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The New York City Planning Commission has unanimously approved a proposal to provide zoning and tax incentives to full-service grocery stores that establish outlets in locations throughout the city known as food deserts, the New York Times reports. Based on a Pennsylvania program that provides grants and loans for supermarket construction, the New York City program aims to eliminate barriers grocery stores typically face when establishing outlets in low-income or underserved neighborhoods. As part of the proposed program, a residential building with a grocery store could be permitted to be 20,000-square-feet larger than existing zoning ordinances currently allow, while outlets in manufacturing districts would be permitted to be as much as 30,000-square-feet larger. In addition, smaller stores in select commercial and manufacturing districts would be exempt from a requirement mandating that they provide customer parking. Grocery stores would also be eligible for several tax abatements and other exemptions aimed at promoting construction. These financial and zoning incentives would specifically apply to approved stores in northern Manhattan, central Brooklyn, the south Bronx and downtown Jamaica in Queens that devote at least one-half of their square footage to the sale of food, and a certain amount of space to fresh produce, meats, dairy and other perishables. The program will also require store owners to display a special “fresh” logo from the planning department featuring the statement, “This store sells fresh food.” Although earlier efforts to make fresh foods readily available in poor neighborhoods have yielded mixed results, the program has already received wide-ranging support from policy experts, City Council members and supermarket executives, with one executive asserting that the proposal is “a very worthy endeavor to improve nutrition.” City Planning Commissioner Amanda M. Burden notes that “this is about being able to walk to get your groceries in those areas that are really, really underserved and basically have no place to buy fresh produce.” (Cardwell, New York Times, 9/24/09 [registration required]).