On Saturday, Oct. 31, sale signs were plastered throughout the Food Emporium in preparation for its closing. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
It was a scene from another time at Tribeca’s Food Emporium on Saturday, Oct. 31, as weekend shoppers stood in check-out lines, their carts loaded with goods. The store was bustling again, much as it had been before Whole Foods moved in down the street seven years ago.
But with a difference.
With a big yellow banner that screamed “STORE CLOSING” strung outside and sale signs plastered everywhere, now it was mostly bargain hunters who were streaming through the door.
On Nov. 21, 32 years after its much celebrated opening at 316 Greenwich St. in Independence Plaza, the store is expected to close.
The Food Emporium chain is among a slew of stores owned by bankrupt A&P that has been on the auction block. Unlike many of the others, no bidder has picked up the Tribeca store, according to Local 338 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union.
“It’s just sad. It’s really a loss to the neighborhood,” said a woman shopping with her husband in the produce aisle.
“It’s also the old Tribeca, not the new Tribeca,” said her husband. (The couple, 11-year residents, did not want to give their names.) “Whole foods is the new Tribeca. I like both but it’s sad to see the old Tribeca go away.”
“I’m new in Tribeca,” said Karly Urata, a shopper who has lived in the neighborhood for two years, “but I always felt like this was a hometown store.”
Standing in the checkout line, Jackie Leak, a long-time Independence Plaza resident, was pained not only by the closing of the grocery store, but the four-block-long strip of now-empty storefronts along Greenwich Street in Independence Plaza where only a Duane Reade remains.
“I pass by here and it looks so awful. It’s all blank,” Leak said. “This is like our history. They just keep eliminating history.”
It wasn’t until 1983, eight years after Independence Plaza opened, that the then-owners of the development finally rented the space to Food Emporium and the neighborhood got its first grocery store. But it took the efforts of local activists to make it happen. They said the landlord was asking a prohibitive rent and warehousing the development’s commercial spaces for a tax write-off.
“By getting thousands of signatures in the street, which took months, we were able to prove to the city that we needed a supermarket,” recalled Diane Lapson, now president of the Independence Plaza Tenants Association. "So they were able to put pressure on the owner, and the owner was suddenly negotiating a better rent.” In addition, John Scott, another tenant leader, helped the Food Emporium get a federal urban development loan that would allow the store to build out its space, Lapson said.
For those like Lapson, with a long history in the neighborhood, the now-empty storefronts today bring back memories. “Like 40 years later,” she said, “here we go again.”
In the meantime, it is many of the workers at the store and thousands of others in the A&P group that are being hit hard.
Felix Gonzales, 59, who has worked for the company for 34 years and the local Food Emporium for 15, said he will be out of a job. “You know how many people are looking for 60-year-olds to work all day?” he said.
“There’s so much stress, you don’t even know what’s happening from day to day,” added Gonzales, who said he wakes up nightly with worry. “It’s really, really bad.”