CM Farías questions supermarket location and food desert rationale
CM Farías asks about community board concerns regarding existing supermarkets in the area and the competitive nature of the developer's other Bronx locations. Orantia explains the applicant has 40 years of supermarket experience, the fresh food program provides healthy food options within walking distance for residents, and the store will operate as a Key Food with periodic compliance reports and a restrictive declaration.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the presentation.
We're super familiar already.
We've had so many conversations before we got to this point, so I'm glad we're here.
Happy to hear that commitment on seeing it all the way through with the HPD term sheet.
My, I guess just like for the record for me, what I'd like to kind of put out there is some of the conversation that happened in community board was around how there's several
supermarkets or a couple, not several, a couple of supermarkets in the area and that they don't, some folks didn't necessarily agree with this being a location.
You folks already know my opinion on that with the food desert that we're in.
I believe this is a suitable location based off of the square footage.
I mean that the radius in the area of accessibility.
But can you talk a little bit more about that and talk about the other locations where the developer already has his supermarkets and the competitive nature of it or not in terms of serving.
Bronx sites.
Sure.
So as I mentioned at the start, this applicant is an experienced supermarket owner.
He's been in the business for 40 years, has other locations in the Bronx and outside the city,
is very familiar with how to run a successful supermarket business, and is eager to bring the fresh food program to this location, which,
as you know, provides for a variety of healthy food options.
And it's designed for residents to be able to walk to the store.
So it's ideal for people who live within the surrounding area.
They don't have to use a car to access healthy food options.
The fresh food program requires periodic compliance reports, restrictive declaration, and the applicant is fully prepared to follow through with that process.
They'll be engaged directly in the operation of the supermarket.
It's going to be run as key food.