With the pending arrival of discount gourmet supermarket Trader Joe’s, Union Square will cement its status as the center of the universe for New York foodies, and brokers expect its status as a gourmet paradise will benefit retailers throughout the area.
Already home to Manhattan’s largest greenmarket, Union Square gourmet grocery arrivals in the last year include Whole Foods on Union Square South, California-based Trader Joe’s opening in March or April, and, a few blocks west, Balducci’s. The New York epicurean market opened in December in the former New York Savings Bank at the corner of 14th Street and Eighth Avenue.
For the budget-conscious gourmand, Trader Joe’s arrival is great news. Alison Mochizuki, a Trader Joe’s spokesperson, says its first New York location will open at 142 East 14th Street, with a separate wine shop next-door at 138 East 14th Street. The company has 250 stores in 19 states.
Contrary to what one might expect, the more new food retailers that arrive, the better all those competing stores may do, brokers say. They’ll also help lift the retail profile of the area in general.
“I know most of them feel the same way. The more traffic there is, the better for all of them,” says Chase Welles of Northwest Atlantic Partners, which represents Whole Foods in Manhattan and northern New Jersey. “It’s the shoe store phenomenon: The more shoe stores there are together, the better they do.”
The area’s greenmarket history is well-established, and Union Square’s status as a high-end food mecca marks the next step in a three-decade local revitalization effort.
In 1976, the city reached out to then-director of the Greenmarket, Barry Benepe, to establish a farmers’ market in Union Square Park — then a haven for drug dealers — in an effort to bring people to the area. Today, the park and its surrounding neighborhood have come to be a vibrant, food-centric destination.
“The Greenmarket became a catalyst for the revitalization of the neighborhood,” says Tom Strumolo, director of the Greenmarket, which operates four days a week. “These new gourmet stores are extending the trend that began with the Greenmarket in ’76.”
The Greenmarket factored heavily in Trader Joe’s decision to locate there, says Amira Yunis, a senior managing director at Newmark Knight Frank. She and James D. Kuhn, Newmark’s president, represented the property’s landlord, New York University, in the deal with Trader Joe’s.
“Trader Joe’s spoke a lot about that,” Yunis says. “It shows that customers are already used to coming there to buy that kind of product and it shows how concerned they are about what they eat.”
The healthy, fresh products from local farms found at the Greenmarket set a standard for food that the neighboring grocers must live up to. “If they are not all the same quality, they are going to go out of business,” says Robert Kinsey, a senior director in the restaurant and food group at Robert K. Futterman & Associates.
Though the grocers share the interest of maintaining high standards of food quality and of the shopping experience generally, they avoid competition by offering complementary services.
“There may be crossover, but each one is a little different,” says Gene Spiegelman, executive director in Cushman & Wakefield’s retail services group. For example, Trader Joe’s does not have on-site butchers and bakers like Whole Foods, but is best-known for its low prices and selection of private-label products. The highlight of the new Balducci’s is its prepared food menu by the company’s chef and culinary director, Katy Sparks.