Billionaire supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis and Morgan Stanley are the two highest bidders for the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company’s Food Emporium portfolio, according to Crain’s. The grocery chain’s 16 Manhattan locations are up for sale by the ailing A&P, which is unloading noncore assets in an attempt to turn a profit after seven quarters in the red. Catsimatidis, one of Forbes’ richest Americans and the owner of Gristedes, all but confirmed his involvement in acquisition negotiations, noting that “it’s no secret that we have interest” in the Food Emporium. [Crain's]

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240 East 86th Street

Grocery chain Fairway Market will break ground Wednesday at 240 East 86th Street, on a 45,000-square-foot store between Second and Third avenues, formerly home to a Barnes & Noble and slated to open in 2011, at the base of luxury apartment building the Ventura. The new Upper East Side location is part of a plan by Fairway’s fourth-generation owners to double the number of stores from six in the next several years, including opening locations in Stamford, Conn., next month and Douglaston, Queens, in fall 2011, according to the Wall Street Journal. “We’re on the fast track to growth right now,” said Howie Glickberg, whose grandfather Nathan founded the original Upper West Side store in the 1930s. “We look to open a store every six months.” [more]

The Fairway supermarket chain is expanding its New York City presence, according to the New York Times, with plans to open a new location at 240 East 86th Street between Second and Third avenues. While the exact square footage of the new location, which will settle into a former Barnes & Noble bookstore, is unknown, a source from the company said it would be roughly the same size as the company’s flagship location on the corner of 74th Street and Broadway. This new location will mark the company’s seventh. Fairway officials expect the store to open in about six months. [NYT]

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With the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea, which owns the A&P, Food Emporium, Pathmark and Waldbaums, well known to be in financial hot water, its competitors are angling to take over not just its market share, but its vast real estate holdings, according to Crain’s. Among the vultures are John Catsimatidis, owner of Gristedes, and Howard Glickberg, owner of Fairway Market, among others. The A&P has suffered as Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s have thrived over the past decade. For the past seven quarter, the company has been in the red, and Standard & Poor’s downgraded the company’s credit rating to CCC in July. A spokesperson for the grocer said it plans to sell noncore assets in an attempt to turn a profit once again. The Montvale, N.J.-based A&P has 48 properties across the five boroughs, and its rare that buildings with enough space for a supermarket become available in the city. Some have speculated that the A&P will sell off Food Emporium, which has 16 Manhattan stores. [Crain's]

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200 West, at 200 West 72nd Street

There are few corners of Manhattan as ill-served by architecture as the northwest and southwest corners of Broadway and 72nd Street. In the 1990s it saw the emergence of the Alexandria, a well-intentioned exercise in classical contextualism which, through a combination of weak design and poor construction values, resulted in a pallid eyesore at what should have been the focal point of the Upper West Side. As for 200 West which has just sprung up across the street at 200 West 72nd Street (with an alternate address of 2075 Broadway), the best that can be said is that, if anything, it makes the Alexandria look almost good by comparison. Its mongrelized aesthetic, devised by Handel Architects, is basically art deco in the heavily geometric and vaguely Chrysler-esque flanges that make up the staggered set-backs, starting around the 14th floor. But such adornments do little to enliven or relieve the sense of value engineering and general tedium of this 19-story development, undertaken by the Gotham Organization. The rest is a boxy mass that rises out of nowhere, curving, in true art deco fashion, round the corner where Broadway turns into 72nd Street. More

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