Raymond M Chera brings supermarket to Fulton Street Mall

After refreshing its property, RMC Assets further freshened up Downtown Brooklyn with the addition of a grocery store.

Raymond M Chera’s company signed The Fresh Grocer to a 21,000-square-foot lease at 523 Fulton Street, the New York Post reported. The property is part of the eight-block-long Fulton Street Mall.

Run by the Inserra family based out of New Jersey, The Fresh Grocer is in the midst of an expansion; the supermarket chain has nearly two dozen locations, but this will be the first outside of New Jersey or Pennsylvania.

Chera recently completed a three-year, $20 million renovation and modernization of the three-story, 114,000-square-foot property. It’s within a five-minute walk from Brooklyn’s tallest building yet, Brooklyn Tower, potentially giving the grocery store a built-in customer base.

Cushman & Wakefield’s Ian Lerner represented RMC in the deal, while Lee & Associates’ Jeffrey Lopez and Steve Lorenzo represented the tenant.

Other tenants at the block-long building between Duffield Street and Albee Square West include Spectrum Cable and Brooklyn Hospital. In 2020, the hospital signed one of the largest office leases across Brooklyn and Queens for the year, signing for 51,000 square feet to be used as administrative offices. The asking rent at the time was $55 per square foot.

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In the last decade, the Fulton Street Mall and its surrounding areas started getting made over, reeling in national retailers to set up shop. Raymour & Flanigan, Victoria’s Secret, Armani Exchange, Nordstrom Rack, Century 21 and H&M were among those to move in at the time, trying to capitalize on a growing student population, as well as more hotel and residential space.

Grocery stores and grocery-anchored assets are among the creme de la creme of the national retail landscape. The largest retail lease signed in Brooklyn last year was another grocery chain, discount retailer Lidl, which took 33,000 square feet in Crown Heights (it also checked in at second with a 25,000-square-foot lease in Park Slope).

— Holden Walter-Warner