Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first city-owned grocery store will be in East Harlem and cost taxpayers about $30 million to open, hizzoner announced Sunday.
The store will be in La Marqueta — a marketplace under the train tracks running over Park Avenue — and is scheduled to be up and running next year.
Mamdani revealed the plan at a Queens bash celebrating his first 100 days in office Sunday, and declared that all five of his planned city-owned grocery stores would be open by the time his first term ends at the close of 2029.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expected to announce plans to open the first city-owned grocery store in East Harlem. Bloomberg via Getty Images
The market at La Marqueta aims to open by 2029, part of Mamdani’s five-borough plan. Bloomberg via Getty Images“During our campaign, we promised New Yorkers that we would create a network of five city-owned grocery stores, one in each park,” Mamdani said. “Today, we make good on that promise.”
La Marqueta is already owned by the city, and the store is expected to operate without rent.
The store will also be built on part of La Marqueta that is sitting empty, Mamdani explained.
Hizzoner said he’d build “stores where prices are fair, where workers are treated with dignity, and where New Yorkers can actually afford to shop at our stores.”
“Eggs will be cheaper, bread will be cheaper, grocery shopping will no longer be an unsolvable equation,” he added.
The East Harlem store would be the first of five city-owned supermarkets the mayor made bold promises to build during his campaign.
The stores were a key part of Mamdani’s campaign last year. Zohran Mamdani / TikTokBut the first store alone will cost about $30 million, the New York Times reported.
That would eat up nearly half of the $70 million he proposed for the five-store program as recently as February.
Mamdani’s plan was to put one market in each of the five boroughs.
He believes the move will lower food costs for poorer New Yorkers.
“We’re going to make it easier for New Yorkers to put food on the table,” Mamdani said at the 100-day party, where his fellow socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) made a surprise appearance.
“Since the pandemic, grocery prices have gone up and they haven’t come back down,” he added.
“We feel it every single time we go to the store. Between 2013 and 2023, grocery prices increased in New York City by nearly 66% — significantly higher than the national average.”
