New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has announced the first location for one of the five promised city-owned grocery stores. The 9,000 square-foot store will be built on a city-owned vacant site under the Metro-North railroad viaduct at La Marqueta, near Park Avenue and East 116th Street, in Manhattan’s East Harlem neighborhood.
The city will finance the store’s construction with $30 million from the capital budget. The store will have no debt service. Though privately operated, it will pay no rent or property tax.
Mamdani’s plan proposes, in essence, that the city will compete with local grocery stores—using public subsidies to lower the cost of staple foods—and that it will do so while paying store employees union wages…