoppers to the East 14th Street location. Not sure how many people will make that trek. And there isn't any guarantee that the East 14th Street store will continue to operate as Associated.
However, there's hope. Principal owner Joseph Falzon and his partners have reportedly been working with Blackstone to come to an agreement for the Stuy Town Associated before their lease expires for that store in 2017, according to the Town & Village Blog.
H/T Bayou!
Previously on EV Grieve:
Report: Associated owners not having any luck shopping for a lease renewal on East 14th Street (34 comments)
Petition drive underway to help save the Stuy Town Associated on East 14th Street
Report: New Stuy Town owner pledges to keep a grocery story on East 14th Street, but it may not be Associated
Are grocery stores the new gas stations?
ReplyDeleteSad to see so much "progress" in the neighborhood. It is hard to buy a decent meal for a decent price. Been starbucked, gourmet cupcaked and googled out.
ReplyDeleteThis is all by design to drive out non-market rent paying people who can't afford Whole Foods etc.
ReplyDeleteTake away affordable grocery stores for them and where could they shop for affordable food?
Whole Foods is a horror in two ways, the proces and the lines.
DeleteYep, if you are the kind of person who can only buy your food in a mere supermarket, this is no longer the city for you, loser. Go move to someplace whsre supermarkets are still considered a viable option - like pretty much everywhere else in the country.
ReplyDeleteWhat a travesty
This is criminal. Note that the city was unable to do anything to help. The elderly and "everyday" people of the city are being forced out for ... ... ... what?
ReplyDeleteWestern Beef is still on 16 & 9. That helps. Other than CVS it is the only place I can afford to buy lunch!
ReplyDeleteWhat about the elderly? No place for them to shop in the neighborhood either. NYC, particularly Manhattan, is becoming the ultimate gated community, bland, boring and indifferent to the plight of the less well off much less the elderly.
ReplyDeleteStuyTown residents should note that if Associated is replaced with a "new, improved" supermarket, the transition will take many months, maybe up to a year, during which time residents will have to cross either 14th St. or 1st Avenue to shop at another supermarket. Many of those intersections are deadly, and the elderly will be put at even more risk. Is it really worth putting Associated though months of negotiations and unreturned phone calls when Blackstone stands to make billions of dollars in profits from this property, not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars the City just gave them in tax breaks? Yet Blackstone still won't give them a new lease. We will soon learn whether there is any limit their greed.
ReplyDeleteDo we know how long of a lease the KeyFood on 4th and A still has? There's still also a C-Town on 4th and C, but so many people rely on the KeyFood that I dread the day a developer decides to put a glassy shitbox of condos on that corner.
ReplyDeleteI think that if it had been up to Bloomberg and his developer friends, all elderly people would have been moved to ice floes upstate and left to die.
ReplyDeleteThis is an old technique, when one nation is at war with another nation they sweep across the land, burn crops, starve the citizens until they surrender their "rent stabilized" homes. I guess it's better than small pox.
ReplyDeleteNot for nothing, but if it the end of a 30 year lease, there is going to be a very big jump in rent and that should be expected. You can't seriously expect that it's still going to be able to pay rental rates from the 80s.
ReplyDeleteThey are working on that 12:13, as nursing homes and hospitals disappear...services are at a premium, and elderly tenants are harassed...and definitely, travel to markets is difficult for older people! Not everyone has "help"!
ReplyDeleteWow...shame on you Pan Am, you just made a mint of $$$ selling 85 E 10th and the adjacent buildings on E 11th, and you force out the grocery store for nothing other than greed....or because it will make it easier to sell that building too without a commercial tenant????
ReplyDeleteSBJSA! SBJSA! SBJSA! SBJSA! SBJSA! NOW!......Dan?
ReplyDeleteMany people who own cars are already shopping over in Jersey,Long Island or north of the city for groceries already.They use corner deli or CVS during the week if they need basics like milk or bread.
ReplyDeleteThere's also the C-Town on 11th and C.
ReplyDeleteYou'd never catch people who shop at Whole Foods or Trader Joe's in Associated, C-town, or Key Food.
ReplyDeleteAt 7:30 PM, Anonymous said:
ReplyDeleteYou'd never catch people who shop at Whole Foods or Trader Joe's in Associated, C-town, or Key Food.
Actually, I refuse to go to WholeMart™, but I'm happy to go to Trader Joe's, Associated, C-Town, or Key Food.
At 3:21 PM, Anonymous said:
ReplyDeleteMany people who own cars are already shopping over in Jersey,Long Island or north of the city for groceries already.They use corner deli or CVS during the week if they need basics like milk or bread.
I definitely think there's a shortage of cars in the city; maybe we should organize carpools so people can go grocery shopping, and send those landlords a message.