Posted on 02/24/2015 4:30:08 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
An old-school supermarket that will soon close in Clinton Hill needs to be replaced with a similar joint, and not some fancy-schmancy shop for white gentrifiers, a state legislator proclaimed this week.
The Key Food on Lafayette Avenue between Saint James Place and Classon Avenue is set to close within the next two months in order to make way for an eight-story residential building. The landlord said he will try to bring a supermarket back once the project is finished, and state Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (D–Clinton Hill) demanded he make sure he finds an operator that will continue serving neighbors of color, who she claimed have different grocery needs than whites.
“Supermarkets are an important part of the community. It’s an important amenity, especially for black and brown communities,” she said. “When you’re talking about a white community, it can be a little boutique, because white people don’t eat the way we do.”
Montgomery did not offer further information on what she thinks the white diet consists of, and her provocative remark went un-commented on at a heated town-hall meeting in the Ryerson Towers, a Mitchell Lama co-op complex, convened to update neighbors about the store’s closing and its pending redevelopment. Others in the predominately African-American crowd of about 100 saw the loss of the supermarket in racial terms, blaming it on gentrification and saying it is cutting off a lifeline for seniors who, because of their race, developers don’t care about.
“If our skin were any other color, this would not be happening,” Roseanne Lynn said.
Clinton Hill was 51 percent African-American and 41 percent white as of the 2010 Census, a marked shift from 2000, when the figures were 72 percent and 19 percent, respectively. The average rent for a two-bedroom has hovered around $3,000 since the fall of 2013, but the cost of new development in the neighborhood has more than doubled since the end of 2011, according to MNS real estate.
Richard Grobman, who owns the property, told the assembled residents that he hoped to have a supermarket open in the ground floor of the completed development. But he also said he could not guarantee that it would happen.
“We certainly appreciate that a supermarket is important to the neighborhood here. And we are endeavoring to have a supermarket here in the final development,” he said. “We’re not obligated to, but we’re certainly trying. I can’t guarantee it though.”
It is in his interest to give the people what they want, he said.
“I hope that I’m smart enough to choose an operator that can provide the community what it needs,” he said. “Because if I don’t, I’m going to have a big vacant store.”
Ryerson Towers residents said that other grocery stores, including a C-Town two blocks away on Taaffe Place, are too far for seniors to get to.
“Closing that store is just crazy,” said Dennis Williams, who goes shopping at Key Food with his elderly mother. “You haven’t taken us or the seniors into consideration at all.”
Public Advocate Letitia James, who lives nearby and patronizes the Key Food, said the distance to the other grocery stores is too much for oldsters.
“I can walk to Myrtle or Dekalb, but the vast majority of these residents cannot,” she said.
Grobman’s family has owned the property for 50 years and used to operate a grocery store at the site called Dan’s Supreme, a chain of supermarkets his family still owns. He is set to retain partial ownership of the property after its development through a joint agreement with Slate Property Group.
The building is supposed to include 110 rental apartments, underground parking, and ground floor retail, according David Schwartz, a principal of Slate.
He said the group will pursue a tax abatement that would set aside a fifth of the units as below-market rate. A small doctor’s office is also planned in the space.
The retail portion is planned to be built in a way conducive to attracting a supermarket, even though building it differently would be more lucrative, Schwartz said.
“We could make a lot more money by dividing it up into smaller stores,” Schwartz said. “But we listened to the community express a demand for a supermarket.”
At the town hall, residents were also angry over the short notice for the store’s shuttering, and asked the pols present why they did not know sooner. The site’s zoning allows for the project to be built without special permission, and does not require public hearings or political input to move forward.
James said she heard about the closing the way everybody did — while shopping for cereal.
Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo (D–Clinton Hill) said the process is broken.
“I’m baffled that you don’t know more about what this project entails,” she said. “We’re working everyday in the Council to transform the legislation that makes a development like this possible.”
James had a different take.
“He owns private property, and he’s saying, ‘I’m going to do whatever I want with it,’ ” she said. “We don’t live in a communist country. This is capitalism.”
That is exactly what learning what chitlins are (just looked it up) made me think of! Although I read about the journals in “Undaunted Courage”. Intestines are only for life and death starvation situations!
We actually close our mouths when we eat, so yeah, we don’t eat like you do..../S
Idiots...
“When you’re talking about a white community, it can be a little boutique, because white people don’t eat the way we do.”
They use utensils?
Snow is racist.
Everything on Earth is Wasist. Waaaaaah.
Some people will never be happy. They just want to complain.
Where I live, developers have moved into a poor section of town and have begun building new houses. The residents there are irate! The value of the homes have gone up!
Imagine being upset because your neighborhood has improved and the value of your house has gone up.
I’m tired of all the complaining.
Beet greens are soul food? I didn’t know that.
I love beet greens, especially when you get some tiny tiny beets in them. You have to be careful though, beet greens and spinach are high in oxalic acid.
It is imperative for this community to have concessions dealing in the secondary and tertiary markets for EBT cards.
Oh THAT would be rough! Yuck!
Pictures?????? Heeheehee
I’m sick and tired of that subset of people who go out of their way to segregate themselves from white society and then complain because people think they are different.
‘White people don’t eat the way we do’. God, I’d have loved it if some white person got up and said, “What are you talking about? We like watermelon and fried chicken too!”
And then watch heads explode.
Is this ALL about orange drank?
Or as they used to call it....”Ernge”. Heavy emphasis on the Er.
That did give me indigestion, even with a 22 year old's digestive system of a coyote. Just could not deal with all that grease.
Mexican food never bothered me, though they use lard as well. Maybe cause I grew up with it?
I would love to have access to mustard, horseradish. beet, etc. greens to try and cook them the way my grandmother did for me once she found out how much I enjoyed them.
Ah, the bite of mustard or horseradish greens and a touch of bacon!
Oxalic acid blocks absorption of iron. I disagree with including spinach in the list as it has very little if any oxalic acid...thus it’s desirability as a great food source for iron!(Remember Pop-eye anyone?)
That “bite” you talk about is the oxalic acid itself!
This would be embarrassing to anyone with any sense of self respect. What they are saying is that whitey is mucking up their glorious hood. They think and sound like the Klan.
You realize, don’t you, that you will not find a person of any color south of the Mason Dixon who calls them ‘chitterlings’.
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