[Photos by Steven]
The Associated Supermarket on 14th Street in Stuy Town is now closed. According to several readers, the grocery shut down after the business day this past Thursday here between Avenue A and First Avenue.
EVG correspondent Steven stopped by on Friday morning and found the store shuttered ... there were no signs to note a closure... people figured it out on their own, though...
News of this closure first surfaced in September. The final day was expected to be somewhere at the end of November or early December, per Town & Village.
The closing date continued to change over the course of the past week. Employees told customers different dates, including Dec. 9 and Dec. 10.
On Saturday morning, workers were spotted removing items from the market...
Longtime store manager Norman Quintanilla told this to T&V in September:
“A lot of people are crying and upset about it,” he said. “It especially affects a lot of elderly customers that we help with phone orders. They don’t know where else to go.”
Quintanilla said that he wasn’t involved in discussions with Associated’s ownership and Blackstone regarding why the store is closing but he said that business has been steadily decreasing every year.
Joseph Falzon, the store’s owner, previously told Crain's that a confluence of factors had cut business nearly in half. For starters, construction on 14th Street for the L train obscured the supermarket with a 12-foot fence these past two years.
[Obscured view of the former Associated from Saturday]
If the Associated remained open, then they'd have faced competition from the Trader Joe' opening soon across 14th Street. The TJ signage arrived last week...
In an email in September, Stuyvesant Town General Manager Rick Hayduk told residents that they are "working on finding a new tenant with full understanding that a local grocery store is important to the community; but this will take some time."
Previously on EV Grieve:
The Associated on 14th Street in Stuy Town is said to close by year's end
